Meet Lynne Hugo

We were lucky to catch up with Lynne Hugo recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Lynne with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?

My parents were children of the great Depression and had both worked extremely hard to climb out of that. They had very high aspirations for me, their first of two daughters. I was gifted in academic areas that involved reading and writing, but abysmal in math and science, and didn’t manage to muster any strong motivation. By early high school, when none of the all-required subject matter actually interested me, I was in an academic slump. My sophomore year was disastrous, and my college prospects looked dim. Internally I tried on the “I’m just not that smart,” identity, but I couldn’t make it fit. At the beginning of my junior year, I decided that for one semester, I would try. I would do the work whether I was interested in it or not. That semester, I got all A’s, and was ultimately moved into the honors program, a huge turning point for me. I was further bolstered by being able to choose a writing class that year, and doing exceptionally well, which gave me a sense of direction I’ve relied on ever since.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I write realistic fiction portraying the struggles, failures, humor, and hope of close relationships in today’s complex world.
My work was bolstered early by a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship as well as several grants from the Ohio Arts Council and The Kentucky Foundation for Women. Since the nineties, I’ve had twelve novels traditionally published, one of which became a Lifetime Original Movie of the Month, two volumes of poetry, and a children’s book. A memoir, WHERE THE TRAIL GROWS FAINT, won the Riverteeth Nonfiction Book Prize.

My husband and I both have roots are firmly planted in New England, but we now live in hilly southwest Ohio, where we hike in the woods with our rescued beagador (half-Lab, half-beagle). Cassie excels at barking, swimming, retrieving, and terrorizing the squirrels in a three-state territory. We really enjoy our loud rowdy and still-growing family. You’re warmly invited to visit my website, Http://www.LynneHugo.com, and especially to subscribe to my combination blog/newsletter, which you’ll find easy to do there.

You’ll also find a lot on my website about all my work, including my newest novels. In THE LANGUAGE OF KIN, two zookeepers who work with great apes conflict over the ethics of confining the intelligent and social creatures at all. A MATTER OF MERCY is set on the outer coast of Cape Cod in a working community of oystermen. It’s based on an actual lawsuit to shut them down in 2004—a lawsuit that relied on the Massachusetts Colonial Ordinance of 1640–brought by a wealthy upland landowner who didn’t want his view spoiled. It became a dramatic story with deep ramifications to think about and discuss. This is the aim of all my work; not to offer answers but to delve into important issues through riveting stories about full, engaging human characters—stories that leave readers thinking for themselves and wanting to talk about their feelings and reactions.

Also, through my website or the sites themselves, I’d love for you to follow me on BookBub, where I posts book reviews of my favorite reads. Other than BookBub, Instagram is where I’m most active, too. My novel, MOTHERS OF FATE, will be published on 4/22/25. It has to do with the complexities of adoption as experienced by an adoptee, a birth mother and adoptive parents. I’m excited because it’s already received generous pre-publication praise; I hope you’ll get a copy and most of all, I hope you find it really meaningful.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

What has helped me most is being self-directed, loving what I do, and having the self-discipline to get myself to my computer and working daily. Just opening the file gets me going.

As for advice: I have always read fiction voraciously, and I’m sure that’s helped me absorb diction and structure. I know that a lot of people benefit enormously from an MFA program. I did not go that route–my Master’s degree is in Counseling Psychology and I am a licensed therapist–but I’m not advocating for that as preparation for becoming a writer, even though I think it’s given me a great deal of insight into individual and relationship dynamics. I think that each person who aspires to write fiction should give it a try, get feedback from trusted sources and try to glean where his or her weaknesses might be. Then work to find ways to improve in that area, whether it be a technical skill such as realistic dialog scene setting or creating more complex human characters, Those are just two examples, of course.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?

When I feel overwhelmed, which is most likely to happen when I am approaching a book launch, I try not to dither. I try to start a master list of tasks, and as I think of things–or my publicist or editor sends me a request or give me a deadline–I add it to the list. This keeps me from getting frantic and worrying that I’m going to forget something because I’m mentally juggling all of these items.
The next step is to rewrite the list in order of priority and/or deadlines. If there are very easy things, and much more time-consuming items, sometimes I’ll put several easy things at the top so that I can check them off in order to encourage myself. I think you have to know your own psychology to know what will be most motivating to you. But the list is really helpful to me because otherwise I keep going over and over it in my mind, which is distracting and draining. A written list. for me, makes it concrete and doable.

Contact Info:

• Website: [email protected]
• Instagram: LynneHugoAuthor
• Facebook: Lynne Hugo Reader’s Page
• Other: Threads: @LynneHugoAuthor

Image Credits

Author photo: Alan deCourcy