speaker-0: I'm your host, Mary J. Cronin, and today I am so excited, and I'll say it's Sam honored to be talking to Sam Walkman, About what he and so many others lived through in the beginning of the war in Ukraine. This is a heartbreaking, uplifting, and truly luminous debut novel from Sam. So thank you so much for joining me Welcome.
speaker-1: Well thank you so much for having me. it's a huge honor. Anyway, thank you for that introduction and for making me sound so cool and it I will try to live up to it.
speaker-0: be yourself because the way you wrote this book, Sam, it blew me away and I could not put it down. I cried, I'll confess, to the listeners, it made me cry more than once, but it also made me cheer the indomitable spirit of individual human beings who are going through so much and you were able to reflect that so well. So let's start there, if you don't mind, with your talking about how it was to write this novel and what really inspired you to make this your first long published piece of fiction.
speaker-1: it's sort of a long story, but you know, you can cut me off at any time. when I was a teenager, I went to Ukraine for the first time, to the region where my family is from. It was my first time traveling without my parents and I wanted to learn Ukrainian and better understand my relationship to the country. I grew up with these dual narratives of This is your familial homeland, and also this is the place that we were chased out of. so I wanted to understand that and reconcile that. And I still have no easy answers there, honestly. But the important part is that I got very sidetracked while I was traveling there. I met some folks running a tiny school, one room schoolhouse, like 16 kids at peak enrollment, and they said they'd love to have an English teacher and especially native speaker. And I said, Well, you know, I'm not a teacher, but I can try my best. and so I became the world's least qualified English teacher and just fell in love with the kids and these the the folks in this community. and while I was there being a useless American in this community, I started writing a novel. I had access to this place that I had come to love deeply, that it was at once foreign to me and also intimately familiar. because most Americans were ignorant of Ukraine and I was as well, but also many generations of my family were buried in that soil. The food was the same food that my grandparents fed me. And I wanted to somehow use my one foot in this country to project an image of it to America. and at the same time I had wanted to write a sort of gay coming of age novel since I was a teenager, since I was a gay coming of age. And I've written some short stories and had them published in in lit mags. And I was dead set on writing a novel. And I figured why not set it here in this place that I would like to document and do justice to. And it can at the same time be kind of a love letter from diaspora to ancestral homeland. and so that was the plan. And then if you recall, there was a pandemic. and I was sent back to my childhood bedroom where I am now in Cambridge, Massachusetts. and I continue teaching online, which is not not the same, but it's far better than just losing touch with this cohort of kids and this community that had become so dear to me. so I kept teaching and I kept working on this novel, which was kind of striving to be like a Ukrainian version of Open Heaven by Sean Hewitt. If you've read that, if you your listeners have read that, in short, a slice of life novel. And I planned to go back to Ukraine after the pandemic. And I made moves in that direction in the winter of twenty twenty one, twenty-two. I spent what was supposed to be my last semester of college in Denmark. my motivation for that was that it was like a two hour flight, 60 euros from Copenhagen to Ukraine at the time. And I was planning on treating it kind of like the city bus, just bouncing back and forth, visiting on long weekends. It did not work out like that. one month after I moved to Denmark. Russia launched its full scale invasion. so that made for an intense, frightening year. I was working on my capstone, I was pre-med at the time, and I just dropped it all completely. My capstone novel semester of college flunked. I didn't touch my writing for a year. It felt like a pretty frivolous pursuit. And the story that I had wanted to tell originally was no longer feasible to tell. It was no longer possible to write about. Ukraine without writing about war, and I was ill-equipped to write about war, having not experienced it, having not lived it in the same way, knowing that there were u Ukrainian writers who I admire who were experiencing it. Sergei Jadan, Artem Cheikh, Viktoria Amelina, rest in peace. And I figured I'd leave that work to them. and I had heard the adage my whole life, write what you know, which is terrible advice. And so I abandoned the novel and I I spent the year of 2022 volunteering. My my students had scattered across Europe. Some were still in Ukraine, some were in Poland, Moldova, Germany, Romania. I tried to meet as many of them and their families as I could and help them get get settled, which was in retrospect more for my catharsis and peace of mind than anything else. But I was trying to be a less useless American, more of useful American. I I I'm fluent in Ukrainian, so I was able to interpret and then in college I'd I'd been an EMT. with the student run emergency medical corps. I was at Brandeis University's version of that. and so I figured maybe I could be of use in in that capacity. I went to stay with my my best friend who at the time she lived in Berlin and I volunteered as an EMT translator, whatever at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, the central train station. and I was kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel as, you know, in terms of what I could contribute because I was not a great EMT I or a great interpreter. most of my college EMT career I had dealt with like freshmen who had gotten a little too high and freaked out and thought too hard about their hands and had a panic attack. And it was very different needs for like people who are escaping war. but you know, I tried to devote that year to to that. And then on the one year anniversary of the full scale invasion, I helped organize a camp for displaced Ukrainian kids as well as my own students, just any students who wanted to enroll. It was essentially free. we organized it in Romania in a border town, so not super far from Ukraine, but far enough that it'd be safe, that there wouldn't be air sirens, that the kids could have some respite from from the the toxic wartime. Atmosphere. And by some miracle, all of my students were able to make it to this camp to reconvene after a year of being apart. And many hadn't seen each other in the last year at all. And we were all sitting around up too late on this first night of camp, which was the one year anniversary of the invasion. and we were drinking tea and playing Uno. and they were exchanging stories, and I was just doing a lot of listening and thinking, damn, I