By Mo Moshaty

Victoria Hood’s newest collection, Destroy Me, Desecrate My Bones, turns toward love without abandoning the grief that has long shaped her work. Where her earlier books grappled openly with the loss of family members to suicide and addiction, this collection lingers in longing, intimacy, and devotion. Yet Hood understands that love is never untouched by mourning. Grief lives within the love we accept, the love we offer, and the love we can no longer reach. The result is a collection that aches with tenderness even as it confronts the quiet devastations carried inside human connection.

What was your first published work?

My first published short story was “The Lemons, Mmmm” from my first published collection of short stories, My Haunted Home. If you like ghosts and obsession, then this collection is right up your alley!

Is there a story inside that you have seeds of but can’t seem to connect that’s dying to get out?

I’ve had this image of trees as grief that I’m not sure what to do with. I like the idea that nature and grief are both uncontrollable forces that we must interact with, but I haven’t quite figured out what that looks like or who would live in this space.

How do you handle a rejected story?

I like to think of every rejection as a step closer to acceptance. Though they used to hurt more, I’ve received so many that it’s gotten easier for me to remind myself that it isn’t personal. Stories can be “good” and not accepted. A lot goes into those decisions that have nothing to do with the writing and everything to do with space, similar themes, recent acceptances, etc. Rejection is a reminder that people are interacting with our work.

What does literary success look like to you?

The more eyes on my work, the more successful I feel. This doesn’t necessarily mean winning prizes or publishing the most work, but focusing on the community you’re engaging with. One publication can be seen as a literary success because more people are reading your work than ever before.

Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with a bad or good one?

I do! The good ones are such an interesting way to be perceived and have people connect to your words and mind. The bad ones usually make me laugh. In my experience, they’re less engaged with what the book wants to do and more centered on them “not liking it,” which is totally okay, but is also not my goal.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

Revision, for sure! It’s such an important aspect, but I often have a hard time seeing where there are logic gaps within my writing. Revision is so helpful in strengthening themes and recurring aspects of the plot/characters, but it also makes me face my story through a new lens. This turns my excitement of a first draft into the dreadful realization that I could never be done (which I tell myself is a new kind of excitement).

As in most times, the truth is stranger than fiction. What has been the hardest scene or chapter you’ve had to write if you were channeling a personal experience?

There are two different toxic relationships I write about in this book. Those were the hardest for me to dive into, because it made me come to terms with aspects of these relationships I was ignoring. In “You Hold Me Down”, I reflect on my years “dating” a 21-year-old man while I was 14. Until I began thinking about the story of us, I hadn’t realized I was groomed and statutorily raped. Writing this essay was cathartic and vulnerable, but it took me years to really understand how I wanted to write that experience. In some ways, “Best Friends Never Win” was even harder for me to write because it centered around a consensual friendship/relationship with my ex-girlfriend that became unconsensual. This relationship feels nuanced and haunting rather than clearly wrong in the way the unconsensual relationship with the older man was. It took a different kind of vulnerability to share this relationship and to interrogate her perception of me within this relationship.

What has inspired your latest work?

The different forms of love we feel ourselves drawn to. We often overlook friendship, love, and familial love to favor monogamous romantic love. I want to interrogate the way we love and let ourselves feel loved. My own polyamorous relationship inspired a lot of this work, as well as the relationships/friendships I’ve survived to get here. I want to remind myself and others that love is endless, even if it can be haunting.

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

Let yourself play around! You’ll be more excited to write, and people will be more excited to read this work.

What was the best advice you’ve gotten from a fellow writer?

Be weird! If you restrain yourself, then you’ll never write the work you want to.

What is your go-to comfort horror or sci-fi book?

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson! For surrealism, I love to reread Sabrina Orah Mark and K-Ming Chang.

If you were to genre hop, which genres would you most like to try writing?

I’d be interested in writing a horror romance at some point! It seems like a fun way to merge my want for love and obsession with hauntings!

Destroy Me, Desecrate My Bones: A Collection of Longings is Victoria Hood at her most intimate and unflinching. Following the grief-soaked terrain of The Lemons and My Haunted Home, this 2026 release from Girl Noise Press turns toward yearning in all its messy, beautiful, and ruinous forms. Across essays, poetry, fiction, and experimental pieces, Hood examines the ache of wanting to be loved, consumed, remembered, and undone. The collection understands that longing is its own kind of haunting, and that love, no matter how profound, always carries the shadow of grief somewhere inside it.
Follow Victoria @toriiellen on Instagram and @toriiellen.bsky.social on BlueSky