Please note that this interview was originally published on our old website in 2015, before our parent nonprofit—then called Tethered by Letters (TBL)—had rebranded as Brink Literacy Project. In the interests of accuracy we have retained the original wording of the interview.

In Naomi Benaron’s debut novel, Running the Rift, Jean Patrick sees the world through a lens of science. He understands the anatomical effects his Olympic training has on his muscles, the instantaneous velocity of rage that erupts when his heritage is insulted, and the pressure and heat that threaten to break his country in half. Yet, surrounded by his single-minded coach and his humorous university friends, these tensions seem to him only a distraction from his training, from the bright future he is working toward.

However, as racial tensions escalate, the political pressure in Rwanda proves too great. Like the springs he studies in physics, his country is suddenly stretched too far, and the volatile relationship between the Hutu and Tutsi finally explodes. Torn now between his father’s dreams of peace of the reality of war surrounding him, Jean Patrick races against the destruction, realizing that his livelong Olympic training might be the only thing that can save him.

With quotes taken from both the Hutu power newspaper and radio station, Running the Rift creates a riveting plot centered around the historical events that took place in Rwanda. Brimming with vibrant characters that inspire both laughter and tears, Benaron’s novel delves into one of the most horrifying moments in human history and, with incredible courage, unearths the beauty beneath the rubble.

It is with great conviction that Tethered by Letters recommends Running the Rift. Following the scientific laws that Jean Patrick so loves, this novel in motion stays in motion until the very end. Without a single lull, the momentum of the plot continuously gains power until the reader cannot turn the pages fast enough. And when the book is closed for the last time, the reader is left reeling: struck by both the horror of genocide and the unbelievable courage of those who survived it.

Benaron on Running the Rift

When I asked Benaron what motivated her to write about a runner in Rwanda, she told me about watching the 2000 Olympics. During the wild card swimming heat—“for people who would never in a thousand years qualify for the Olympics”—one young African stood out: “He practically drowned for the first 100 meters, but he just kept going,” she explained, “I was so impressed with his heart and it just stayed with me.”

This idea initially took the form of a short story set in Burundi. Then, in 2002, when Benaron made her first trip to Rwanda, new inspiration began to take root at the moment that she fell in love with the country’s rolling hills from the airplane window. With awe lacing her words, she spoke of the wide-open smiles of the people and the way they opened their homes to her, sharing their food and their stories. The pivotal experience that propelled her to write about the genocide was not listening to the people’s stories, but instead dipping her feet into Lake Kivu. While walking along the shore at daybreak, she felt something beneath her bare foot. Bending down to investigate, she realized that she had stepped on a bone, a human bone. Soon on her hands and knees, she found there were bones everywhere in the sand. She realized instantly that they were the remains of the victims of the genocide: “I held these bones in my hands and I thought these aren’t just bones; these are stories, and they are stories that will never be told unless someone else gives them voice.”

This moment launched Benaron onto an eight-year journey writing Running the Rift. Originally, she had planned to finish her short story about the Burundian swimmer and then embark on the harrowing task of writing about the Rwandan genocide. But once she had visited Rwanda, she struggled to imagine Burundi, a country she had never visited. After she started her MFA, it finally dawned on her: “You’re an idiot!” she declared, “You’ve been to Rwanda. Why don’t you just change the story to Rwanda? Take out the swimmer, make him a runner.” The change from swimming to running was also incredibly apt, for Benaron herself is an avid runner. “In order to represent a character, I really need to live, breath, and inhabit their souls and their hearts,” she explained, “So running was easier for me.”

Now with a stronger understanding of her characters, she began the historical research into the genocide. When I asked how she dealt with such dark material, Benaron shook her head softly, confessing that it was exceptionally difficult. “Sometimes I would be writing and I would need to take a break. It wasn’t just that I would get stuck as a writer; I just couldn’t deal with it anymore…there would be days where I just walked around shell-shocked. I couldn’t take in what I was reading or seeing.”