should write this down. And eventually I I made a one-off comment, something along the lines of, You guys need to write a book about this. And one of them said to me, We're busy, you do it. so I took that as sort of a green light to approach my own writing again, very cautiously. I had this half of a slice of life coming of age novel collecting dust in my Google Docs account. And I I knew I just couldn't finish that novel. I knew that the the novel had to take a hard left turn. I don't think it's a spoiler for your listeners that the war does arrive halfway through this novel. and I did not know how to write that part at all. I did not how I did not know how to address the experience of war to do my kids' stories and their family stories justice. and you know if I was gonna put anything out there into the world about this community now, it also had to illustrate their resilience and what they've been through in in specifics. What you said, the indomitable s human spirit, you said it better than I did. but I knew I had to address that and I was I was not sure how to even how to even get started. but I knew that there was a r a purpose there because I figured now isn't the time to shy away from detail. Like it's easy for Americans to look at the news and see a headline like X number of people killed in attack very far away and think, that's terrible and then do the wordle. and I the poet Kada Akbar said it better than I can. I'm gonna see if I can quote this from memory. He said, by restoring specific narrative to abstract historical data, we restore for readers the urgent somatic obliteration of individual loss. Yes, I got it. and I had access to the specificity, to the to the specificity of my kids and and their families and my friends' individual losses. And I figured I had the opportunity here to to do as Kava Akbar said and restore narrative to data. I also had a bit of a tightrope to walk because I'm not a journalist. and so I was kind of because I'm a fiction writer and I'm taking a journalistic approach to fiction, I was sort of worried it would feel less like I was platforming Ukrainian narratives and more like I was co-opting them. But I asked a few Ukrainian friends how they would feel about me me writing a book as Sort of an agglomeration of their stories fictionalized heavily. And the basic consensus was yes, please. You know, you're an English speaker, you speak Ukrainian, you have an American literary agent, and thus access to the American American media. So please do shed light on these stories. So that was the impetus. And then the method was that I interviewed a lot. I got myself one of those little voice recorder dudads and brought it around to each of my friends and students and eventually their friends and family. Basically, anyone who had the desire or the an emotional wherewithal to share their testimony. And that was an enormous display on their part of trust and generosity. I basically asked them to make themselves exceptionally vulnerable and hand me these stories and trust me to do with them what I will. So I'm immensely grateful for that. and that was how the that was how the idea came and that was why that felt like the necessary first novel to write. And it came together pretty quickly.
speaker-0: Thank you for that. And that answers so many of the questions I have, but of course not all say a lot more to talk about. So let's shift to the pages of the book. Again, no spoilers. but I did say already it made me cry. And it's heartbreaking. And then I thought about you writing it. And so I have to ask you. And I'm not laughing. I'm like. I don't want to cry again. So I'm trying to be like the good journalist on your side too. how did how did you cope with writing once the war started and you shifted ground and the book is organized into parts for someone who hasn't read it? So you're aware that, you know, the the beautiful life of daily life and Teen angst and and the gay growing up and not understanding even how to deal with that in those powerful emotions, all good, all so moving, so lyrical, and yet not war. And then suddenly it no one believed it was gonna happen, and then it was you were in it, and you wrote about it. From all those beautiful interviews you did, as if the reader is in it. So I'm here to ask: how did that feel to you? What were your struggles as a writer in coping with all that tragedy and suffering and emotion that is presented in a beautiful way in this novel?
speaker-1: grateful that I was able to I had somewhere to put it. I mean the book gave me somewhere to put it because I I was hearing these stories anyway. none of none of the stories from the second half of the novel are from my imagination. I've altered them and covered them in a patina of fiction and you know changed the details. but they're all things that that people I care about have told me. And I was either gonna carry that around or I was going to put it in a book. and so writing it was was the catharsis for it was the coping mechanism. and I'm super I mean, even if I hadn't written it as a book meant for other people to read, meant for HarperCollins to publish, it was I was still gonna write it down in some some diary somewhere. so that was mainly it was a kind of a processing. There's a a great novel called Lost Children Archive but by Valeria Lewiselli. she characterized, and I'm I'm paraphrasing here, but she characterized her writing of that novel as kind of a primal scream, and a release of frustration at what was going on in in this case with family separation at the US-Mexico border. I think that my approach to the Sunflower Boys was actually very much the same. Because it was otherwise, what was I gonna do with all this? I was gonna sit around and be horrified and sad and angry all the time, or I was going to narrativize it for myself and for readers who might find it cathartic to to read it, put into a narrative like that, and to see their own experiences or some some version of their own experiences reflected in in prose. so I that that was how it felt for me. and then also going through the steps of of interviewing people was likewise hugely cathartic because it gave me the ex excuse. Well, I'd I'd gotten a lot of these stories throughout osmosis. I after I I stopped being an EMT in Germany, I came back to the US where I was working with resettling Ukrainians here in the Boston area. and nobody introduces themselves by by saying, you know, here's all the horrible things that that we've gone through, but you end up hearing them bit in bits and pieces. and in a lot of ways that's that's more upsetting to deal with than to say, you know, here's what happened from start to finish and now we're here and we're gonna here's how we're gonna restart our lives. And so being able to sit down with people and talk to them for literally four hours at a go, and just basically put all the pieces together like that, I think I know that At least one one of my friends said that this was super therapeutic for her. I know it was super therapeutic for me. which is is not the part that matters, but it was appreciated.
