hika.

Galligan, a senior at Kenyon, is currently working as the Kenyon Review Outreach Intern, where she is hosting an eight-week, creative writing workshop with elementary kids. She is an English major with an emphasis in creative writing and a concentration in gender and sexuality studies. Her short fiction piece, “Walking with Ghosts” will be featured in the 2025-2026 edition of HIKA.

What inspired you to write “Walking with Ghosts”? 

I was here for the summer, and doing a Kenyon Review Young Writers camp, and you just had all day to do nothing basically because we mostly worked in the evenings. And so, I was doing a lot of walking up and down the Middle Path and I was reflecting on starting my last year at Kenyon, and I was thinking about ghostliness as a big theme. It’s what my honor’s thesis is about. I was thinking about what it means to transition into ghostliness, and all of these memories I’ve had of walking up and down Middle Path, and all of these ghosts meeting me in this place, and then me like leaving with them. Essentially becoming ghosts. 

Your very last paragraph is really striking. You said, “please won’t you walk with me a little longer? Please come along. It won’t be far just until we reach the end of the path just until it all turns ghostly.” What compelled you to change the point of view and talk directly to the ghosts? 

I was thinking about this movement: you start as an observer, and then, as you go along, you become the ghost. So “you” almost becomes the reader and it transitions from ‘let me talk about these ghosts’ to me starting to beg you to walk with me like I was a ghost. You were the one who was walking with me as a ghost. That was like the transition I was envisioning—slowly as the piece went on, things got a little bit looser and a little bit like fuzzier on the pronouns. 

What are some of your favorite craft elements to incorporate in your work? 

I’m a big repetition gal, probably to my detriment. I have to edit out a lot of unnecessary repetition, but when I really like a short impactful phrase, I like coming back to it or repeating it for emphasis. Or, putting it at the start of a sentence. 

Do you work in any other genres other than fiction? 

I’m primarily fiction. I’ve written some non-fiction memoir writing, life writing, and nature and science writing. I dabble in poetry, but I really have no business being there. But primarily fiction. 

Have you noticed any differences between how you write fiction and when you dabble in other genres? 

Yeah, I feel like there’s different muscles there. I remember I took a film writing class last year and I remember thinking it was gonna be easy because I was like, ‘oh I know how to do a short story.’ And then, as soon as you translate it into film, it’s a whole different toolbox you need. So I think with something like film writing or something like nonfiction writing, you have to rely on a different lens. I think in terms of film, thinking about how you can express movement and emotion in dialogue is an interesting skill to learn. For nature and science writing, how do you make something feel clear and surprising? How do you surprise your reader and make them wanna keep reading it? I think that that was another skill set. Making something feel real and intangible to an audience. And so all those things feel like building certain skill sets that make my fiction better as well. 

Do you have any ideas or themes that you want to explore in the near future? 

I think I keep coming back to personal relationships and the connections between people, specifically strangers. Like what happens when you and a stranger have this weird connection. Like when you’re crying one day and somebody in the bathroom gives you a tissue or like when you’re on a bus and you make eye contact with a stranger and you’re like reading the same book, something like that. I really am fascinated by the ways in which our worlds collide briefly and have some kind of reverberations from that. 

Can you tell me about your writing process? 

I start with a preoccupation or a daydream, usually. Whether it’s an image or like a specific phrase or a sensation I can’t get out of my head, I start there. If it sticks around with me long enough, then it starts to build itself out into a story or a fragment in my own head. There’s a lot of daydreaming to begin. Then when it feels like I have something formed enough in my head, then I put it on paper and it becomes brutalized—it’s like a terrible version of the thing I have in my head. I think that’s always the hardest part for me, just getting it out. Then there’s the fun part of trying to refine it and engineer it into something that works and reads on the page. 

How did you start writing? 

I was a dyslexic child and so I couldn’t read anything. I thought that was boring, so I just started making things up instead. So I was always a child with a very overactive imagination. And stories just kept coming out of me left and right. I’d tell them to my stuffed animals or I’d draw them out or I’d play pretend with my friends. Then, when a teacher told me you’re allowed to write those stories down, it was life changing to me. It blew my mind. I’ve kind of just stuck with it ever since. I was very lucky to find the thing that made me the happiest. 

Since you started writing, how do you think your work has changed? 

I think I’ve gotten past the instinct to want to be writerly or the want to have this thing that I made that sounds impressive and sounds like these other impressive writers. I think I was in that phase for a while and I’ve sort of deconstructed that. Now I’m more interested in what my particular voice is and I’m not interested in necessarily being writerly. I’m interested in playing with words and sentences and what is my truth.

Do you think teaching creative writing to elementary kids has changed how you approach your own writing? 

For sure! It makes it so much more fun. There’s something so liberating about a child’s imagination because they’re just willing to throw anything out there. Any weird combination of words or ideas. It’s just crazy the things that they come up with. And so, it’s made my writing a lot more playful because writing can be the most serious thing in the world, but it’s also the most unserious thing in the world. Keeping that element of fun and exploration and joy involved is so great for my own writing practice.

Do you have any advice for people who want to be writers that might be afraid to start? 

You have to understand that everybody is a bad writer. Writers are bad writers. That’s a key part of the element: writing very poorly. The worse, the better, even. Because as soon as you have something that’s actually written out on the page and in its ugly, weird, lumpy form, then that’s the part where you can make it the thing you want it to be. Then you can actually work on it. 

I think I especially—speaking from my own experience—get too caught up in that first phase where I want that thing that I’m making to be immediately good and the best thing that’s ever been written in humanity. I have to fight myself in that process of initial creation, and then nothing ever gets written out. To embrace being messy with it, and noticing where you could improve, and then just making it a process of getting a little bit better is my number one advice. And it’s worthy. Your writing is gonna be what the world needs. So, start. 

Do you have any writing aspirations going forward? 

I’ve always known that I’m gonna write ‘cause it’s the way I move through the world. It’s just kind of the question of what format it’ll take. I would love to have a novel published, whether that’s in some small press or a bigger one, but I would love to share my work. I just finished an honors thesis, which is a short story collection, so I wrote three short stories about ghosts. I would love to see if I could get them published in literary magazines outside of college. But primarily, I’ll be a writer. Forever, I think. Whether my work goes in a drawer or goes on a website or goes in a book, the work will still be there.