In Conversation with: A. M. Dassu – author of 'Fight Back', 'Boy Everywhere' and more
All of my novels have been inspired by the news. News coverage convinces me there is a need to show a different point of view to what we're shown on TV channels, social media and newspapers.
Hello and Salam alaykum friends,
I hope you’re well and have been having a fab writing week so far!
Today’s post is an interview featuring one of my favourite people in the world. It’s so wild that Az and I have never met in person, but she’s been one of my biggest cheerleaders on my writing journey. She sends opportunities my way, responds to my messages, gives the best tips and advice and is ever ready to listen to me. She’s so cheerful, joyous and loving. With everything she has on her plate, I don’t know how she manages to squeeze in the time to show up for so many people as she does. Anyone who knows her, who encounters her, knows she’s a light. I’ll stop now and allow you to enjoy all of the gems she has to share about writing and the publishing world because her journey has been far from easy or smooth.
About A. M. DASSU:
A. M. DASSU is the internationally acclaimed author of Boy, Everywhere and Fight Back, which have collectively been listed for 50 awards, including the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the Week Junior Book Award, the Carnegie Medal, The Little Rebels Award for Radical Fiction, the American Library Association Notable Book List and Jane Addams Peace Book Award.
She is a director at Inclusive Minds, which is an organisation for people who are passionate about inclusion, diversity, equality and accessibility in children’s literature; a patron of The Other Side of Hope, a literary magazine edited by immigrants and refugees, which celebrates the refugee and immigrant communities worldwide, and one of The National Literacy Trust’s Connecting Stories campaign authors, aiming to help inspire a love of reading and writing in children and young people.
A. M. Dassu grew up in the Midlands dreaming of becoming a writer but studied economics instead and worked in marketing and project management before realising her dream. She writes books that challenge stereotypes, humanise the “other” and are full of empathy, hope and heart. Her most recent book, Boot It! was a World Book Day novella, published in March 2023. Her latest novel, Kicked Out was published in October 2023. You can also find her on Twitter/X @a_reflective or Instagram @a.m.dassu.
Name: A. M. Dassu
Literary agent: Julia Churchill
Book title(s): Boy, Everywhere, Fight Back, Boot It, Kicked Out
Genre/category: Contemporary teen fiction
Have you always known you were going to be a writer?
You could say I first embarked on my literary career aged eleven while working as a library assistant in my school library for five years. I enjoyed English at secondary school and played Juliet in the Romeo and Juliet school production and knew right then that literature and performing was my passion. And I knew in my heart, I should study English at university, but I didn’t. I became a little laid back to the say the least when it came to writing essays, but I continued to write poems and short stories in my free time.
Almost ten years ago, my friend was organising a festival and he asked me to write the biographies of the attending speakers. While writing the copy for the website, I rediscovered my love of research and writing for an audience and set up a blog which was nominated for the UK Blog Awards in the same year. That gave me the confidence to submit a piece to The Huffington Post for which I became a featured writer. My very first piece was published on the front-page, alongside Barack Obama and Lenny Henry.
In 2015, I wrote a picture book inspired by my son’s school friend. I started looking into publishing it and I’ve never looked back.
I finally found the dream career I’d been looking for!
I set about looking at getting my stories published; attended courses and conferences, and did everything possible to give myself a good chance at getting an agent. Of course, it didn’t happen right away. Then one day in November 2015, while watching the news, I was inspired to write Boy, Everywhere, and here I am!
Where do you get inspiration from?
All of my novels have been inspired by the news. News coverage convinces me there is a need to show a different point of view to what we're shown on TV channels, social media and newspapers. We don’t always get to hear all perspectives and sometimes what we’re told isn’t always the full story. So I write books in the hope that it might give some insight into a community or a narrative we don’t usually get to hear about and build empathy and challenge stereotypes to help encourage a kinder, more understanding society.
How did the idea for your novel come about?
I’ll focus on my novel Fight Back for this question:
Fight Back is an empowering story about finding your identity and the courage to fight for it.