Benaron went on to tell me more about the history she uncovered, both of us struggling to conceptualize the horrors. I sat speechless as she spoke of attending the genocide conference in Rwanda: “They have a week where pretty much everything in the country stops and you go to services where people bear witness and give testimony and remember their families who were killed…That for me was such an emotional experience. I mean, I felt traumatized just from that.” She went on to explain that people there would suffer what is known as traumatisé, “where you slip through the cracks of the present and go back.” Throughout the conference, Benaron watched as people fell to the ground screaming and covering their heads. A friend translated for her, explaining that “they thought they were back there and they were saying ‘don’t kill me, don’t kill me. Don’t kill my family!’” While these horrors certainly stayed with Benaron, she was even more moved by the people she encountered there: “How people survive that is beyond me.”

Drawing on the strength of the survivors she met, Running the Rift is driven by characters brave enough to dream of something greater: of happiness and triumph. It was through these characters that Benaron distanced the narrative from the horrors that culminated in Rwanda. Setting the characters’ journeys against the genocide lends their ambitions a greater validity, the power of dreams salvaged from the waste of so many lives.

Benaron on Writing and Publishing

In 2008, after years of writing, Benaron finally finished Running the Rift and submitted it for the prestigious Bellwether Prize for Fiction, a literary award specifically directed at works that address important issues of social justice. Admitting that her earlier version wasn’t “nearly as good,” Benaron was very thankful that she didn’t win in 2008, and she got to go back to Rwanda one more time, inspiring two more rounds of serious revisions before she submitted again. In 2010, her hard work paid off and she was honored by winning the Bellwether and the publication with Algonquin Books.

Even though Running the Rift has been in the bookstore for less than two months, she is already immersed in her next novel—a story of a Jewish holocaust survivor coming to grips with her traumatic past through her relationship with her granddaughter. I asked Benaron why she chose to write again about such a horrifying time in human history. “I think it’s just who I am,” she explained. Her mother had lived through the Holocaust, and trying to understand what she had gone through was a “formative experience” for Benaron. “In a lot of ways, my writing is trying to come to terms with my mother’s legacy.” Furthermore, Benaron believes in literature’s ability to unveil important truths about the human condition. She talked at length about how grateful she is to Barbara Kingsolver, the founder of the Bellwether, for her dedication to promoting fiction that addresses important social issues and to her publisher, Algonquin Books, for choosing manuscripts of “substance.”

Curious as always about how different authors approach their craft, as the interview drew to a close I asked Benaron about her process as a writer. She summed up her process in one word: “schizophrenic.” Having both an “obsessive compulsive” and a rather impulsive side, her “process is always trying to combine these two parts.” In her new book, she told me that she is trying to be less meticulous, reminding herself that very likely the paragraphs she continuously rewrites won’t make it into the final copy. To break this cycle, she’s planning on writing the first draft all the way through so she knows exactly what research needs to be done and she can give a complete version of her novel to her agent—who is constantly chanting “new book please, next book please” whenever they speak.

Along with her vow to overcome her perfectionism, Benaron also advocates the importance of running as a writing tool. “I have some of my best ideas when I’m on a run,” she explained, adding that taking long jogs away from the bustle of the city always helps her clear her head and battle writer’s block. For those who aren’t keen to pound out their thoughts in running shoes, she offered the following two writing tips: “never lose faith and write from the heart.” These ideas, she says, were instrumental throughout her experience with Running the Rift, confessing how much self-doubt she struggled with about tackling both an entire culture and exploring such an important historical time. “But for every time I said ‘I can’t do it,’” she concluded, “I said ‘I have to do it’ one more time.”

Excerpt from Running the Rift

Mama picked up Papa’s journal and held it out to Jean Patrick. Since Papa’s death, it had remained open, as he had left it. “Take it.” She removed the pen and closed the book.

Jean Patrick took the journal and pen and went outside. Opening to a random page, he tried to read what was written, but it was too dark. What he needed from his father was a clue, something to help him fit the fractured pieces of the afternoon together.

