Today we are very excited to share an interview with author Suzy Zail!
Read on to learn more about the author, the book, and a giveaway!
Meet the Author: Suzy Zail
An internationally published author of more than a dozen books, Suzy is best-known for her Young Adult novels, Playing for the Commandant, Alexander Altmann A10567 and I am Change, stories that shine a light on injustice. Her books have been published in the UK, U.S. and Europe, are studied in secondary schools and have been included in the USSBY’s Outstanding International Books list and honoured in the Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People List. Her most recent novel, Inkflower, won Kid’s Choice for Book of the Year, Older Readers in the 2024 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards, and was shortlisted for the Centre of Youth Literature’s Book Link’s Award for Children’s Historical fiction and the Young Australians’ Book of the Year Award, Fiction Years 7-9. Inkflower is a School Library Journal starred book.
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About the Book: Inkflower
I shouldn’t be kissing Adam Winter but it’s my best chance at forgetting. When I kiss him, I’m not a girl whose father is dying; I’m just a girl, kissing a boy.
Lisa’s father has six months to live. And a story to tell about a boy sent to Auschwitz. A boy who lost everything and started again. A story he has kept hidden – until now.
But Lisa doesn’t want to hear it, because she has secrets too. No one at school knows she is Jewish or that her dad is sick. Not even her boyfriend. But that’s all about to change. And so is she.
Suzy Zail mines her family’s past, and her life as the child of a holocaust survivor, in this gritty YA novel about family secrets, hope and healing.
~Author Chat~
YABC: Inkflower is based on a true story. What inspired you to share this story?
My father. He’d survived the Holocaust as a teenager but kept his story a secret, until he was diagnosed with ALS. Hearing the details of what had been done to him, and how he’d survived it, changed everything. I quit my job as a lawyer and spent our last years together writing his story. And then, just before he died I promised I’d get it published. A year later I kept that promise when our father-daughter memoir, The Tattooed Flower was published, but twenty years later I found myself drawn back to that story. Hate crimes, racism and antisemitism were on the rise, and we’d learnt nothing from the past. We were still making the same mistakes, still hurting each other, so I returned to my father’s story, this time reimagining it for teen readers, in the hope that they’ll be the ones to build us a kinder world.
YABC: Did your research for this novel differ to your previous novels because it was based on a true story?
In some ways, yes. I had a head-start on Lisa. I wasn’t sixteen when my father died, and I hadn’t dated a boy like Adam Winter, but I knew who Lisa was. I’d lived in her house, listened to the same music and had the same 1980’s boy band posters tacked to my bedroom wall. I knew what it felt like to want to fit in, to avoid the spotlight, to be the child of a survivor. I knew what it felt like to watch my father die.
Where I had to do the work was the Holocaust chapters. I had the story my father had revealed to us after he was diagnosed with ALS, but there were things he hadn’t told us because he didn’t have the words; what he’d seen was too dark. I filled the gaps with research I did at the Holocaust Museum. I read history books and memoirs, listened to testimonies and scoured photos and maps. I watched documentaries and interviewed survivors. I needed to know the facts and see the images, so I could tell a truthful story. I knew for some of my readers Inkflower would be their first introduction to the Holocaust. I owed it them, to those who’d survived the camps, and those we’d lost, to get the details right.
YABC: Was there a scene or moment in the book that was especially rewarding to write?
When my father told us about his childhood, he mentioned an older brother Willie, who had looked after him in the concentration camps, stolen food for him, carried him through the snow, made him smile when there was nothing to smile about, and given him hope. That was all I knew. When I sat down to writeInkflower my father was gone so I couldn’t ask him questions about my Uncle Willie. There were no photos of my Dad’s brother, no letters they’d written, nothing to go off except my imagination. I loved writing those scenes, watching my dad and his brother laugh, whisper, argue and buoy each other up. I never got to meet my Uncle Willie. He died the day before the camp was liberated, but after two years spending time with him on the page, I felt like I knew him. I felt like we were friends.
YABC: In what ways did your father’s storytelling help inform how you navigated such difficult topics as WWII and the Holocaust?