Aaliyah is an ordinary thirteen-year-old living in the Midlands. She’s into books, shoes and her favourite K-pop boy band. She has always felt at home where she lives … until a terrorist attack at a concert in her area changes everything. As racial tension increases, Aaliyah is bullied, but instead of hiding who she is, she decides to speak up and wear a hijab. She’s proud of her identity, and wants to challenge people’s misconceptions. But when her right to wear a hijab at school is questioned and she is attacked and intimidated, she feels isolated. Aaliyah discovers she’s not alone and that other young people from different backgrounds are also discriminated against because of their identity, and feel scared and judged. Channelling all of her bravery, Aaliyah decides to speak out. Together, Aaliyah and her friends try to halt the tide of hatred rippling through their community.
It’s a story of hope, speaking up and the power of coming together in the face of hatred.
My first novel looked at what it's like to be a refugee. With this one, I wanted to look at what it's like to be a Muslim today but what makes this novel different is that it pans out and looks at the experiences of others who are discriminated against too. It shows what we have in common and what can happen when we come together.
Like Boy, Everywhere, this novel reflects the experiences of those who have faced discrimination, and aims for readers to experience and understand the impact of prejudice. Stereotypes are hurtful and can belittle a part of a young person’s identity. Recent revelations in sports news have highlighted the importance of words and how comments or “banter” about an individual’s identity can be immensely harmful. Aaliyah’s story seeks to build empathy, and helps to challenge stereotypes and break down barriers in our society. My hope is for anyone who hasn’t been able to express themselves the way they want, or has been excluded, or doesn’t feel like they belong, to see themselves in this story. Many people experience such struggles, but one thing is true: we are stronger when we support each other.
To stamp out hateful ideologies, we need to start discussing what’s happening at home and school early. What drove me to write this book was my hope that Aaliyah’s and Lisa’s story will bring people together and do just that.
Fight Back was inspired by recent terrorist events and the subsequent rise of the far right, and my desire to put a spotlight on a community that is vilified in the media. Islamophobia and prejudice are a sad reality for people from Muslim backgrounds. Hate crime is on the rise, and anti-Muslim attacks have risen year on year. Fight Back challenges the stereotype constantly depicted in the news and in films that Muslims aren’t peaceful and a Muslim woman can only be empowered if she doesn’t wear a headscarf, or if she is not religious. This story seeks to authentically represent the true lives of Muslims, particularly independent women who are free to make their own decisions.
Through Fight Back I wanted to show a different side to a story the world thinks it knows. I wanted to show how Islamist terrorism affects Muslims and also how far-right beliefs not only affect Muslims, Jews, and people of colour but equally the families of far-right ideologists.
What’s your favourite part about the writing process?
Having finished : )
Writing books is like being on a BIG rollercoaster! When things are going well, it is so much fun and such a thrill. I love writing first drafts and pouring my thoughts and ideas onto paper and it’s always a great feeling to have written a book. Let’s not talk about the editing…
What was the most difficult part of the writing process for you?
Ah we are going there! I find editing a book hard while also juggling events with only short bouts of writing time. That is the struggle for most authors, I think.
Editing to me feels like playing Jenga with your words. You pull out one piece of the plot, and the manuscript can feel like it’s going to crumble. It takes a lot of courage to keep going back to improve your work and it sadly doesn’t get any easier with subsequent books!
What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
One of my writer friends showed me that by being disciplined and writing at least 800 words a day, she could have her first draft of a novel written in 75 days.
I employed the same method and I managed to write my first draft of Boy, Everywhere in six weeks (if I don’t include the time I lost during the Christmas and New Year holiday period). I wrote Fight Back in an even shorter time, but it took me years to edit them both!
Still, it’s better to have a messy, awful draft to work from, than to have a few sentences on the page, even if they’re close to perfect.
Can you tell us a bit about your path to publication?
After a number of rejections for my picture books, I started writing Boy, Everywhere in 2015. I submitted it to agents in 2016 and was really lucky to get personal rejections from almost all the agents I submitted to (about thirteen). They all said the story had huge potential but wasn’t ready yet. Instead of getting disheartened, this gave me the confidence to rewrite it. I applied for two mentorships and was lucky enough to win both. One mentor only read the first chapter and helped me to analyse it, and the other mentor highlighted all of the scenes I could cut and the others I could expand on. She showed me my book could be saved and I was so impatient to get the book published to help refugees, I rewrote it in two months. And when I say rewrite, I mean, moving the first chapter (boat scene) into the middle, rewriting the beginning, the ending and so on. It was months of work squeezed into weeks!