speaker-0: Thank you for that too. And now I'm gonna have a two-part question for you that is you partially answered. but first I'd like to stay focused on the actual contents of the book and asking you of all the really heartrending and difficult memories and experiences that you heard. from your interviews and from your work that you incorporated into the book were there a few that were the hardest to write and were there one or two you can recall you felt proudest of writing?
speaker-1: Hmm. Okay, so I mean the section that I feel proudest of, that's the easier one to to answer, is the sort of connective tissue section that that that connects the first part of the book, the peace part, to the war part. It's this part where the three main characters of the book are riding their bikes and encounter well, one of them gets a a flat tire, and and there's a thunderstorm and they encounter a man who, although it's I didn't say it, you know, i I didn't say it explicitly is very traumatized veteran from the invasion in the in the Donbass, which has been an ongoing thing since twenty fourteen. You know, we started hearing about the the war in Ukraine in in twenty twenty two, when it was became a full scale invasion, but the war has been relevant to Ukrainians' lives since twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, since the annexation of Crimea. and so I I was proud of that scene. Partially because I instead of saying and then suddenly this suddenly this thing happened, suddenly everything changed. This actually has just been waiting just beyond the periphery of what the boys knew. and so I I do remember writing that at like four in the morning and being like, ooh, I'm good. the hardest the hardest to write, I mean, It's very hard to hear stories from people. Who you care about who have had horrible things happen to them. That was always the hard part. And the hard part was having nowhere to put that and having to, you know, talk to my my therapist about it, which was like, I mean, that's that's one level of processing it, but still it it ends with her. There's nothing that I can put out into the world from that. and so that was really the hard part. I'm interviewing the whole family and I kind of went through their story bit by bit and said, Okay, what would you like me to do with this? Shall I leave this and this just stays in this room? shall I incorporate this into the novel somehow? What would make you feel represented and not exploited? and I think that some of the stuff that I had to leave on the cutting room floor is what still haunts me. But also being able to see this family thriving here and being able to spend time with them and see how how resilient they are and how far they have come from that extremely low point. and being able to spend time with, for example, this kid and just have it be like spending time with any other kid playing chess with him, losing repeatedly. that's, you know, that is what makes it easy to sit with.
speaker-0: And that's a wonderful segue to what I did want to ask, which is the response from that primary readership in a sense of the the people whose stories you did share. it sounds like they they appreciated how you approached what was shareable and what was not in it in this very, very traumatic set of experiences.
speaker-1: You know, it's I've heard from very few Ukrainian readers because the book is not translated into Ukrainian. And most of the folks who I interviewed, well the the kids speak English, but a lot of them are actually I feel like too young to read the book and or they're it disinterested in reading in general. the parents usually don't have a lick of English unless they've been living here for the past couple of years. so the primary readership is certainly Americans. and Americans and Ukrainians have definitely responded in two different ways. What I've heard from Americans more is the concerns about who a story belongs to. That's been a very American talking point. ris the responses have all been good, but it's also been much more focused on like, but wait, who is this Sam Walkman? Like he's not he's not Ukrainian, so what's what's going on here? the few Ukrainians who I have who who have sp spoke who speak English and who have read the book, have had a very different response, which is like, good, this is getting exposed. I think the the concept of appropriating stories doesn't exist in the same way. but it's been positive all around, which I'm really grateful for. I've had nobody reach out to me with an angry note saying, you got you got this wrong or anything. which also I attribute to the fact that I had a ton of readers before it this reached my editor's desk. I had a ton of of friends and friends of friends who poured over my manuscript and found all the little things that don't ring true. I think that it's it writing can be a really solidistic pursuit if you are just gonna shut yourself in your in your room like I do sometimes and and just write fiction in the dark. but this book was such a communal effort. because I sent it through so many different people to vet it, the which came from a place of anxiety. and also from a place of wanting to do justice to the story that I was telling. but it ended up just creating a community around this book, which is the greatest and least expected thing that I I could have asked for.
