Christine Evans: Bringing the Book to Life Through Revision
Christine Evans writes internationally produced plays, opera libretti, and fiction. Her debut novel, Nadia was published in fall 2023 (University of Iowa Press.) Christine’s theater and opera work has been staged at the Sydney Opera House, the American Repertory Theater, and many other venues, and her plays are published by Samuel French. She is a multiple MacDowell fellow, VCCA fellow, and a recipient of several DC Council on the Arts & Humanities Fellowships.
Originally from Australia, she is a Professor of Performing Arts at Georgetown University, and lives in Washington, DC. Visit her at www.christineevanswriter.com. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.
In this post, Christine shares how her writing process works, when she knew her book would live (after not being sure earlier in the drafting process), and more.
Christine Evans
Name: Christine Evans
Literary agent: Jennifer Thompson
Book title: Nadia
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Release date: September 19, 2023
Genre/category: Literary Fiction; Historical Fiction
Previous titles: Cloudless, a novella in verse; Trojan Barbie, a play
Elevator pitch for the book: Nadia just wants to fit into her boring 1990s London office job—until one day, a man she suspects is a sniper from the Sarajevo siege she fled turns up to work at the desk next to hers. Tense, suspenseful, and mordantly funny, Nadia spans countries and times to track the complex ways in which past political violence can shadow and disrupt the present.
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What prompted you to write this book?
It started with a ghost. I was working in New York on my play, You Are Dead. You Are Here., about the traumatic aftermath of the Iraq war for both US veterans and Iraqi civilians. The play had a minor character called Nadia, a temp secretary haunting a therapy office. She came from the (fictional) agency Temp Angels. Their slogan was: Short Term Solutions When You Need Them Most!
I became fascinated by this ghostly, secretive temp worker. Temps slip in and out between worlds; it would be a great job for a spy, or someone who wanted to disappear. I started wondering if my Nadia needed “short term solutions” of her own.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
It was a very, very long process! Over a decade, in between other projects.
I didn’t really have an “idea” that changed as I wrote. My process is more intuition-driven than that. It’s more like being a detective: I follow a hunch, a voice. The Australian writer, Ross Gibson, says that your attention is a magnet you swing over your material. It attracts metal filings that start to form shapes. That’s what happened: The shapes formed as I wrote.
The 1990s Balkan wars context to the novel came later, as my two main characters started to come to life. I have a long connection with the region, first as a traveling musician when it was still Yugoslavia and later, through theater connections and friendships. Once I had a draft, the notes I got (on war details, music, queer culture, London refugee life) from friends and from professional readers from former Yugoslavia also changed the book in large and small ways.
I did so many drafts of this book. So. Many. Images and character come quickly for me; plot, however, is laborious. I almost gave up many times. Luckily, Nadia won the Threepenny Editor’s prize for an unfinished novel: The prize was a first-draft edit. Editor Sarah Cypher, herself a novelist (The Skin and Its Girl), helped me see my way through to the end of the first draft.
Then one day, I saw the ending image of my story. Once I had that, I knew the book would live.
The last significant change came in response to an editorial note by Jim McCoy, director of University of Iowa Press (UIP). He observed that the story of Iggy, the suspected sniper, had a story that petered out once he and Nadia were both in London. Jim challenged me to give that character a full arc as well, and to expand the role of music in the book (Iggy’s a wannabe punk musician). So, after picking myself off the floor at having to face yet another draft, I’m so happy that I did that last revision. It revealed an essential turning point to me and transformed the book.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
I think as a playwright, I had this naïve idea that the book world was simpler to navigate than the theater. Wrong! And I had no idea how utterly deluged publishers are—now I do. Everything was even harder than usual, because we were pitching the book during the first two years of the pandemic. There was a lot of anxiety and general glue in the works during that time.
Eventually, I had meetings with editors. It became clear that Jim McCoy at UIP was the right publisher: His vision of the work aligned with mine, and his notes made sense. It’s been a real joy to work with UIP. The whole team is highly professional, collaborative, and communicative, and they are clearly passionate about making beautiful literary books. For a small press, they punch above their weight.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I hadn’t intended Iggy to have his own entire thread in the book, but as with Nadia, once I heard his voice, he insisted on a role. I was surprised that Iggy’s voice came to me from a second-person point of view, but that’s how it came to life.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope they miss their train stop because they can’t put it down. I hope the story will be both strange and familiar. I hope they laugh and cry and see the world a bit differently after reading it. I hope it haunts them for months. I hope they love it so much they tell all their friends. Those are my own hopes as a reader when I pick up a new book.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
E. L. Doctorow famously wrote: “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
My advice: Follow those headlights. Don’t give up ‘til you get to the end. Ideas come from writing, not the other way around.