An Interview with Hope Wilkerson

Hope Wilkerson is a raw, unflinching voice in contemporary literary fiction. She writes what most people are afraid to say out loud—stories that live in the shadows of addiction, grief, and survival. Born and raised in a small town in Kentucky, Hope still calls it home, drawing inspiration from the quiet backroads and hidden struggles of rural life. Her work strips language to the bone—poetic, spare, and searingly honest. When she’s not writing, she’s listening: to the silences between words, the weight of what’s left unsaid, and the echoes of lives that never got a headline. Teeth Like Glass is her debut novella and the first in a series that dares to tell the truth about addiction—not the aftermath, but the ache of the during.

---

---

What inspired you to start writing this book?

I wanted to write the truth no one talks about—the part no one puts in the movies. Teeth Like Glass was born from watching people disappear while still sitting across from you. I didn’t want to write about recovery. I wanted to write about the “during”—about the shame, the silence, and the way time warps when you’re deep in it. It came from stories I saw, lived beside, and sometimes lived through. There’s poetry in the pain, and I needed to make something out of it.

Tell us the story of your book’s current title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

Teeth Like Glass wasn’t a title I labored over with endless lists and discarded ideas. It was a phrase that surfaced mid-writing, during one of the rawer passages where the narrator is high, unraveling, and reflecting on how fragile her smile has become—how her teeth feel like glass from the inside out. It stuck. Not just because of the literal decay drugs cause, but because of what it symbolizes: something meant to break down the world (teeth) now on the verge of shattering itself (glass). Strong and delicate. Destructive and destroyed. A smile that’s hollow. A mouth full of lies.

That’s what this book is—a portrait of fragility disguised as force. And Teeth Like Glass felt like the only way to name it.

Describe your dream book cover.

My dream book cover feels like a bruise in visual form—raw, quiet, and impossible to look away from.

I imagine a muted color palette, something smoky or ash-toned, with a single striking image at the center: maybe a girl with her back turned, hair tangled, shadow spilling off her shoulders like smoke. Or just a broken toothbrush in a dirty sink, lit like a relic. Nothing too loud. Nothing trying to sell anything. Just something that feels like the book—aching, intimate, and honest. I want the reader to feel unsettled before they even turn the first page.

It shouldn’t scream. It should haunt.

And more than anything, it should reflect the spirit of the story: that even in destruction, there’s a terrible kind of beauty.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

1. “Symptoms of Being Human” – Shinedown

A soul unraveling. A perfect mirror to the book’s theme of internal fracture and masking pain.

2. “Breathe Me” – Sia

For the silences that swallow you. This plays when she’s curled up, too hollow to cry.

3. “Heavy” – Linkin Park ft. Kiiara

The weight of withdrawal. The invisible weight no one sees.

4. “Liability” – Lorde

Feeling like a burden. Wanting to be loved but always preparing to be left.

5. “The Drugs Don’t Work” – The Verve

The brutal reality of numbing out until nothing’s left.

6. “Creep” (Acoustic) – Radiohead

That moment when self-worth is stripped bare and you’re just bones and shame.

7. “Hurt” – Nine Inch Nails / Johnny Cash version

Either version works — raw, haunting, and so close to the emotional core of this story it hurts to breathe.

8. “1-800-273-8255” – Logic ft. Alessia Cara & Khalid

A quiet reminder that stories like this are still being lived. And they matter.

9. “Youth” – Daughter

Delicate, devastating. It belongs in every broken bathroom scene.

10. “Doomed” – Bring Me The Horizon

A track that feels like spiraling while pretending you’re fine. The emotional sound of isolation.

What books are you reading (for research or comfort) as you continue the writing process?

I am currently not reading any books. Mary Higgins Clark is one of my favorite authors.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I’ve worked in social work and support roles. I’ve been the one people call when they’re at the edge, and sometimes I’ve stood at that edge myself. Readers might not know that I live in a small Kentucky town where people still wave at each other on backroads. My world is rural, raw, and full of stories waiting to be told.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

Pain made me write. Survival made me write. But I stayed because of people like Sylvia Plath, Ocean Vuong, and Anne Sexton. Their work didn’t flinch—and I didn’t want to flinch either. I also draw from old gospel hymns, southern storytelling, and the kind of porch-swing confessions you only hear after midnight.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Curled up in the quiet—usually on my bed with a fan blowing and coffee gone cold. I need isolation to dig into the rawness. I write best at night, when the world is still and ghosts start to talk.

What advice would you give your past self at the start of your writing journey?

Don’t water it down. Don’t try to make it pretty for people who’ve never been where you’ve been. The right readers will find you—and they’ll be the ones who needed your words like air. And when you think you’ve gone too far? Go one line further.

What’s one thing you hope sticks with readers after they finish your book?

That there’s beauty in the broken. That sometimes telling the truth—even the ugly, uncomfortable, razor-edged truth—is a form of love. And maybe most of all: if you’re still in it, still breathing, still trying—you’re not alone.

---

Are you a writer, too? Submit your manuscript to Atmosphere Press.