speaker-0: What a wonderful outcome. And I would say now, let's move quickly into congratulations. This is an award-winning book. It's not only your debut novel. it is this year's winner of the fiction prize from the Boston Authors Club, which I happen to be a member of. And I applaud that decision. And I know that you mentioned you have a literary agent. Harper Collins is the publisher. for those aspiring writers and other debut novelists in our audience, can you talk a bit about that part of publishing? what was it like to find a publisher, have feedback at that level? how did that shape? You're thinking about this book and maybe other books you will write in the future.
speaker-1: it's been it's been significantly less onerous for me than I hear it it it is for a lot of writers. my agent found me, which I don't think is the norm. I've heard that people get stuck in in querying hell for years. and my agent spared me that. Thank you, Naomi. she found a a short story that I I wrote. And she liked it and she sent me an email. and likewise the you know, finding an editor thing, she made that effortless for me. I'm sure that there was a ton on on of effort on her part, but when we we we volleyed drafts back and forth for a couple of months and then decided that it was baked enough to, you know, be sent off to to to be put on sub. and within the week. we had two editors interested. We talked to both and picked one. And my editor is named Millicent Bennett. And I'm also working with her on the next book. I am so lucky to have kept my entire team from this book. because they've all been so cool, so excellent. you know they took a pretty good manuscript and turned it into a book I'm really proud of. if you can get short stories published, that could be a great way in. Or maybe what happened to me was a one off. I have no idea. but that that's how I how I got it. And I think that getting short stories published is a is a good good idea as well, just because first off, short stories are like the most perfect form of fiction. and I'm I'm a huge fan of them. And also it gives you a little taste of what it's like to go through the editorial process, 'cause at the more respected lit mags, I you're gonna be working with an editor who's gonna probably want to swap around a few things and you get to to see what happens when someone dissects you know rearranges your work. and you get to feel, this is strangely vulnerable, but also this is really helpful. these folks do it for a living and I have a great admiration because at some point you go blind to your own writing after you've been staring at drafts one through thirty-two of the same manuscript over and over, you can no longer see it for what it is. And so when I hand it to my editor or my agent or whatever, and they can see all these flaws that are glaringly obvious and all these solutions that are glaringly obvious that I just can no longer see. It's super helpful.
speaker-0: That's some great insight I love what you said that you know it was a very good book and now it's a classic. And that was an outcome of that editorial process and your willingness to embrace it, because some authors find that very difficult to give up on their words.
speaker-1: Yeah, it it is in the interest of full disclosure, I mean I found I was surprised by how hard that how hard I found it. I had a I have a really great gentle, talented, kind editor. And still I remember I was at my my aunt's lake house in Quebec standing knee deep in the water on the phone with my agent crying because I was like this not able to figure out like how to reconcile the version of my book that I wanted with the vision that my editor had and then I realized that I was just kind of being stubborn. and my editor was completely right. and I think that's also a huge part of my my gratitude toward them is that like they've had a ton of patience with me. I'm in general, I'm just happy to be here. Like I kind of feel like I fell into the publishing world is not something that I was fighting for for decades. and so every time that something like this comes up, I'm like, well I'm I'm just along for the ride. This is great. Like I'm gonna keep doing this for as long as I can. but so then it was like hard to to actually realize, wait, I am attached, very attached to this novel. and I feel protective over it. And I kind of feel like, you know, pop a bear over it. And like I understand you want to perform this surgery to make it better, but still you're cutting it open.
speaker-0: I love I am moved by that. I'm gonna go through the door you opened, Sam, which you said you're working on your next book. And sometimes authors do not want to talk about that. But let's wrap up with whatever you want to say about how you are moving on from this incredible debut novel that is based on a moment in your time in your life and so many of the people you interviewed, what is happening in in that transition to a different theme? How different is it? And tell us whatever you're willing to share about that next book.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, so I'm willing to share a lot. Also, I'm aware of how these things evolve over the editorial process now. And so I could tell you about, you know, one version of this book and then the version that comes out in 2028 actually bears no resemblance to it. So I don't want to make false promises. it shares a lot of DNA, because of course it has the same author and it and it's also a novel that in some way, in a different way, deals with Ukraine and the war in it. but it is set in the US. it is in broad strokes about blindness, and cousinhood and about misshapen impromptu families, I guess. it the families that that the ripple effects of the war accidentally created for better or for worse. and that's I guess, you know probably as specific as I can get. it's still based off of the same kids who are now becoming adults who I taught in Ukraine, who I'm still very much in touch with, some of whom have moved to the US. And so it still feels like a very collaborative kind of novel. and I I will keep doing that and keep telling that story until I until everyone stops listening.
speaker-0: Then we are going to end this interview with first anyone who's listening, you must read this book. Please buy the book, read the book, talk about this book. It is a book that changed my ideas about so many things, and I realized how ignorant I was. about life on the ground during this episode. So what you said, Sam, is true. Americans have it easy. We can read the news and move on to the next thing in our day. And you kept me rooted to the spot through all the pain and tragedy. And yet at the end, I was grateful to have read the book. So thank you so much for that.