Before his first day in primary school, Jean Patrick had not known what Tutsi meant. When the teacher said, “All Tutsi stand,” Jean Patrick did not know that he was to rise from his seat and be counted and say his name. Roger had to pull him up and explain. That night, Jean Patrick said to his father, “Dadi, I am Tutsi.” His father regarded him strangely and then laughed. From that day forward, Jean Patrick carried the word inside him, but it was only now, after the windows and the rocks, after the insults, that this memory rose to the surface.

The first stars blinked sleepily from the sky’s dark face. The generator at Gihundwe intoned its malarial lament. If Jean Patrick had powers like his namesake, Nkuba, he could have breathed life into the inert pages, sensed the leather skin stretch and grow into a man’s shape, felt once more his father’s strong, beating heart. Instead he dug the pen into his flesh until blood marked his palm.

Please note that this interview was originally published on our old website in 2015, before our parent nonprofit—then called Tethered by Letters (TBL)—had rebranded as Brink Literacy Project. In the interests of accuracy, we have retained the original wording of the interview.

Dan Josefson’s debut novel, That’s Not a Feeling, is an unsettling book. Set in Roaring Orchards School for Troubled Teens, the novel forces us to navigate a murky world of disorder, one without objectivity, clear-cut heroes and villains, or even a reliable narrator. The characters—students and staff alike—are deeply damaged, often comically so, and the school meant to heal them seems much more likely to deepen their issues. With a Catch-22-eque flare for satire, punishments and prizes are handed out with no perceivable logic, “therapeutic methods” seem more like torture than treatment, and the strange rules that control the school are so absurd the reader—and the characters—can only laugh.

In this world of chaos, it seems only fitting that our narrator, too, would be unstable. After two attempts to commit suicide, Benjamin’s parents send him to Roaring Orchard, but, compared to the other students and teachers, his troubles seem insignificant. If anything, Benjamin tries to act more damaged, just to fit in. However, what is most unique about Benjamin is not his past, but the way he chooses to narrate it. Throughout the novel, he is so impressionable and timid that his voice comes across as a distanced, third-person narrative. We don’t even realize that Benjamin is telling his story until a sudden emergence of “I” slices into the text. What is even more troubling is that Benjamin often narrates events, feelings, and thoughts he could not possibly know, showing us early on that we cannot trust everything he tells us.

Our narrator is not the only character we are hesitant to trust. His closet friend—and eventual love interest—Tidbit, is a chronic liar; the headmaster, Aubrey, could easily be branded as a deranged egomaniac; and half the students and staff are utterly delusional. These elements create a plot that often has us laughing, shaking our heads at the ridiculousness of the situation our characters find themselves in. However, just like in Catch-22, there are also troubling moments when we recognize that these sorts of things actually happen, where our humor hardens in the realization that we are laughing at ourselves, at insecurities, fears, and hopes that reside in all of us.

It is without hesitation that Tethered by Letters recommends That’s Not a Feeling. Not only is this novel a humorous narrative adventure, it’s also deeply moving, subtle in its approach, and beautiful in its execution. Roaring Orchards might be a world without objectivity, without clearly defined lines and roles, but sans those limits, Josefson has painted a vivid portrait of human frailly and perseverance, one that makes us question what breaks us, what heals us, and what makes that journey worth it.

Josefson on That’s Not a Feeling

One of the most unique aspects of That’s Not a Feeling is the setting, Roaring Orchard School for Troubled Teens. At first glance, the school is a strictly organized institution, run so efficiently that both the teachers and students exist in a soft equilibrium. However, as we delve further into that world, we realized that if there is equilibrium, it is a deranged one, if it is organized, that system is built on chaos.

When I asked Josefson where the inspiration for this setting arose, he explained that he had once worked at a similar institution. Fascinated by the conflicting elements at play—especially ideas of authority—Josefson wanted to create a similar “dystopian” world with Roaring Orchard. This setting also presented him with the perfect mixture of serious and hilarious, where he could write about characters confronting their inner demons with a good does of contradictions and absurdities thrown in to lighten the mood.

