All That’s Unseen by Emilee Hackney is a powerful coming-of-age memoir, detailing the author’s upbringing in the Appalachian mountains: her radical church background, her family’s struggles with poverty, and the soaring mountains that inspire awe yet seem to keep people from ever leaving the region. As a teenager, Emilee is ensnared in the Pentecostal church (later called a “cult” by her friend) and almost marries a predatory older man, Sam, who uses their shared religion to control her. When she finally breaks away from the church—and from Sam—and attends Harvard, what could be a victorious escape becomes, instead, a new series of trials. Feeling like an outsider in Cambridge, she grows depressed, then turns to sex work and a series of relationships to ease her loneliness. It is only when—bristling at the negative stereotypes she encounters at Harvard about Appalachia—Emilee begins writing that she is able to find her own voice and to reconcile her ambiguous feelings about where she comes from.
Told in elegant prose, All That’s Unseen is a fascinating, thought-provoking memoir that interrogates questions of faith, family, agency, and belonging.
I spoke with Hackney over Zoom. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarification.
Madeleine Moss: It seems like your memoir was started in creative writing classes at Harvard. Can you talk about the process of writing and publishing All That’s Unseen?
Emilee Hackney: So, I got accepted into Michael Pollan’s narrative writing class at Harvard when I was an undergraduate in the fall of 2018. And I started writing these essays about my life growing up in Appalachia and growing up evangelical, [and about] a bad relationship that ultimately propelled me to go to Harvard in the very unlikely way that I ended up there. And Michael was just a fantastic professor, the best I’ve ever had. He thought I had an interesting story to tell. So he encouraged me to turn those essays into my undergraduate thesis. And from there, after my thesis was completed, he connected me with his personal agent, Binky Urban, who works at CAA. She was also very interested in my story and thought that my life could become a book. I worked on writing it for several years; it took much longer for me to figure out where I was going with it than I originally expected. But ultimately, it became a book. [Binky Urban] had some people in mind who were interested in it. It was acquired by Ann Godoff at Penguin Press. And from there, it was edited and put into publication. And now it’s coming out here in a couple of weeks!
MM: Exciting! So there are parts of the book that were originally separate essays? Because it reads so smoothly.
EH: Oh, thank you. There’s one part of the book where I’m going to Winter Ramp, which is like a charismatic Christian revival-slash-concert. It was a big deal. And that was the first time I spoke in tongues. And that was one of my original essays from Michael’s class, which has been altered very little. Because it was just a very visceral, powerful experience. And I wrote it down as a catharsis, almost. The writing ended up being very pure, so it’s been edited very, very little from its original form when I wrote it eight years ago.
MM: That leads into my next question. Your memoir mainly addresses the problematic elements of Pentecostalism, yet we watch you have several powerful experiences in the church, like the one you just cited. I was wondering what your current attitude toward religion is, and how—looking back—you view these episodes of religious fervor?
EH: You know, they’re hard to explain. And I still don’t know that I have a good answer for them. I guess that’s partly where the title for my book comes from: things that we can’t see, things that we can’t understand or explain. I think part of it might have been a groupthink-type thing: I see other people behaving in certain ways and I’m an impressionable child and teenager, so I end up behaving in the same ways. But that’s not all of it. There’s definitely some mystery and something supernatural, I still believe, that happened to me in that church.
And it’s funny that you ask about my current views on religion, because after I left the Pentecostal church, I would have called myself an atheist for several years. I mean, I was just really burnt by the church and the people in it. But my husband grew up Presbyterian, and I went to his Presbyterian church with him when we were dating. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is the most boring thing in the entire world! [laughs] No shade or anything to him, though, because I ended up becoming [a Presbyterian] myself. And I love that it’s boring because it’s the exact opposite of what I grew up with. It’s still religion, it’s still community, but it’s not all the excitement and fervor that I grew up with—because I don’t really want anything to do with that anymore.
MM: That’s so interesting. Another crucial part of your memoir is your relationship with your first boyfriend, Sam. You start dating when he’s a senior in high school and you’re a freshman; he turns out to be manipulative and controlling. He’s also deeply involved in the church. I think I have an answer to this, but to what extent do you think the Pentecostal church enables men like Sam?
EH: I think there are several facets to it. It’s not necessarily the Pentecostal church or even evangelical churches, although I will say a lot of evangelical churches are non-denominational: They’re started by people who just feel called to start a church. And there are no governing bodies, no oversight, no systems of accountability. So when you have that kind of thing, it can be very easy for abuse to take place. But, also, with the church that I grew up in and the beliefs about men being superior to women, it’s very easy for women to fall prey to older men or men in positions of power and to not even know that that’s wrong. It’s like, I started dating this 18-year-old when I was 14, and I look back and think that’s terrible. But it was very normalized in the church and even more broadly in the culture I grew up in.
MM: Your memoir is dedicated to “Jeremy, wherever you are.” Jeremy is your second boyfriend and he’s basically Sam’s opposite. Toward the end of your memoir, both Sam and Jeremy briefly appear again, after being absent from your life for years: Sam is driving a car and speeds away when he makes eye contact with you, while Jeremy hops into your car to escape the pouring rain. I love the symbolism of that contrast! Was this in fact the last time you saw either of them?