speaker-1: But thank you so much. This is very kind of you to say.
speaker-0: And thank you for joining us on Why Authors Write. It's been a pleasure.
speaker-1: Well thank you so much for having me. it's a huge honor. Anyway, thank you for that introduction and for making me sound so cool and it I will try to live up to it.
speaker-0: be yourself because the way you wrote this book, Sam, it blew me away and I could not put it down. I cried, I'll confess, to the listeners, it made me cry more than once, but it also made me cheer the indomitable spirit of individual human beings who are going through so much and you were able to reflect that so well. So let's start there, if you don't mind, with your talking about how it was to write this novel and what really inspired you to make this your first long published piece of fiction.
speaker-1: it's sort of a long story, but you know, you can cut me off at any time. when I was a teenager, I went to Ukraine for the first time, to the region where my family is from. It was my first time traveling without my parents and I wanted to learn Ukrainian and better understand my relationship to the country. I grew up with these dual narratives of This is your familial homeland, and also this is the place that we were chased out of. so I wanted to understand that and reconcile that. And I still have no easy answers there, honestly. But the important part is that I got very sidetracked while I was traveling there. I met some folks running a tiny school, one room schoolhouse, like 16 kids at peak enrollment, and they said they'd love to have an English teacher and especially native speaker. And I said, Well, you know, I'm not a teacher, but I can try my best. and so I became the world's least qualified English teacher and just fell in love with the kids and these the the folks in this community. and while I was there being a useless American in this community, I started writing a novel. I had access to this place that I had come to love deeply, that it was at once foreign to me and also intimately familiar. because most Americans were ignorant of Ukraine and I was as well, but also many generations of my family were buried in that soil. The food was the same food that my grandparents fed me. And I wanted to somehow use my one foot in this country to project an image of it to America. and at the same time I had wanted to write a sort of gay coming of age novel since I was a teenager, since I was a gay coming of age. And I've written some short stories and had them published in in lit mags. And I was dead set on writing a novel. And I figured why not set it here in this place that I would like to document and do justice to. And it can at the same time be kind of a love letter from diaspora to ancestral homeland. and so that was the plan. And then if you recall, there was a pandemic. and I was sent back to my childhood bedroom where I am now in Cambridge, Massachusetts. and I continue teaching online, which is not not the same, but it's far better than just losing touch with this cohort of kids and this community that had become so dear to me. so I kept teaching and I kept working on this novel, which was kind of striving to be like a Ukrainian version of Open Heaven by Sean Hewitt. If you've read that, if you your listeners have read that, in short, a slice of life novel. And I planned to go back to Ukraine after the pandemic. And I made moves in that direction in the winter of twenty twenty one, twenty-two. I spent what was supposed to be my last semester of college in Denmark. my motivation for that was that it was like a two hour flight, 60 euros from Copenhagen to Ukraine at the time. And I was planning on treating it kind of like the city bus, just bouncing back and forth, visiting on long weekends. It did not work out like that. one month after I moved to Denmark. Russia launched its full scale invasion. so that made for an intense, frightening year. I was working on my capstone, I was pre-med at the time, and I just dropped it all completely. My capstone novel semester of college flunked. I didn't touch my writing for a year. It felt like a pretty frivolous pursuit. And the story that I had wanted to tell originally was no longer feasible to tell. It was no longer possible to write about. Ukraine without writing about war, and I was ill-equipped to write about war, having not experienced it, having not lived it in the same way, knowing that there were u Ukrainian writers who I admire who were experiencing it. Sergei Jadan, Artem Cheikh, Viktoria Amelina, rest in peace. And I figured I'd leave that work to them. and I had heard the adage my whole life, write what you know, which is terrible advice. And so I abandoned the novel and I I spent the year of 2022 volunteering. My my students had scattered across Europe. Some were still in Ukraine, some were in Poland, Moldova, Germany, Romania. I tried to meet as many of them and their families as I could and help them get get settled, which was in retrospect more for my catharsis and peace of mind than anything else. But I was trying to be a less useless American, more of useful American. I I I'm fluent in Ukrainian, so I was able to interpret and then in college I'd I'd been an EMT. with the student run emergency medical corps. I was at Brandeis University's version of that. and so I figured maybe I could be of use in in that capacity. I went to stay with my my best friend who at the time she lived in Berlin and I volunteered as an EMT translator, whatever at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, the central train station. and I was kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel as, you know, in terms of what I could contribute because I was not a great EMT I or a great interpreter. most of my college EMT career I had dealt with like freshmen who had gotten a little too high and freaked out and thought too hard about their hands and had a panic attack. And it was very different needs for like people who are escaping war. but you know, I tried to devote that year to to that. And then on the one year anniversary of the full scale invasion, I helped organize a camp for displaced Ukrainian kids as well as my own students, just any students who wanted to enroll. It was essentially free. we organized it in Romania in a border town, so not super far from Ukraine, but far enough that it'd be safe, that there wouldn't be air sirens, that the kids could have some respite from from the the toxic wartime. Atmosphere. And by some miracle, all of my students were able to make it to this camp to reconvene after a year of being apart. And many hadn't seen each other in the last year at all. And we were all sitting around up too late on this first night of camp, which was the one year anniversary of the invasion. and we were drinking tea and playing Uno. and they were exchanging stories, and I was just doing a lot of listening and thinking, damn, I should write this down. And eventually I I made a one-off comment, something along the lines