The standard recommendation for beginners in fiction is to write what you know. Nova Ren Suma has taken that advice and run with it – to her own credit, and to the benefit of insatiable young readers who yearn to have their imaginations expanded in print media. The entire genre of fiction for teens, ‘tweens and kids has, in fact, exploded in the past decade: a hopeful sign that twittering and texting have not entirely eliminated literacy. So when a new author shows up with yet another tale of youthful angst and curiosity and possibility, it’s cause to celebrate.
On Friday, November 27 at noon, Suma will be at the Golden Notebook in Woodstock to celebrate the release of her new title Dani Noir, and to meet up with old friends as well. Suma grew up in the Ulster County communities of Woodstock, Accord and Saugerties, and has written extensively from that experience. But, for the record, this isn’t her first offering to kid literature. In her relatively short career, she has penned 17 books for young people, all ghostwritten – meaning no credit, no byline, no trace of fame. It should be noted, however, that fame and success are separate entities when it comes to writing. While it’s satisfying to see your name on the spine of a book cover, Suma acknowledges that ghostwriting gave her the connections that opened doors to other things.
She earned her BA in Writing and Photography from Antioch College and an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, where she was co-editor-in-chief of the literary journal Columbia. She has attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop. Her short stories for adults have appeared in the literary journals Gulf Coast, Orchid, the New School’s LIT magazine, The Portland Review, Small Spiral Notebook and elsewhere.
Her résumé reads: “I was an assistant at a literary agency that focused on mystery novels. I read short stories on a beanbag chair for a magazine. I worked on textbooks for people wanting to learn English. I was an assistant editor on X-Men comic books. I assisted a cartoonist. I copyedited books based on movies and TV shows and toys.” Suma was also a fiction Fellow with the New York Foundation for the Arts, a resident at the MacDowell Colony and will be a resident at Yaddo in 2010.
In her book Dani Noir, 13-year-old Dani lives in a small, fictional Catskill Mountain town called Shanosha – an isolated place that makes her feel abandoned by everyone she knows, especially one unbearable summer when her parents divorce, her best friend moves and her brother leaves for camp. But there is a lot more going on in Shanosha than Dani could ever guess, and by the end of the story she’s so embroiled in it that she doesn’t want to escape her small town after all. Before Dani Noir was even published (by Simon & Schuster’s Children’s’ Books), two additional books were contracted with Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers’ Group, one of which she has already begun writing, titled Imaginary Girls.
According to Suma, “I started off writing for adults, but I was always writing teenage or ‘tween characters, so writing for young people was a natural progression for me. I feel like I’m writing stories for the kid I used to be. I think of what would have interested me then, what would have felt ‘real’ to me then. But more than that, I have very vivid memories of being 13 (like my character in Dani Noir) or 16 (like Chloe, the narrator of the novel I’m writing now), as if I’m still deep in that place. Maybe it’s more an issue of never having grown up than anything else!”
When asked about the similar lack of self-direction and self-empowerment that often exists in the condition of being a ghostwriter and that of being an adolescent, she says, “I’ve never thought of that before, but I think it’s such a fascinating idea! I spent only a few years ghostwriting, and I’ve since stopped to write my own stories, but there was that strange sense of having to do what someone else is telling you to do. The characters weren’t mine, the plots weren’t mine and the final product was never mine. So I wonder if spending those years writing those books only worked to help me be in the perfect frame of mind for writing Dani Noir.”
Come meet the author at the Golden Notebook on Tinker Street in Woodstock at noon on the 27th, and check out Suma’s websites at http://novaren.com and http://daninoir.com.