EH: Yeah, it is. Jeremy has always been somebody that’s bounced around, and he’s just not an easy person to get in contact with. So that’s why I said “wherever you are,” because I don’t know where he is. And it makes me sad. Part of the reason I dedicate [All That’s Unseen] to Jeremy is because he was such a wonderful person and came into my life at a point where I really needed somebody like him. And I think that he had a huge influence on me leaving my church and leaving my hometown. And he’s also somebody that, had he been in a different set of circumstances and maybe had a better family situation growing up, maybe been surrounded by a better support system, I think that he could have been really successful because he was just so charismatic and witty and funny and smart and charming, but was brought down by his circumstances. So, yeah, it’s painful to reflect on.
And also, yes, that was the last time I saw Sam, too. He drove around the corner and that was that. I recognize there is weird symbolism in that, even though it is true, but I guess it’s kind of fitting.
MM: To continue on the topic of men, I was interested in the dichotomy of men “using” you vs. you “using” men, both of which are beautifully present in your memoir. The episode of sex work at Harvard illustrates this so well: who is “using” whom? How do you want readers to understand your relationship with men?
EH: Well, it’s obviously not a very healthy one! [laughs] And that’s kind of something I came to terms with as I was writing the book, weirdly. I guess it took me writing out all these scenes with different boyfriends, different men, for me to trace this pattern throughout my life of relying on them in difficult circumstances. And I don’t want to just blame everything on the church, but I think that that has its roots in the church I grew up in, where you’re taught that men are superior and they should be the head of the household and you should rely on them to make decisions for you and your family.
[The church’s sexism] was so ingrained in me at an early age that its roots kind of spread out into my young adulthood. So it’s something that I’ve had to grapple with as I’ve gotten older, just this unhealthy reliance on men in difficult situations. And I’m married now, I have a husband—we’ve been together for four years—so this is something that’s in my past, but it’s still not too far in my past.
MM: At Harvard, you first begin writing in order to defend Appalachia, after being exposed to so many negative stereotypes about it. What is your relationship to Appalachia now? Are there any books you can recommend that—like your memoir—present Appalachia in a nuanced way?
EH: My relationship with Appalachia is still kind of like it is in the book: It’s complicated. You know, I really appreciate it and I love it for what it is, and also, I don’t know, I’m disappointed by it. It’s just such a complex relationship between me and home. And I think it’s always going to be that way because it’s a very nuanced place. It’s not just this flat, stereotypical thing, the way it’s portrayed in the media or the way it’s portrayed by, you know, another popular memoir that we’re not going to mention here. It’s such a beautiful and heartbreaking place. And I think that some of my favorite books that portray it very well, in my opinion, by actual Appalachian writers—I’m throwing a lot of shade! You don’t have to put this in the interview—
MM: I think it’s well-deserved shade!
EH: Okay. Thank you. So one memoir I absolutely love is by Cassie Chambers. It’s called Hill Women. She grew up in eastern Kentucky and went to Yale, I believe, and then came home to try to serve her community. She’s doing good work. Another book is called Crapalachia by Scott McClanahan. That’s a great one. [Another favorite is] Breece Pancake’s short story collection; he was an Appalachian writer from West Virginia. And [there’s also] Lee Smith; my favorite books by her are Fair and Tender Ladies and Black Mountain Breakdown. They both portray Appalachian women in difficult situations.
MM: Thanks for the recommendations. Publishing a memoir must be scary because you’re baring your life in such an intimate way. Are you nervous about anyone from your personal life reading your memoir?
EH: I think the person I was most nervous about reading it was my mom. Because she’s a character in it, you know, and also it’s my mom. I had a lot of questions about the ethics of writing about somebody in my life who’s still alive and writing about parts of their life that probably feel very personal to them. You know, I write about my mom’s childhood and her father, who was an alcoholic, and I write about my parents’ financial struggles when I was younger. It was very scary to let her read that, even though these stories are also part of my story. The whole time I knew she was reading it, I was just looking at my phone, like I’m expecting her to call me any minute and be like, “What is this?” But she didn’t do that. She had thoughts and opinions about the book. But she felt that [how she was portrayed] was fair. She was very, very gracious with my writing about her.
MM: What is one thing you want readers to take away from All That’s Unseen?
EH: This one’s kind of a hard one. Because there are a lot of different things I’d like for them to take away. I guess I had in my head, as I was writing this, that maybe if I had found this book when I was younger that maybe it would have opened my eyes a little bit to all the things that I didn’t see as I was growing up in this environment and this church and this culture. And I hope that it does find its way into the hands of somebody that needs it. I know that there’s a lot of talk right now about trad wives, and younger generations—especially men—are finding their way back into more conservative churches, which is a really interesting cultural trend. But I hope that people can recognize the dangers of that, that this idealism of the “traditional life” or the “traditional family structure” can be very dangerous in a lot of ways, especially for women. So I hope that this book maybe influences the talk about this traditional way of life in some way, and, yeah, de-influences anybody that has an idealistic view of what it looks like.
MM: I think it will! Finally, what are you working on now, writing-wise?
EH: Well, I’m not writing a whole lot right now because I work full-time and also I have a six-month-old! So my free time is very limited. But I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2022 and I’m possibly turning that into another memoir. We’ll see. It’s in its early stages. But I’d love to turn that into my next book… We’ll see!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Emilee Hackney grew up in the coalfields of southwest Virginia. She graduated from Harvard University with a BA in English and briefly attended Vanderbilt University’s MFA program. All That’s Unseen is her first book.
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER: Madeleine Moss holds a degree in French literature from Cornell University and an MFA in fiction from Washington University in St. Louis. She lives in Strasbourg, France. Her debut novel, Mistranslation, was a Debutiful Most Anticipated Debut Book of 2026.