of, You guys need to write a book about this. And one of them said to me, We're busy, you do it. so I took that as sort of a green light to approach my own writing again, very cautiously. I had this half of a slice of life coming of age novel collecting dust in my Google Docs account. And I I knew I just couldn't finish that novel. I knew that the the novel had to take a hard left turn. I don't think it's a spoiler for your listeners that the war does arrive halfway through this novel. and I did not know how to write that part at all. I did not how I did not know how to address the experience of war to do my kids' stories and their family stories justice. and you know if I was gonna put anything out there into the world about this community now, it also had to illustrate their resilience and what they've been through in in specifics. What you said, the indomitable s human spirit, you said it better than I did. but I knew I had to address that and I was I was not sure how to even how to even get started. but I knew that there was a r a purpose there because I figured now isn't the time to shy away from detail. Like it's easy for Americans to look at the news and see a headline like X number of people killed in attack very far away and think, that's terrible and then do the wordle. and I the poet Kada Akbar said it better than I can. I'm gonna see if I can quote this from memory. He said, by restoring specific narrative to abstract historical data, we restore for readers the urgent somatic obliteration of individual loss. Yes, I got it. and I had access to the specificity, to the to the specificity of my kids and and their families and my friends' individual losses. And I figured I had the opportunity here to to do as Kava Akbar said and restore narrative to data. I also had a bit of a tightrope to walk because I'm not a journalist. and so I was kind of because I'm a fiction writer and I'm taking a journalistic approach to fiction, I was sort of worried it would feel less like I was platforming Ukrainian narratives and more like I was co-opting them. But I asked a few Ukrainian friends how they would feel about me me writing a book as Sort of an agglomeration of their stories fictionalized heavily. And the basic consensus was yes, please. You know, you're an English speaker, you speak Ukrainian, you have an American literary agent, and thus access to the American American media. So please do shed light on these stories. So that was the impetus. And then the method was that I interviewed a lot. I got myself one of those little voice recorder dudads and brought it around to each of my friends and students and eventually their friends and family. Basically, anyone who had the desire or the an emotional wherewithal to share their testimony. And that was an enormous display on their part of trust and generosity. I basically asked them to make themselves exceptionally vulnerable and hand me these stories and trust me to do with them what I will. So I'm immensely grateful for that. and that was how the that was how the idea came and that was why that felt like the necessary first novel to write. And it came together pretty quickly.
speaker-0: Thank you for that. And that answers so many of the questions I have, but of course not all say a lot more to talk about. So let's shift to the pages of the book. Again, no spoilers. but I did say already it made me cry. And it's heartbreaking. And then I thought about you writing it. And so I have to ask you. And I'm not laughing. I'm like. I don't want to cry again. So I'm trying to be like the good journalist on your side too. how did how did you cope with writing once the war started and you shifted ground and the book is organized into parts for someone who hasn't read it? So you're aware that, you know, the the beautiful life of daily life and Teen angst and and the gay growing up and not understanding even how to deal with that in those powerful emotions, all good, all so moving, so lyrical, and yet not war. And then suddenly it no one believed it was gonna happen, and then it was you were in it, and you wrote about it. From all those beautiful interviews you did, as if the reader is in it. So I'm here to ask: how did that feel to you? What were your struggles as a writer in coping with all that tragedy and suffering and emotion that is presented in a beautiful way in this novel?
speaker-1: grateful that I was able to I had somewhere to put it. I mean the book gave me somewhere to put it because I I was hearing these stories anyway. none of none of the stories from the second half of the novel are from my imagination. I've altered them and covered them in a patina of fiction and you know changed the details. but they're all things that that people I care about have told me. And I was either gonna carry that around or I was going to put it in a book. and so writing it was was the catharsis for it was the coping mechanism. and I'm super I mean, even if I hadn't written it as a book meant for other people to read, meant for HarperCollins to publish, it was I was still gonna write it down in some some diary somewhere. so that was mainly it was a kind of a processing. There's a a great novel called Lost Children Archive but by Valeria Lewiselli. she characterized, and I'm I'm paraphrasing here, but she characterized her writing of that novel as kind of a primal scream, and a release of frustration at what was going on in in this case with family separation at the US-Mexico border. I think that my approach to the Sunflower Boys was actually very much the same. Because it was otherwise, what was I gonna do with all this? I was gonna sit around and be horrified and sad and angry all the time, or I was going to narrativize it for myself and for readers who might find it cathartic to to read it, put into a narrative like that, and to see their own experiences or some some version of their own experiences reflected in in prose. so I that that was how it felt for me. and then also going through the steps of of interviewing people was likewise hugely cathartic because it gave me the ex excuse. Well, I'd I'd gotten a lot of these stories throughout osmosis. I after I I stopped being an EMT in Germany, I came back to the US where I was working with resettling Ukrainians here in the Boston area. and nobody introduces themselves by by saying, you know, here's all the horrible things that that we've gone through, but you end up hearing them bit in bits and pieces. and in a lot of ways that's that's more upsetting to deal with than to say, you know, here's what happened from start to finish and now we're here and we're gonna here's how we're gonna restart our lives. And so being able to sit down with people and talk to them for literally four hours at a go, and just basically put all the pieces together like that, I think I know that At least one one of my friends said that this was super therapeutic for her. I know it was super therapeutic for me. which is is not the part that matters, but it was appreciated.
