The Walls Around Us | Nova Ren Suma | Talks at Google

TL;DR

“The Walls Around Us” is Nova Ren Suma’s young adult ghost story about teenage girls, set partly in an all-girls juvenile detention center in upstate New York. It follows Amber, incarcerated since age 14 after a manslaughter conviction, and Violet, whose story involves the ballet world. Read on to discover how prisons, classic ghost stories, character voices, and a month-long residency shaped the novel.

Transcript

[APPLAUSE] NOVA REN SUMA: Thank you so much for that great intro, [? Sunny. ?] So I'm Nova, and I am here to talk about "The Walls Around Us," which just came out this spring from Algonquin. And this is a young adult novel, a YA novel. And I've said this before outside of this room, but I'll say this here. I write stories about teenagers, most spec... Read More

Key Insights

• 🇼🇫 The novel "The Walls Around Us" explores teenage identity and the consequences of one's actions in a supernatural setting within a juvenile detention center.
• 🍃 The story delves into the intense emotions and experiences of teenagers and their desire to disappear or leave their past behind.
• ✍️ The unique voices of the main characters, Amber and Violet, were developed through specific writing styles and playlists.
• 📔 The theme of disappearing is represented both metaphorically and literally in the book, adding depth to the storytelling.

Questions & Answers

Q: What is Nova Ren Suma’s “The Walls Around Us” about?

“The Walls Around Us” is a young adult novel about teenage girls that combines a real-world setting with ghosts and other supernatural elements. The story follows Amber in a juvenile detention center and Violet in the ballet world while exploring identity, consequences, and the desire to escape the past.

Q: Why is “The Walls Around Us” set in a juvenile detention center?

Suma wanted a strong, concrete setting for a ghost story and was already watching prison documentaries and reading about incarcerated people. Because she writes primarily about teenage girls, she developed the prison setting into an all-girls juvenile detention center.

Q: Who is Amber in “The Walls Around Us”?

Amber has been incarcerated at the fictional Aurora Hills Secure Juvenile Detention Center since she was 14. She was convicted of manslaughter for killing her stepfather and narrates by collecting both her own story and the stories of the girls around her.

Q: How did Nova Ren Suma imagine Aurora Hills?

Suma placed the fictional detention center on a tall hill in far-upstate New York. She pictured grey stone walls, three lines of fencing, and barbed wire, imagining that the facility had once imprisoned adult men before being converted to house teenage girls convicted of serious, violent crimes.

Q: What inspired the supernatural elements in “The Walls Around Us”?

Suma wanted to write something surreal that felt like a classic ghost story while remaining rooted in the real world. She identified Shirley Jackson’s “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” and “The Haunting of Hill House,” along with David Lynch’s films and “Twin Peaks,” as inspirations.

Q: How did Nova Ren Suma develop Amber’s narrative voice?

Suma began by writing Amber in an unusual voice that used “we” instead of “I.” She then realized Amber was not simply telling her own story: she was a quiet observer who listened to the other girls and collected their stories as well.

Q: How did Suma distinguish the voices of Amber and Violet?

Suma separated the novel into two sections and created a specific writing style for each character. She also used character-specific playlists and writing rules to enter Amber’s and Violet’s different mindsets.

Q: How did the Millay Colony residency contribute to the novel’s development?

Suma arrived at the Millay Colony in Austerlitz, New York, with Amber and the basic idea for the book but no written pages. During the month-long residency, she had the freedom to work without anyone checking her output, although she placed considerable pressure on herself to make progress.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Nova Ren Suma discusses her novel "The Walls Around Us," a young adult story set in a juvenile detention center with supernatural elements.

• The story follows two main characters, Amber and Violet, as they navigate their experiences in the detention center and the ballet world respectively.

• The novel explores themes of teenage identity, the consequences of one's actions, and the desire to disappear or leave one's past behind.