At the root of Roaring Orchards is Aubrey, the headmaster. Although Josefson stated that he constructed this character to uphold many of the “classic villain characteristics,” he also wanted him to be just as convoluted as the school he runs. At times ruthless, at others shockingly caring, Aubrey is the force that keeps Roaring Orchard functioning, if not functioning chaotically—which seems to be the way he likes it.

Because there is nothing black and white in the world of That’s Not a Feeling, it seems only appropriate that the narrative too denies the reader any sense of objectivity. Pulling on traditional ideas of the unreliable narrator, Josefson explained that he wanted there to be doubt in the readers’ mind as to the validity of what was being reported. Josefson achieves this by having his first-person narrator, Benjamin, narrate moments, feelings, and thoughts he could not possibly know. When I asked Josefson about this fascinating technique, he explained that he didn’t always have Benjamin masquerading as a third-person narrator. Instead, in the first draft, the story was told purely through an omnipotent third-person. It wasn’t until the revisions that he started to consider books like A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter, where the first-person narrator essentially pretends to be a distanced, objective narrator, only to reveal suddenly that he is in fact one of the characters.

Although the “sneakiness” of this interested Josefson, the way the style reflected Benjamin’s personality was the real appeal. “Benjamin’s personality is really like a blank slate since he is so self-effacing,” he explained. As a result of his timidity, his narration is almost completely void of personal opinions, giving the illusion that he is the distanced third-person narrator he appears to be. Only in moments when he directly refers to himself—usually from the perspective of the present moment when he is writing his story—do we get any feel for Benjamin as a person. However, these moments are so rare that, even hundreds of pages into the novel, they still shock the reader..

Josefson on Writing and Publishing

Josefson started That’s Not a Feeling in 2001, while he was studying for his MFA at the University of Nevada. When I asked him to explain his general process, he told me that he started writing the novel in the middle—with the escape from the school—not realizing it would in fact be the moment that closes the book. Following this pattern, Josefson didn’t write the chapters in order of sequence. Instead, he’d write whatever moment inspired him and then went back afterward and pieced these scenes together, creating an outline and conforming the sections to it. Of course, this meant that he had to do a great deal of cutting and adding filler sections. Laughing, Josefson confessed that “it wasn’t very efficient,” but, in the end, he’d pieced everything together just right…even if it took him six years.

Once he completed the novel in 2008—using an early version of the draft as his thesis for his MFA—he began the arduous hunt for representation. He wrote his query letters, he polished his chapters, he sent them out to every agent he could find…and nothing. Then he started targeting smaller presses, with the same result. It wasn’t until 2011, when an intern at Soho press pulled his chapters out of the slush pile, that his dreams of publication finally came to fruition. His editor, Mark Doten, quickly discovered just how unique and brilliant That’s Not a Feeling is and, a year later, Soho published Josefson’s debut novel.

Hearing this incredible story, my first question was simply how he survived it, how he never lost hope. Smiling humbly, Josefson told me about how supportive his friends, teachers, and other writers had been of the novel, how this helped him weather the sea of rejection. Starting a new novel, he added, also aided him greatly while he marketed That’s Not a Feeling, allowing him to keep his focus on his craft.

When I asked him if he ever considered giving up on his first novel, shaving it in drawer somewhere and focusing on the next one—as many writers have done—he shook his head. “I felt like I had to get it out there,” he replied.

Even with a publisher backing him, he was still one step away from “getting it out there;” he still needed to work with his editor at Soho. The two major issues were balancing so many characters and speeding up the first fifty to eighty pages. In this aspect, Josefson felt exceptionally blessed. He gushed about how wonderful his editor is and how helpful he was when they tackled these issues.