speaker-0: Thank you for that too. And now I'm gonna have a two-part question for you that is you partially answered. but first I'd like to stay focused on the actual contents of the book and asking you of all the really heartrending and difficult memories and experiences that you heard. from your interviews and from your work that you incorporated into the book were there a few that were the hardest to write and were there one or two you can recall you felt proudest of writing?
speaker-1: Hmm. Okay, so I mean the section that I feel proudest of, that's the easier one to to answer, is the sort of connective tissue section that that that connects the first part of the book, the peace part, to the war part. It's this part where the three main characters of the book are riding their bikes and encounter well, one of them gets a a flat tire, and and there's a thunderstorm and they encounter a man who, although it's I didn't say it, you know, i I didn't say it explicitly is very traumatized veteran from the invasion in the in the Donbass, which has been an ongoing thing since twenty fourteen. You know, we started hearing about the the war in Ukraine in in twenty twenty two, when it was became a full scale invasion, but the war has been relevant to Ukrainians' lives since twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, since the annexation of Crimea. and so I I was proud of that scene. Partially because I instead of saying and then suddenly this suddenly this thing happened, suddenly everything changed. This actually has just been waiting just beyond the periphery of what the boys knew. and so I I do remember writing that at like four in the morning and being like, ooh, I'm good. the hardest the hardest to write, I mean, It's very hard to hear stories from people. Who you care about who have had horrible things happen to them. That was always the hard part. And the hard part was having nowhere to put that and having to, you know, talk to my my therapist about it, which was like, I mean, that's that's one level of processing it, but still it it ends with her. There's nothing that I can put out into the world from that. and so that was really the hard part. I'm interviewing the whole family and I kind of went through their story bit by bit and said, Okay, what would you like me to do with this? Shall I leave this and this just stays in this room? shall I incorporate this into the novel somehow? What would make you feel represented and not exploited? and I think that some of the stuff that I had to leave on the cutting room floor is what still haunts me. But also being able to see this family thriving here and being able to spend time with them and see how how resilient they are and how far they have come from that extremely low point. and being able to spend time with, for example, this kid and just have it be like spending time with any other kid playing chess with him, losing repeatedly. that's, you know, that is what makes it easy to sit with.
speaker-0: And that's a wonderful segue to what I did want to ask, which is the response from that primary readership in a sense of the the people whose stories you did share. it sounds like they they appreciated how you approached what was shareable and what was not in it in this very, very traumatic set of experiences.
speaker-1: You know, it's I've heard from very few Ukrainian readers because the book is not translated into Ukrainian. And most of the folks who I interviewed, well the the kids speak English, but a lot of them are actually I feel like too young to read the book and or they're it disinterested in reading in general. the parents usually don't have a lick of English unless they've been living here for the past couple of years. so the primary readership is certainly Americans. and Americans and Ukrainians have definitely responded in two different ways. What I've heard from Americans more is the concerns about who a story belongs to. That's been a very American talking point. ris the responses have all been good, but it's also been much more focused on like, but wait, who is this Sam Walkman? Like he's not he's not Ukrainian, so what's what's going on here? the few Ukrainians who I have who who have sp spoke who speak English and who have read the book, have had a very different response, which is like, good, this is getting exposed. I think the the concept of appropriating stories doesn't exist in the same way. but it's been positive all around, which I'm really grateful for. I've had nobody reach out to me with an angry note saying, you got you got this wrong or anything. which also I attribute to the fact that I had a ton of readers before it this reached my editor's desk. I had a ton of of friends and friends of friends who poured over my manuscript and found all the little things that don't ring true. I think that it's it writing can be a really solidistic pursuit if you are just gonna shut yourself in your in your room like I do sometimes and and just write fiction in the dark. but this book was such a communal effort. because I sent it through so many different people to vet it, the which came from a place of anxiety. and also from a place of wanting to do justice to the story that I was telling. but it ended up just creating a community around this book, which is the greatest and least expected thing that I I could have asked for.
