This post was updated Aug. 31 at 7:42 p.m.
Michelle Huneven crafts an evocative tribute to her hometown in her latest novel, “Bug Hollow.”
“Bug Hollow” is a tale of grief and drama following the lives of the Samuelson family in 1970s Altadena, California, after the death of their eldest son, Ellis. The author’s sixth novel hit bookshelves June 17, just five months after Huneven’s own home in the city was destroyed in the Eaton Fire. Prior to the book’s genesis in April 2023, Huneven – a UCLA English lecturer – said she wasn’t ready for another big project after finishing her 2022 book, “Search.” Yet, when she started following a writing exercise she often assigned to her students, Huneven said the urge to write “Bug Hollow” was irresistible.
“I got out all of my prompts that I had given to my students, and I started writing to them every day, one prompt a day,” Huneven said. “I had a story that was floating around on my desktop that I’d started and thought, ‘Well, I’ll just work on that for my 20 minutes today.’ And I just kept working on it, and that became ‘Bug Hollow.’”
Each day, Huneven said she would set a timer for 20 minutes to freewrite to one of the many writing prompts she would give to students in UCLA’s fiction writing workshops. The prompt to “write about a sibling that you never had” inspired the first story of “Bug Hollow.” Huneven shared the short story with English professor and longtime writing partner, Mona Simpson, who sparked an idea for the next chapter about Ellis’ girlfriend, Julia.
Huneven said Simpson continued to stimulate her interest in the book’s subsequent characters, including the older sister and mother, whose perspectives became central to the story. Simpson said she was immediately drawn to the complexities of Huneven’s characters. She added that her earliest feedback on Huneven’s work was to further explore each character’s traits, effectively balancing how they are perceived by readers and other characters within the story. Simpson said she was thrilled with how the characters turned out, along with Huneven’s descriptions of the story’s locations.
“Huneven is just a beautiful landscape writer,” Simpson said. “She really captures California.”
Huneven, who grew up in Altadena and still lives there with her husband, said she chose to set her story there because of its personal meaning to her and its rich cultural history. While Huneven writes extensively about Californian settings, she said the novel – her second set in Altadena – encapsulates a special connection to her hometown. In the aftermath of the wildfire, Huneven dedicated “Bug Hollow” to Altadena.
While Huneven said she experienced a different type of grief from her characters, who are dealing with the tragic death of Ellis, the loss of her house carried similar weight.
“It is interesting to be experiencing it (grief) not creatively, but on the ground, as they would say,” Huneven said.
Though Huneven placed most of her story in the greater Altadena community, one of the most iconic places she explores is the location from which the book gets its title: Bug Hollow. She said the fictional commune was inspired by three separate trips: the first to a rental house in Boulder Creek over three decades ago and the second a few years later to Ben Lomond, a census designated place near Boulder Creek where Huneven went to buy some lavender soap and became enamored with the former hunting-lodge-turned-soap-business. The third trip was to Tick Creek, a North Carolina commune, where Huneven spent time as a hippie after her junior year of college. Huneven said the Bug Hollow commune seemed like the perfect place that would appeal to a recent high school graduate like Ellis.
After building the setting of “Bug Hollow,” Huneven said she continued to write the novel over the course of the next year and a half, forming each character’s perspective as its own story before tying them together into a cohesive narrative. In particular, she said she enjoys writing “prickly” characters, such as those with conflicting motives or personality traits. Huneven said one of her favorite characters is Ellis’ younger sister, Sally, who she described as funny, intrepid and loving.
Sue Horton, one of Huneven’s longtime friends and colleagues, said “Bug Hollow” stands out among the author’s works.
“This book is different from her other books,” Horton said. “Michelle is such a lovely writer … each one (of her books) is so different from the others and so fabulous in its own right.”
As an educator, Huneven said her students’ bravery in class motivated her to stick with the project. Since the book’s publication, Huneven said she has reflected heavily on the advice she gives her students. Huneven’s main advice for other writers, especially her students, is to persevere. She said she admires her students for having the courage to share their work aloud during workshops, and she hopes to channel their courage in her own life.
“You have to just ignore those feelings of insecurity and sometimes even disgust of your own writing and just keep pushing through it,” Huneven said. “It’s a natural part of the process.”
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