The Wisdom of Hair by Kim Boykin

6 October 2012

1. What can you tell our readers about your new book The Wisdom of Hair?

The book is about is really about the truth women believe, if they can change their hair, even if it’s for a moment or a day or a lifetime, they can change their lives. But that change requires a stylist, so through the protagonist, Zora Adams, we also learn about the sacred connection that exists between stylist and client. People don’t just trust their hair stylist with their hair; they trust them with their secrets. They tell their stylist things they’d never tell anyone else, not their sister not their best friend.

2. Why did you decide to choose South Carolina as your setting for this novel?

I grew up there, but that’s not the only reason I set all my novels in South Carolina. Aside from being beautiful, it offers all kinds of wonderful backdrops for stories. From the romance of Charleston, to horses and high society of Aiken, to the mountains of Travelers Rest, you’d be hard pressed to find a state that offers that kind of variety within a 300-kilometer radius.

3. The main character in the novel finds her calling in beauty school, is this something that you were familair with already or did you have to research into this discipline?

When I was in the third grade, my mother went to beauty. She took me with her a couple of times during the summer. The school she attended was the garden-variety kind, but the one in book is special because Mrs. Cathcart, the dean of the school, makes sure her budding hair stylists know how important they are to womankind. Of course we in the US don’t have deans of beauty school, but after hearing from so many stylists and women who really get that connection that exist between the two, maybe we should have more Mrs. Cathcart’s.

4. Where did your inspiration come from for the novel?

Initially the story was about Zora’s hardships growing up in the mountains with her crazy man-addicted mother, which explains her totally wrong but delicious addiction to Winston Sawyer. But when Zora got to beauty school, she showed me her story was more than just a story about a mountain girl who goes to beauty school and falls for the wrong guy. It’s about this quirky community of women who teach her what real love is and, more importantly, what it’s not, and Zora growing into herself as an independent young woman and finding her calling as a hair stylist.

5. You write about strong Southern women as that is all you know, can you expand upon this for us?

The first rule of writing anything is to write what you know. There have been so many strong Southern women in my life. By nature, women are strong, but we’re also nurturers. I love the paradox that we give part of that strength away in crisis or in every day life, and somehow that act of giving makes us stronger.

6. Tell us about your involvement in the South Carolina's Writer's Workshop.

I’m on the board of directors of SCWW. It’s a great organization that fosters writing throughout the state through critique groups, workshops, and our annual conference where writers can pitch their work to top shelf agents and editors. Our board is one that requires all members to do many things; primarily I’m responsible for communications.

7. Who do you most like to read and why?

Lately, I’ve been reading A LOT of romance because I’m writing a romance set in Charleston in 1952. But I just finished Gillian Flynn’s very dark suspense novels. I love the way she can take such unlikeable characters and make me care about what happens to them.

8. Which writers have inspired your own writing over the years and in what way?

I’ve always written, but I’m so ADHD it took about forty years for me to be able to sit still long enough to read as voraciously as a writer should. But when I did, I was immediately smitten by Robert Olen Butler, and his amazing collection of American short stories based on postcards from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s called HAD A GOOD TIME. The book is a study in so many things, especially good storytelling.

THE LOVELY BONES by Alice Seabold; she breaks so many rules of writing and makes them work seamlessly. Most recently, A GOOD HARD LOOK by Ann Napolitano. The author tells a heartbreakingly beautiful story from five points of view, one of which is the patron saint of Southern gothic literature, Flannery O’Connor. And she makes you care equally about the other characters. I didn’t read anything for two months after I finished Napolitano’s book because nothing else measured up.

9. Your grandfather was a great storyteller, so do you think this was your main motivation to begin write?

When I began writing, thirty years ago, I didn’t think about it like that, but yes. I know he had a lot to do my abilities because I learned so much from him about pacing and noticing small things that make the story rich. But the motivation came from inside me; I suspect it was the same for him, maybe some sort of primal gift. We are storytellers.

10. So what is next for you?

Honestly? I’m stress eating and checking Email every five seconds, waiting to find out if my editor likes my second novel I just sent her. Being ADHD, I’m really good at multi-tasking, so I’m also writing my third novel, which is a romantic comedy set in the early 1950’s.

11. You have ADHD, so tell us how this affected your writing.

Growing up in the 1960’s, nobody knew what ADHD was. Compared to my brilliant older sisters, I knew something was “wrong with me.” So I learned to multi-task and excel at things I did well to make up for things I couldn’t do, like sitting still and math.

But while the rest of the class was learning whatever they were supposed to be learning, I was noticing things that enrich my writing today. Things like the pace of the teacher’s breathing, the tenor or her voice, what her hands looked like, what she smelled like, what shapes the wrinkles on her face made. All of that made me wonder why those things were the way they were, and that’s really where the story is, in the details.

Female First Lucy Walton

---

by Lucy Walton find me on and follow me on