Rowan Hisayo Buchanan: 'I’m writing characters who are individuals with their own very personal histories and world views'
BY Discoveries
11th Oct 2023
CBC and Curtis Brown are proud to be partnering with the Women’s Prize Trust and Audible to run Discoveries for a fourth year. This unique writing development prize and programme offers practical support and encouragement to aspiring female novelists of all ages and backgrounds, from across the UK and Ireland.
This week the Discoveries team talk books and writing advice with award-winning author Rowan Hisayo Buchanan. Rowan is also on the Discoveries 2024 judging panel – she will be joined by chair of judges and founder of the Women's Prize Kate Mosse, acclaimed author Natasha Brown, Curtis Brown literary agent Jess Molloy and CBC’s founder Anna Davis.
When did you know you wanted to be an author?
Not until my early twenties did I realize I could be an author. But I have written and told stories since I could write and speak. I don’t think that’s unusual – I just suspect that life bashes it out of many children. I was lucky enough to escape that.
Your latest novel The Sleep Watcher follows 16-year-old Kit throughout a restless summer, as her body sleeps, she walks through her family home and her seaside hometown bearing witness to arguments and violence. The magical realism in the novel is perfectly integrated with the awkwardness and liminal spaces of adolescence. What inspired the concept for this novel?
I find I need to gather not just once piece of inspiration but a bundle. The terrible nightmares I had as a teenager, a Ted Talk about Out of Body Experiences, a Victorian bus route, a wet day by dark brown sandy cliffs, the memory of a dress with a zipper that went from the hem to the throat, an article about druids, the smell of bins and sea air. But even with all that, there was a long time when I thought the novel wasn’t going to work.
I couldn’t figure out the point of view. And then I realized that it would be told by Kit, as an adult, to her lover. The story is a confession. It’s the kind we make when we want to trust someone with ourselves – even the parts that we think of as our worst selves. Once I understood that the tone would be intimate, guilty, desperate to be understood, the first draft flew.
Mental health and loneliness are reoccurring themes throughout your writing. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors looking to tackle similar themes with sensitivity and care?
I don’t think there’s one right way of doing this. But I try to convey to my reader that I’m not speaking for every person with a particular condition or a particular label. I’m writing characters who are individuals with their own very personal histories and world views.
You write novels, short stories and essays. Is there one form you prefer over the others?
I think of myself as a fiction writer first. Essays are something I came to later. It’s still fiction that I think about as I fall asleep at night.
Recently you co-edited the anthology Dog-Hearted: Essays on Our Fierce and Familiar Companions. What is the process like for you switching from author-mode to editor-mode – working with other people’s words?
It is a joy. I see the editor’s job as helping the writer bring out the best of what is already in the text. As the editor you can get all the pleasure of playing with language without the anxiety of ego.
Who is your favourite fictional character?
As an adult, I’ve found my focus has moved from empathizing with individual characters to falling in love with the voice of the book. Writers like Sophie Mackintosh (longlisted for the Women’s Prize last year) and Caleb Azumah Nelson are masters of voice.
For a character I loved as if they were real, I must go back to childhood, to a book called Aki and the Fox. It’s the story of a girl and her fox who take the train together to visit her grandmother. The fox’s name is Kon, and he’s an overthinker, trying to protect the innocent optimist Aki. It’s essentially a buddy comedy writ small. But there is a moment when Kon might be lost forever. It is my first memory of feeling afraid for a character in a story.
Which books do you always recommend to others?
I teach Creative Writing. And I change my syllabus every term. But there are certain writers who I find myself assigning again and again—Anne Enright, Yiyun Li, Kamila Shamsie, Sharlene Teo, and Sarah Hall come to mind.
We’re delighted to have you onboard as a judge for Discoveries 2024 – do you have any advice for writers getting ready to submit to the prize?
Don’t send in the work you think we’ll like best. Send in the work you believe in most. Send in your bravest, truest, work. By truest—I don’t mean biographical truth. I mean the raw truth of what it is to be alive that fiction can sometimes grab a strand of.
What will you be looking for from entrants when reading for Discoveries?
Writing that successfully submerges me into another’s mind. Other forms, film, TV, painting etc can capture something of consciousness but for me nothing does this quite so well as literature.
Best of luck preparing your submission to Discoveries 2024. We’re so excited to read your work!
For advice preparing your novel-in-progress to enter Discoveries 2024, sign up for our free webinar: Your Novel: How to Get Started (taking place on Thurs 26 Oct). This special panel event will feature expert speakers, including Rowan Hisayo Buchanan. Click the button below to find out more about the event.
Get your hands on Rowan's latest novel The Sleep Watcher.
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