Interviewed by Christine Maul Rice
This novel.
This writing.
Katey Schultz’s ambitious and fully realized novel, Still Come Home (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press), is a nuanced and damn-near flawless investigation of war and those caught in it. The novel’s narrative lays bare timeless dilemmas—desperation, loyalty, the sticky demands of love—but the situations her main characters find themselves in are so thoroughly modern, the focus so timely, relevant, and startling that it opened me up, as a reader and human, to a greater understanding of the horrifying toll we’ve paid through US involvement in the Eastern Mediterranean Region.
Set in a war-torn Afghan town, the novel’s intersecting narratives focus on an educated and ambitious Afghan girl, Aaseya, Second Lieutenant Nathan Miller, and Aaseya’s husband Rahim. On the page, Schultz renders a deep understanding of and compassion for her characters—for better or worse. This fully realized deep dive into her characters’ internal and external worlds is successful, in part, because she allows her unwavering writerly gaze to linger on deeply unsettling emotions, sights, and dilemmas.
There’s a richness and lyricism to her writing that can be attributed to talent although, as every writer knows, what we recognize as talent takes dogged hard work.
I knew and admired Katey’s writing from her award-winning collection Flashes of War and was delighted to interview her about Still Come Home.
Christine Rice: I’m always fascinated by book covers. How did this one develop? (In other words, was there a lot of back and forth? Did you know this one was it immediately?)
Katey Schultz: After some back and forth with the publisher, I suggested using a digital image of a letterpress print by an artist whose work I have admired for years, Marianne Dages. I reached out to her and learned that the print was a collaboration with Amze Emmons. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was the right cover for Still Come Home. I wanted something abstract and beautiful, that represented the movements and emotions of the woven storylines in the novel. My hope is that the cover draws potential readers in, and that once they’ve finished the book, they can perhaps see—through extrapolation and imagination—how this lovely arrangement of colors and shapes also symbolizes, to me, a narrative.
CR: This is your first novel.
KS: Yep, that’s right.
CR: What was challenging (or wonderful…or both) about writing a novel after writing a collection of flash fiction?
KS: The most challenging aspect of teaching myself to write longform prose was—for lack of a better phrase—prose glue. What happens between scenes? How does a writer narrate without meandering or eddying? The most rewarding aspect was having a solid handle on scene, impact, and metaphor—all skills that flash teaches and that I feel a natural creative affinity toward.
CR: In the Epilogue to your first book, Flashes of War, you discuss your fascination with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and elements of your research and writing processes.
You write:
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were described as “my generation’s,” but I knew very little about them and had no immediate ties to the military. Right or wrong, “their” side or “ours,” I wanted to know, on the level of basic human experience, what were these wars actually like? How did people operate under extreme conditions with less-than-ideal tools for survival? How did their personal traits influence their motivations and experiences against the backdrop of war? What were the impacts of war inside the family home or in the far reaches of an individual’s mind?
Still Come Home dissects the lives—and intersecting narratives of three main characters: two Afghans and an American lieutenant serving in Afghanistan.
What was the hair trigger idea for this novel? Did it grow out of the original research for Flashes of War? Or did it come to you later?
KS: From a craft perspective, the hair trigger for this novel was simply one of challenge. I’d done the work it took to “put penguins on Mars,” as I like to tell people (because that’s how foreign writing about the Middle East, the Long Wars, and military culture initially felt to me)—so I might as well keep digging around and see what I could discover by going long. Flashes of War taught me that I could navigate the imaginative leaps it took to create characters like Aaseya, Rahim, and Nathan, which in turn freed me up to focus on the actual structural components of longform prose, and how they work in concert with one another over the course of a character’s prolonged moral decisions.
From a narrative perspective, my stories are always driven by unanswered questions. In 2009, news broke about the realities of host nation trucking contracts, and where US dollars were actually ending up. Our troops on Forward Operating Bases in Afghanistan had their head lamps and port-a-johns and MREs and Facebook, but actual American dollars were getting into the hands of the Taliban in order to pull it off, which seemed a hideous irony, to say the least. I aspired to write a story that explored the ramifications of how that money moves, on the micro level. What violence came as a result? What opportunities? Was it worth it?
From a human perspective, I’m always curious to see how a character will react when they’re put into a situation where they can do everything right, and still be wrong. War presents, for better or worse, exactly that kind of predicament over and over again, and since I’m interested in the micro—the tiny, impossible moments that make or break our sense of identity—I routinely put my characters into these situations to see how they react. Because it’s in that reaction, to be honest, that their most authentic selves are revealed and that, more than anything I can think of, speaks to our capacity to love and to live, regardless of circumstance.