speaker-0: What a wonderful outcome. And I would say now, let's move quickly into congratulations. This is an award-winning book. It's not only your debut novel. it is this year's winner of the fiction prize from the Boston Authors Club, which I happen to be a member of. And I applaud that decision. And I know that you mentioned you have a literary agent. Harper Collins is the publisher. for those aspiring writers and other debut novelists in our audience, can you talk a bit about that part of publishing? what was it like to find a publisher, have feedback at that level? how did that shape? You're thinking about this book and maybe other books you will write in the future.
speaker-1: it's been it's been significantly less onerous for me than I hear it it it is for a lot of writers. my agent found me, which I don't think is the norm. I've heard that people get stuck in in querying hell for years. and my agent spared me that. Thank you, Naomi. she found a a short story that I I wrote. And she liked it and she sent me an email. and likewise the you know, finding an editor thing, she made that effortless for me. I'm sure that there was a ton on on of effort on her part, but when we we we volleyed drafts back and forth for a couple of months and then decided that it was baked enough to, you know, be sent off to to to be put on sub. and within the week. we had two editors interested. We talked to both and picked one. And my editor is named Millicent Bennett. And I'm also working with her on the next book. I am so lucky to have kept my entire team from this book. because they've all been so cool, so excellent. you know they took a pretty good manuscript and turned it into a book I'm really proud of. if you can get short stories published, that could be a great way in. Or maybe what happened to me was a one off. I have no idea. but that that's how I how I got it. And I think that getting short stories published is a is a good good idea as well, just because first off, short stories are like the most perfect form of fiction. and I'm I'm a huge fan of them. And also it gives you a little taste of what it's like to go through the editorial process, 'cause at the more respected lit mags, I you're gonna be working with an editor who's gonna probably want to swap around a few things and you get to to see what happens when someone dissects you know rearranges your work. and you get to feel, this is strangely vulnerable, but also this is really helpful. these folks do it for a living and I have a great admiration because at some point you go blind to your own writing after you've been staring at drafts one through thirty-two of the same manuscript over and over, you can no longer see it for what it is. And so when I hand it to my editor or my agent or whatever, and they can see all these flaws that are glaringly obvious and all these solutions that are glaringly obvious that I just can no longer see. It's super helpful.
speaker-0: That's some great insight I love what you said that you know it was a very good book and now it's a classic. And that was an outcome of that editorial process and your willingness to embrace it, because some authors find that very difficult to give up on their words.
speaker-1: Yeah, it it is in the interest of full disclosure, I mean I found I was surprised by how hard that how hard I found it. I had a I have a really great gentle, talented, kind editor. And still I remember I was at my my aunt's lake house in Quebec standing knee deep in the water on the phone with my agent crying because I was like this not able to figure out like how to reconcile the version of my book that I wanted with the vision that my editor had and then I realized that I was just kind of being stubborn. and my editor was completely right. and I think that's also a huge part of my my gratitude toward them is that like they've had a ton of patience with me. I'm in general, I'm just happy to be here. Like I kind of feel like I fell into the publishing world is not something that I was fighting for for decades. and so every time that something like this comes up, I'm like, well I'm I'm just along for the ride. This is great. Like I'm gonna keep doing this for as long as I can. but so then it was like hard to to actually realize, wait, I am attached, very attached to this novel. and I feel protective over it. And I kind of feel like, you know, pop a bear over it. And like I understand you want to perform this surgery to make it better, but still you're cutting it open.
speaker-0: I love I am moved by that. I'm gonna go through the door you opened, Sam, which you said you're working on your next book. And sometimes authors do not want to talk about that. But let's wrap up with whatever you want to say about how you are moving on from this incredible debut novel that is based on a moment in your time in your life and so many of the people you interviewed, what is happening in in that transition to a different theme? How different is it? And tell us whatever you're willing to share about that next book.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, so I'm willing to share a lot. Also, I'm aware of how these things evolve over the editorial process now. And so I could tell you about, you know, one version of this book and then the version that comes out in 2028 actually bears no resemblance to it. So I don't want to make false promises. it shares a lot of DNA, because of course it has the same author and it and it's also a novel that in some way, in a different way, deals with Ukraine and the war in it. but it is set in the US. it is in broad strokes about blindness, and cousinhood and about misshapen impromptu families, I guess. it the families that that the ripple effects of the war accidentally created for better or for worse. and that's I guess, you know probably as specific as I can get. it's still based off of the same kids who are now becoming adults who I taught in Ukraine, who I'm still very much in touch with, some of whom have moved to the US. And so it still feels like a very collaborative kind of novel. and I I will keep doing that and keep telling that story until I until everyone stops listening.
speaker-0: Then we are going to end this interview with first anyone who's listening, you must read this book. Please buy the book, read the book, talk about this book. It is a book that changed my ideas about so many things, and I realized how ignorant I was. about life on the ground during this episode. So what you said, Sam, is true. Americans have it easy. We can read the news and move on to the next thing in our day. And you kept me rooted to the spot through all the pain and tragedy. And yet at the end, I was grateful to have read the book. So thank you so much for that.
speaker-1: But thank you so much. This is very kind of you to say.
speaker-0: And thank you for joining us on Why Authors Write. It's been a pleasure.
