Today we’d like to introduce you to Hannah Harlee.
Hi Hannah, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
In 2022, my wife and I were living in San Francisco, where we met and got married, and where we’d been living for nearly a decade at that point. That September, we went to see Lady Gaga on her Chromatica Tour. Gaga is our favorite musical artist, and we were deeply moved by her performance and the quality of her artistry on that tour; I was so moved, in fact, that I was inspired to think about how I too could live my art in such clear, concrete, and daily ways. This was the spark that ignited ARTWIFE.
Within a couple of months, we’d created and launched ARTWIFE Magazine, our digital literary & arts journal. The process of creation was so alive and invigorating: the drive to make this thing was totally intrinsic—no one was asking for it, no one even knew about it—but I couldn’t wait to work on it each day. I look back on that period of time with great fondness and gratitude. I developed the aesthetic and imagery, created the website and design elements, and established the editorial guidelines; my wife, Erica, took the lead on the business and financial elements. Starting from launch day we began accepting unsolicited submissions of visual art, video art, short stories, and essays, and since then, we’ve published over 100 pieces of literary and visual art from artists all around the globe.
Since that beginning in 2022, ARTWIFE has continued to grow in some really rewarding ways. We’ve added The ARTWIFE Creative Hour (a free, weekly, and virtual working hour for artists in all genres and mediums) and The ARTWIFE Podcast (a monthly show featuring interviews with writers published by independent presses), and we travel to the AWP writers conference every year to exhibit in the Book Fair, where we’ve gotten to meet many of our magazine’s contributors in person. But by far the best thing that’s ever happened to ARTWIFE was our move to Washington DC. Erica and I moved here in late 2023 and while we genuinely love San Francisco and were bereft upon leaving, I really can’t imagine a better place to have landed than here. The literary community in the area is incredibly rich, vivid, and thriving. We’ve drawn so much inspiration and sense of togetherness from the community in this region, which includes both individual writers and literary organizations.
And it was exactly this vibrant and active community that planted the seed of our next idea: brick-and-mortar operations! We’re currently in the process of opening ARTWIFE Books & Wine, DC’s newest independent bookstore and wine bar. We’ll stock literary fiction and local authors, serve wines by the glass, and host readings, open mics, gatherings on the solstices and equinoxes, and lots of other fun events.
And throughout this time of ARTWIFE’s growth, I’ve also been at work on my own writing projects. After several years and a lot of effort, it feels incredible that I get to say this: my debut novel, Celine in Silence, is coming out on May 11, 2027! We’ll be hosting some big celebrations at ARTWIFE Books & Wine for my novel’s launch.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
This is a really good question and, on the surface, my immediate answer is no, it hasn’t been a smooth road and there have definitely been struggles, both internal and external. The external struggles have everything to do with what we all already know: we’re currently operating in a capitalist structure that does very little to support artists—we don’t create shareholder value!—and, as a result, the publishing/art environment too often prioritizes commercial appeal over artistic merit. These realities have made the financial struggles very, very significant. Sometimes it feels truly scary, from a money perspective, to pursue a life in the arts.
There are internal challenges too. Before we got traction, there were a lot of times when it was a real struggle for me to find the fortitude to keep going. For a long time, I felt like I was shouting into the void. The only reason I stuck with it was because I’d made an oath to myself at the beginning: I swore I’d stay committed to ARTWIFE for a minimum of three years. That seemed like enough time to give it a real chance in the world and I knew before I’d even begun that there would be moments when I’d want to quit. So I promised myself I’d stick with it for just three years, and after that I’d be free to make a new decision if I wanted to. And the amazing thing is, it was right around two and a half years in when we started to flourish. Now I’m SO relieved that I kept the commitment to myself and saw it through the early, often discouraging times. It was more than worth it.
Overall, the truth is that running ARTWIFE has put me into direct contact with a lot of my own fears and insecurities—you know, real deep stuff like questions of worthiness. Who was I to ever imagine I had something of value to offer publicly, who on earth was I to think I had any right to interview writers I admired? Etc., etc. I’ve had to learn how to be afraid and do it anyway; to acknowledge the fear but not allow it to stop me. And now, just when I’ve gotten a little more comfortable, we’re going through it all over again—and at a much higher intensity!—in preparing for the bookstore. I’ve been anxious and overwhelmed at pretty much every last step of the process, but I also know in my bones that this is the right next move for us and we have to pursue it or we’ll always regret it.
And that’s what’s underneath these struggles I’ve named. There’s something deeper, a gift that I feel my life has given me in exchange for staying with the vision through the challenges. Following my artistic drive—my intuition, my internal voice—even when it didn’t make logical sense has afforded me a sense of purpose and fulfillment that is worth more than ease or comfort or convenience or certainty ever could be. When I was a young adult I used to feel a sense of sort of generalized lack and hunger, this vague, uneasy feeling that something was missing. But since developing ARTWIFE and writing my novel, that feeling has evaporated. I think it’s got everything to do with following the vision, even when it seemed unrealistic or foolish, even when I couldn’t see the outcome. That internal shift has been one of the greatest gifts of the whole enterprise.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
In my personal work as a writer, I began with nonfiction. I was graduating college and emerging into the world in the 2010s, when blogging was a big deal. So I started a blog of my own and I quickly found that writing was the thing that made me feel most whole. I’d feel antsy and unsettled if I went too long without writing, so it wasn’t too long before writing became a necessity for my sense of well-being. I continued to follow that thread, by taking writing workshops and doing editorial work for free, which I would sneak time to do on the company computers while at my various customer service jobs. Finally I decided to study writing for real, at the MFA program at UNR Lake Tahoe, which was one of the best decisions I ever made. I learned so much in those two years.
After I graduated I did have a few personal essays published, but still, things didn’t fully click into place until I began writing fiction. I’ve been interested in cults for a long time—why they proliferate, how “regular people” become entangled in them—and I started, in my head, to develop a story about a young woman who got caught up in one. Once I started writing that story, it became clear pretty immediately that fiction was the path for me. It was the lane that was the most artistically rewarding and personally interesting. And now that cult story is my debut novel, Celine in Silence!
Whenever I write, I try to access a state of depth and intangibility that’s deeper than the typical surface we’re occupying in our day-to-day lives. It’s a quieter, almost indefinable place inside—the place from which creativity originates. The work I’ve done to be able to access that place is one of the things I’m most proud of in my life thus far.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
Readers can support us by contributing to the ARTWIFE Books & Wine crowdfunding campaign (https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-launch-artwife-books-wine-in-dc). Artists of all kinds are very welcome to join us on Monday evenings for our free accountability hour, The ARTWIFE Creative Hour (https://www.artwifemag.com/the-creative-hour), where they can make progress on their arts projects in a supportive, online community environment. We also welcome submissions of literary & arts events/news for our Community Announcements page (https://www.artwifemag.com/community-announcements) and monthly newsletter.
Contact Info:
- Website: artwifemag.com and hannahharlee.com
- Instagram: @_artwife, @hannah_a_harlee
- Other: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-artwife-podcast/id1696053287