CR: Flashes of War was embraced by active military and military veterans alike. What did that feel like? To have done your research so thoroughly, to have imagined your places and characters so fully, to have written with such authority that the ‘experts’ could find no fault?
KS: That embrace was the most meaningful reward I ever could have imagined. To this day, the “mil lit” family remains one of the most welcoming, insightful, genuine, kind group of writers I’ve interacted with. Beyond my wildest imagination, civilians in Afghanistan read the book, cadets at the United States Air Force Academy read it, and even “everyday readers” who said they “don’t usually read about war” embraced the stories. More than anything, the fact that other people cared enough to look closely at these wars and read along, felt like a success. There are so many ways in which human beings are alike, even across the miles and across the war zones. I wanted to write stories that made that feel true, possible, even hopeful. Meeting readers who picked up on that is something I will never forget.
CR: We spent a week teaching at Interlochen, Michigan, at the Interlochen Writers Retreat where you are Artistic Director. These days working writers wear a lot of hats but you might wear more than most. You founded Maximum Impact—which offers an online flash form writing glass and monthly mentorship. You have also edited three fiction anthologies.
Can you talk about how you balance your writing/editorial/teaching endeavors and how (or if!) they fuel your writing? Or, perhaps the question is: how do you discipline yourself?
KS: The good news is that I don’t do most of that stuff anymore, hah! The fiction anthologies I edited were nearly a decade ago. My role at Interlochen is a labor of love, and only takes a bit of work each fall and then a week of fun-filled author conversations at Narnia (a.k.a Interlochen Center for the Arts) each April and June. Likewise, my offerings for Maximum Impact allow for summers off and a vacation each December and May. In this way, I consider myself a passionate teacher who works part-time, and a full-time writer who paces herself for the long haul.
On a practical level, what that looks like is this: I “clock in” for everything I do, using the Harvest app, so I know exactly how many hours I’m teaching, prepping, reading, writing, emailing, etc. This helps me keep things in balance and also set goals for myself. In terms of schedule, what that also means it that I know when my busier weeks are each month, and often choose not to write during those weeks, and read and free write in my journal instead. Then, as other tasks quiet for a week or so, I amp up my writing hours, and in the end, it seems to balance.
Still, it’s always a work in progress. I try to be kind to myself, and to my students, because to be honest—most of us make writing harder than it needs to be, and guilt or impossible goals never got anyone anywhere. But practicality, patience, determination, and kindness…those things really do feed the spirit and enable writers to keep writing, for good.
CR: Speaking of book clubs, why do book clubs matter?
KS: Books clubs and public libraries are the last great defenders of the written word, and I love them all with all of my heart. What more could a writer ever ask for, than a dedicated group of thoughtful, open-minded, book-loving people willing to sit down and have deep conversations about narrative, morality, culture, entertainment, and civic duty? What could be better than a free, public space to celebrate the literary arts? Put another way, book clubs are like the trail maintenance crews and libraries are like our National Forests. They are treasures and our birthright. How seriously lucky is that?
But to be more direct: book clubs matter because conversations matter. When we can talk about what moves us, what unsettles us, what breaks us open—we remember what it means to be human, and we remain open to experience of “the other.” That, in my opinion, is the beginning of world peace, one page at a time.
It’s also why I livestream free into any book club in the world, “meeting” readers for a Q&A. I want to make the invisible, visible, as a writer and imaginer and story-shaper. Talking with readers excites and inspires me and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to foster these kinds of conversations.
CR: What books or writers are taking your attention lately?
KS: This summer I tore through Louise Erdrich’s Tracks, Vivan Gornick’s The Odd Woman and the City, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. I’m also revisiting some Ray Carver works. But by and large, I’m trying to read anyone who isn’t White, who wasn’t on any curriculum I ever encountered, and who didn’t get interviewed on NPR or Oprah. I’m interested in the glorious marginalia, the voices I should have heard all along but never did, the writers who can teach me about my blind spots as a human being and as an author, and inspire me to be better.
Katey Schultz is the author of Flashes of War, which the Daily Beast praised as an “ambitious and fearless” collection. Honors for her work include the Linda Flowers Literary Award, the Doris Betts Fiction Prize, IndieFab Book of the Year, a Gold Medal from the Military Writers Society of America, four Pushcart nominations, and writing fellowships in eight states. She lives in Celo, North Carolina and is the founder of Maximum Impact, a transformative mentoring service for creative writers that has been recognized by both CNBC and the What Works Network. Learn more at www.kateyschultz.com.
