Interview

Lauren Groff's acclaimed first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, is based on Cooperstown, New York. In this interview Lauren discusses how Cooperstown influenced her novel, and the sources of her characters.

What was your experience growing up in Cooperstown, New York? Did you always have a fascination with its history, or was that something that you came to later in life?

My family is not originally from Cooperstown, but I was born there, so I have always had a fierce, possessive pride in my town. I tried to mirror in my novel exactly the way I felt about Cooperstown: it's such a beautiful, rich place, though not without its irritations and drawbacks. I grew up in the heart of the town, about a block and a half from the Hall of Fame, right on the lake—in a house named Averell Cottage, exactly the way I described it in the book, all haunted and wonky—at least to my overactive imagination as a child. I was a really shy, really bookish, easily frightened little girl with horrible eyesight, so when I awoke at night in my my creaky, drafty old house and the light from the window slanted a certain way, I really did see ghosts. Living in a house so old, one just feels as if one is living in layers upon layers of history. Also, in the basement of the house they actually did at one time find slave fetters, and that made a huge impression on me—I wrote Hetty, in part, to try to rewrite what I knew about the house where I ...