As the interview drew to a close, I asked—as I always do—if Josefson had any advice for our many aspiring writers at TBL. Reflecting on his own experiences, he advised that once you complete a manuscript, “don’t limit yourself to the big guys…do everything: agents, little presses, journals that will publish your chapters.” He spoke at length about small presses and literary journals, how smart and inspiring the people who work there are—he was talking about TBL, right?—and how much better his hunt for publication became when he made this switch, not only because Soho eventually published his novel, but because he was able to interact with young, inventive, and passionate people that reminded him of why his novel was worth fighting for.

Excerpt from That’s Not a Feeling

Tidbit crawled into a spot large enough for her to lie down, between the stems of two bushes whose branches had grown into one another overhead. She could see the Mansion’s front lawn and the valley beyond it. The sun hung over the hills, dripping heat. A brown Oldsmobile Cutlass she didn’t recognize was driving up the school’s gravel driveway, making a buzzing sound.

It was parked in the carport next to the Mansion, facing the girls. A scream escaped it as a door opened and a woman climbed out, and was silenced when she swung the door shut. New Girls stopped what they were doing to look out across campus at the car. The scream erupted again as another door opened. A man exited the driver’s seat slowly and again, like in a cartoon, the scream was gone when he closed the door. The couple climbed the front steps and, after taking one long look back, entered the Mansion. It was an intake.

Tidbit couldn’t tell whether she heard muffled screaming still coming from inside the Cutlass. Another dazzling wave of energy was seeping through her. She stared at her hand drawing circles in the dust. Tidbit used to tell me how much she hated her hands. Except for the bloody bits where she bit them, they were completely pale, even at the end of the summer. Worse, they were so swollen that her knuckles just looked like dimples, and they trembled from the Lithium. It was what it did to her hands that made Tidbit want of get off the Lithium. But Dr. Walt always said maybe.

Tidbit turned to see Carly Sibbons-Dias crawling toward her in the narrow space between the wall of the Classroom Building and the back of the shrubs. Carly squeeze into Tidbit’s space beneath the junipers and collapsed next to her.

“Hi, Tidbit,” she said. “Found the razor?”

“Nope.” At home Carly had worn her hair dyed black, but no one at school was allowed to use dye, so in the weeks since her intake, her blond roots had begun to show in the thick stripe down the center of her scalp where she parted her hair. Everyone said it made her look like a skunk but up close, Tidbit thought, it didn’t really. “How’re you feeling?”

“Okay.”

“Anything yet?”

“Nah. You?”

“My vision’s kinda messed up,” Tidbit said. “I keep seeing tiny, tiny little blackbirds hopping from branch to branch in these bushes, but when I look they’re not there.” This wasn’t exactly true, but when she said it, it felt sort of true. “You see anything like that?”

Carly just sighed and looked where Tidbit was looking, at the brown Cutlass by the Mansion. She thought she saw a silhouette move inside it. Carly edged forward so she could see the car better. Maybe the Dexedrine was messing with her vision. “You think Bev just took the razor blade?” she asked. “Is she a cutter?”

“Everyone’s a cutter,” Tidbit said. “Have you seen her belly?”

“Did she do that to herself?” Carly spat in the dirt. “Shit. She didn’t do that with a razor, do—”

Tidbit help up her hand to quiet Carly.

She heard something from inside the car now, a distant wailing. There was thud, then another, a banging that was getting louder and slowly gaining speed. The sunlight reflecting off the windshield trembled with each thud, and with each Tidbit could just make out the sole of a shoe hitting the inside of the glass. Then two soles, kicking the windshield together until the shatter-proof glass began to spiderweb. Finally the kicking became bicycling, one foot after the other. The girls could hear the screaming with perfect clarity as two grey-green sneakers kicked the crumpled window away.

After a few moments, a group of staff members and Regular Kids ran out of the Mansion. They opened the front doors of the car, which I hadn’t bothered to lock, dragged me from my parents’ car and held me down on the ground until I stopped yelling. It took five of them to hold me, though I’m not all that big. Then they led me up the Mansion steps and inside.

“Holy shit,” Carly said. “Finally something cool happens at this fucking place.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Tidbit said.