When my father shared his story, he wasn’t trying to teach us a lesson. He just told us one boy’s story. I try to do the same with my novels. Give the reader one person to care about. Not six million Jews, just one, with the same fears, dreams and longings. Someone they can empathise with and relate to. Someone just like them.
My father told us his story over ten nights, more than 25 hours. He didn’t get emotional. It was almost like he was on the outside looking in. He was still protecting himself, and protecting us. He talked about hunger not starvation, death instead of murder. He never cried.
I don’t shy away from making my readers feel deeply, but like my father, I’m careful to protect them. That means not too much graphic detail and moments of light threaded through the dark. My stories are never unrelentingly sad. Hope is a huge thing in YA literature and all my books are infused with it. The characters are strong and there are always brave, good people who perform small acts of kindness.
Can you talk about the challenges and joys of writing from the perspective of a teenage protagonist?
The biggest challenge with Inkflower was probably trying to recall, and then sink into, the angst, fear and confusion Lisa would have experienced after discovering that her father is dying and has this awful secret he wants to share. The joy was living with the same abandon, curiosity and spontaneity as a teen, and allowing myself to feel all the feels. When you’re embodying a teenager, there’s no hiding from your emotions, not if you want to write a real character. So being Lisa was a revelation. My father had died 18 years before I started writing Inkflower, and I don’t think, in all that time, I’d ever really broken down. My dad had raised me to build walls and let go of sadness, just like he had after the war. So that’s what I did after he died. I thought of him, free of his disease and at peace, and I smiled. Writing Inkflower I had to dig deeper. I remember sitting at my desk, on the first day, and just asking myself over and over ‘How would it feel to find out at fifteen, that your Dad was dying? How would it feel?’ and I started bawling. I think that was the first time I really let myself come undone.
YABC: What is the main message or lesson you would like your reader to remember from this book?
There are so many things I learned in the last years of my father’s life, that I wanted readers to learn too, but perhaps the biggest was that small acts of kindness can be hugely powerful. During the war, my father was saved by the kindness of strangers, time and again. Sometimes it feels overwhelming to try and build a better world. It’s easy to give up trying. After all, what can one person do? I like to think of it another way. Imagine if millions of people did just one small thing each?
YABC: Do you have a playlist you listened to when you were writing?
Absolutely and the Spotify link is inside the book. Lisa’s story unfolds in the 1980’s so I spent a lot of time listening to the music she would have been listening to on her Sony Walkman – Madonna, Tears for Fears and the soundtrack to Grease. Lisa’s music, her celebrity crushes and the fashion of the 1980’s provided respite from the heavier scenes set in Auschwitz. They were an escape for my readers – and for me.
YABC: What’s one tip you’d give new writers?
When I quit my law career to become a writer, the most common advice I was given was Write what you know. I’ve always preferred Write what you want to know. Write about the things that horrify and fascinate you. Write about the things that anger you, or that you struggle to understand. I’ve always done that. If I’m going to spend three years researching and writing a novel, I want to learn and be changed by the process, as much as my readers are.
YABC: What would you say is your superpower?
Making history personal. And having readers reach for a tissue. A novel’s only a success if I get both laughter and tears. I want readers to care.
YABC: How do you cope with criticism from editors or the public?
I love it at the editing phase. It’s lovely hearing praise, but constructive criticism is the only way to make a book better. I have a brilliant group of writer friends and we critique each other’s early drafts, one chapter at a time. Some writers preface the workshop sessions with a request to go easy on them. I always go in telling my friends to be brutal. Of course once the book’s out in the world, it’s a different story… I’ll take as many five star Goodreads ratings as I can.
Book’s Title: Inkflower
Author: Suzy Zail
Release Date: September 2024
Publisher: Walker Books Australia Pty Ltd
ISBN-13: 978 1 760659 39 4
Genre: YA Historical fiction
Age Range: 14+
~ Giveaway Details ~
Five (5) winners will receive a hardcover copy of Inkflower (Suzy Zail) ~US Only!
*Click the Rafflecopter link below to enter the giveaway*
