While most English literature students have story drafts haunting their Google drives, Kingston-born speculative fiction writer Sophia Hannan brought hers to life, signing a literary agent, getting a book deal, and a publication credit all before finishing her undergrad.
During Hannan’s first-year at Trent University, Simon & Schuster acquired her first novel, We Were Never Here, a spine-chilling debut that centers around a popular YouTube ghost hunting show that falls apart after the death of the co-host, Jules. As her presence haunts the narrative, her grieving girlfriend, Georgia, is left to pick up the pieces.
After releasing her book this summer, Hannan is pursuing a master’s in creative writing at the University of Toronto while continuing to balance her student-author double life with a second book on the way and an upcoming panel at Kingston WritersFest.
For Hannan, her writing journey began with what she calls a 17-year-old’s “unearned confidence.”
This led her to apply for online mentorship programs, where her drafts were met with positive responses from readers.
“I felt really good about the book at that point because I knew it wasn’t just me looking at it and trying to make it work, someone had seen it who knew what they were doing,” Hannan said in an interview with The Journal.
Hannan was mentored by Trang Thanh Tran, who wrote the New York Times Bestseller She Is a Haunting, a queer young adult Gothic novel.
Beyond the mentorship, Hannan’s inspiration and influences came from all thing’s horror. She was into ghost hunting shows and her degree introduced her to the Gothic, which came to influence her work. But English degrees traditionally consist of reading books, not necessarily writing your own.
“Definitely a bit of a balancing act and a lot of spreadsheets were involved with my class readings and all of the things I needed to do that week for the book. Some writing in lectures, but we won’t tell my profs about that,” Hannan joked.
In her debut queer young adult horror, We Were Never Here, Georgia becomes a ghost of who she once was after her girlfriend’s death. As the story unfolds, her grief takes on a ghostly presence. While her mind was tormented by that last night, her physical attributes change too.
“I was thinking a lot about the language of being consumed by grief and what that would look like if it were to happen more physically, and in a creepier way, but I also feel like a lot of grief is a loss of agency. You can’t control the situation around you or even how you feel, and so I wanted to write her loss of autonomy in that way,” Hannan said.
As well as grief, We Were Never Here touches on YouTube’s toxic fan culture, including queer baiting and real person fanfiction, creating online personas that impact characters off-screen.
When Hannan was online during COVID-19 and realizing she was queer, she felt she was seeing a culture of “you have to come out if you want to make queer art or do anything or say anything in relation to the queer community.”
“When I decided that I was going to write a book where the main characters had a huge YouTube channel and being public facing, I knew that was something I wanted to touch on.”
As a born and raised Kingstonian whose parents went to Queen’s, Kingston holds a special place in Hannan’s heart.
“I have done a lot of writing at every café and library that I could find, even around the Queen’s campus. In the summer, I come back and I’m in the Douglas library and no one else is there and it’s beautiful.”
As well, Hannan grew up attending Kingston’s WritersFest (KWF) which had an impact on her writing and ambition.
“[It] felt much more achievable because these real people in front of me are doing this, I can do this too, we’re not that different. KWF has always been special to me for that reason, and Kingston is a great place to write, especially if you want to do Gothic stuff.” On Oct. 2, Hannan will be panelling at KWF’s “”Beyond the Veil of Things.”
Tags
Canadian literature, horror, queer books, Sophia Hannan
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