I met my first agent at the SCBWI Agents’ party in September 2016. She loved the concept the moment we met in London and insisted I send my manuscript to her inbox before she landed in New York. I told her it needed rewriting and I’d send it as soon as it was ready. Six months later, in March 2017 I finally submitted it. My agent called while ill and barely able to speak to tell me she couldn’t put it down and offered representation. I was so relieved––I could finally send my work to publishers.
Boy, Everywhere went to Bologna Book Fair in 2018. Every publisher my agent met wanted to read it. In came the most beautiful rejections because they loved the story and my writing and wanted to work with me, but it either wasn’t right for this year’s list or they had something similar.
Heartened by the rejections, I decided to attend more courses and started editing Book Two (Fight Back). I was determined to work on my craft and get published. Then in August 2018 the tables turned. Out of nowhere, just after we’d moved to another house and I had no Internet connection(!), US editor Cheryl Klein commissioned me to write additional chapters for a non-fiction book about Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus for Lee & Low in America (published in August 2019). This led to more freelance work and just when I’d resigned myself to thinking that Boy, Everywhere would probably be my second or third book (I still believed it would sell one day), an offer from the US came in!
As soon as the deal was announced in Publishers Weekly, the UK market sat up and Boy, Everywhere went to acquisitions with four publishers. It was published in October 2020, exactly five years after I wrote that first chapter and here we are!
As a veteran writer who’s gone through the publishing cycle a few times now, what is your biggest learning so far?
The biggest shock for me was how much authors have to do in addition to writing. If you really want to make an impact, connect with readers and make the most of opportunities, you need to make time for social media, attend events, think of article / blog post angles you can write related to your work, and sign lots of books (a bigger shock was when I had to go post some of them too!). All of this takes a lot of time out of your working week and can drastically limit your writing time.
You’ll also always need to write synopses and pitches – so make sure you work on that as a skill for life. A good pitch will help your agent sell your book to your publisher, and it’ll help your publisher to sell your book to booksellers/supermarkets and pitch it to events/panels etc.
If you could share one piece of advice with an aspiring writer, what would it be?
Take feedback on the chin – criticism is about the words on the page, not you. No one can write a perfect book. And it’s only through feedback and critique that you can polish it. If you really want to get published, be ready to edit it and listen. And don’t give up. Be persistent. Publishing is so subjective, you just need to find the right person at the right time to read your book! If I’d gotten disheartened and given up on Boy, Everywhere when it first went out on submission to agents in July 2016, it wouldn’t be published today. With work, every book can be rewritten and you can absolutely make it stronger for submission. Believe in yourself and keep on writing.
It’s a long journey, be patient. Keep rewriting and getting that butt in your chair to edit yet again!
What do you hope readers would get out of your books?
My hope for all my books is always that they encourage empathy, challenge stereotypes and empower readers to speak up and come together in the face of hatred. I want them to open readers to new perspectives and perhaps even challenge their own. I also want them to be gripped by a good story. Not asking for much, yikes!
If there were no publishing barriers, what would your next book be on?
Ooh, I love this question! I would write a really fun and kooky book that has nothing to do with identity or culture. Just fun.
As someone juggling several responsibilities, what does your writing routine look like?
At the moment, a mess! My main issue is I get distracted dealing with three different email inboxes.
It took me a while to figure out that I work best in the mornings. My mind is fresh and I'm able to get more done without any distractions. I rush home after the school drop, put my phone on silent and leave it upstairs so I can’t log onto Twitter. I like to write at my desk. I don’t think I could work in a café – I am easily distracted! So my challenge at the moment is to ignore emails and write first thing, then move onto emails.
Where can readers find your work?
Everywhere Alhumdullilah. My books are available in all good bookstores online and in most shops.
How can readers connect with you?
Instagram: @a.m.dassu
Twitter/ X: @a_reflective
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/a.m.dassu
Website: www.amdassu.com
What’s on your bookshelf?
Honestly, too much! I am a total bibliophile, so I buy lots of books (especially those by my author friends) and then I also get sent advanced reader copies. Due to lack of time, I end up prioritising proofs that publishers want quotes for or those I am judging for an award.
I currently have books in every genre stacked in piles on the floor, next to my sofa, on bookshelves and also my desk and on the Kindle app on my phone. I can’t keep up! I need more time to read them all. I have been wanting to read As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow and also An American Marriage since they were published, this is how bad things have got!
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Till next Friday,
Suad x