Episode 106: Jeannée Sacken, award-winning author of Behind the Lens and Double Exposure
Jeannée Sacken’s first novel, Behind the Lens won the 2022 American Writing Awards Hawthorne Prize and Book of the Year in fiction, women’s fiction and suspense, in addition to several other awards.
Her new novel, Double Exposure, is also set in Afghanistan featuring Annie Hawkins Greene, a war zone photojournalist.
Jeannée shares why her first novel’s setting and location evolved, and the deep research involved in writing another set of cultures.
“This is an intense read that focuses on the inner strength of women, the power of profound friendships, the love that aids survival during the hardest moments in life, and appreciation for one another despite cultural and religious divides.”-Heba Elkobaitry, Muslim Cultural Advisement Consultant.
Don’t miss Jeannée’s recipe for Banjaan Borani (eggplant in tomato and yogurt sauce- Annie Hawkins' favorite dish) as well as book club questions at Book Club Bites.
Books Mentioned:
Behind the Lens by Jeannée Sacken (Bookshop.org / Amazon )
Double Exposure by Jeannée Sacken (Bookshop.org / Amazon )
Luz by Debra Thomas (Bookshop.org / Amazon )
Truth and Other Lies by Maggie Smith (Bookshop.org / Amazon ). And you can watch Maggie’s own episode on the podcast.
A Wicked Conceit by Anna Lee Huber (Bookshop.org / Amazon )
Almost Home by Pam Jenoff (Bookshop.org / Amazon )
A Hidden Affair by Pam Jenoff (Bookshop.org / Amazon )
I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan by Seamus Murphy (Photographer) Eliza Griswold (Translator) (Bookshop.org / Amazon )
(Bookshop.org / Amazon )
Connect with the author:
Transcript:
** Transcript created using AI (so please forgive the typos!) **
Lainey Cameron
I've wanted to have you on the podcast since your first book Behind the Lens, which won so many great awards. I think it won the Hawthorne prize Book of the Year from American Writing Awards, Shelf Unbound had was a Notable Book of the Year. And now that I had a chance to read both the first and the one we're going to talk about today, I totally understand why. I am in awe of your ability to go so in depth into a culture that is not your own, and to write about the location, which is very hard to write about. Both of these books are set in Afghanistan. So first, let me congratulate you because I can tell that these are a true work of the heart to create a book this beautiful.
Jeannée Sacken
Thank you so much, a lot of research and a lot of heart.
Lainey Cameron
So let's start with em, where are you? Where are you joining me from today?
Jeannée Sacken
I am joining you from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, home of an incredible writing community, very vibrant red oak writing and Redford writing.
Lainey Cameron
Awesome. Well, during the question, when I asked you about writing advice, I'd love if you told us a little bit more about that, especially for anyone who might be listening to in that area. But let's start with talking about your two novels and feel free if you want to start with the first one and talk about the second one. I mean, it's the same main character Annie Hawkins Greene. This book touched me but also got me like my heart was racing half the way through this book. I was like I couldn't put it down. Tell us about the books.
Jeannée Sacken
Annie Hawkins green originally was in a very different books set in Mexico as a matter of fact, and she was a lawyer for the United Nations investigating the maquiladoras in Ciudad Juarez, I thought it was a terrific book, I really liked it a great deal. My writing community really liked it. And one person who, whom I respect enormously said Jeannée, it just doesn't hang together. So I pulled the book off the shelf, the manuscript off the shelf, and I read through it again, looking for anything that I could salvage, I decided that Annie Hawkins Green was a character who needed to be salvaged. But she needed to be in a different book. So I was talking to Annie, I often talk to my characters. And she said, Well, I'm a photographer. I said, Great. I know photography, I can do this. And she said, No, I'm a war photographer. You're just a photo journalist. You don't even like to go into dangerous places, even though you do. So I made her a war photographer. Therefore I needed a war. So I cast around looking for some sort of conflict zone. And I wanted to a war in which the US had a military presence. Because I wanted Annie in the first chapter to be embedded poetry. I love Afghan culture. I love the complexity of life in Afghanistan, and the hospitality and warmth of the Afghan people. And so Afghanistan, it was there is a, a war scene at the beginning of behind the lens and a war scene at the end. And in double exposure, there is not really any war scene, although there are some dangerous things that happen near the end of the book.
Lainey Cameron
Yeah, but what's interesting is you really did write this into an entirely different culture. I mean, you must have done so much research, because you're talking about multiple cultures with the languages. I could tell right? As I'm reading the book, I'm like, wow, the research that this took the meticulous research that this took to do justice to that culture, many cultures and languages. How did you even approach that?
Jeannée Sacken
Well, the very first thing I did after I got the concept, I met with a Muslim community in South Milwaukee. And there were five couples, including the Imam and his wife. And I just pitched them the idea and they were rather stunned that someone would do this upfront. I said, you know, I am not Muslim. I want to know if this is even going to work. And they loved the idea, the culture of Iran, and Islam, and what the Taliban and now ISIS also are trying to impose on the Afghan people and how they are interpreting Islam. That was my mantra throughout writing the book. I also did a huge amount of research. I discovered the internet as my best friend so long as you quadruple quintuple check everything and then check it again. And even if you think you know something, Hang, for example, my second book Double Exposure is set in Milwaukee Shorewood and Bayview, which I know very well. I triple checked everything and I ran it by people. In addition, my brother is now retired naval officer. And he was incredibly helpful with all things naval and military. He even got me on board a ship of the same type as the USS baton. So I could have really first hand knowledge of what Annie was seeing when she was and feeling when she was on that ship. Also, in my writing group, I have a lawyer who in double exposure, there are some law scenes and she and her husband who's also a lawyer, helped enormously with that. My husband is a physician. And so in double exposure, where there are medical scenes, he was very helpful with that. But when I was getting ready to publish behind the lens, it occurred to me that it would be very helpful to have a cultural sensitivity reader, I made my way through some connections to EMPAC, which is the Muslim public Advisory Council. They were incredible. I actually got in touch with the Hollywood branch, and they were in the middle of two crises, because most people don't consult them until the movie or the television show is out there. And there's a problem. And so again, they were thrilled that I was taking it from the front end, and asking to have someone read through the book and make sure it's an accurate portrayal of life in Afghanistan, and Islam. So my cultural and a sensitivity reader is a fabulous woman named Heba Elkobaitry. And she read both books with a fine tooth comb. We talked about anything that she felt was incorrect. And in fact, I did some revisions, one entire chapter got revised under her tutelage for that I am incredibly grateful. In Double Exposure, she took issue with a scene at the very end, and I don't want to do any, yes, no spoilers. She suggested that I rewrite a scene from Seamas point of view, as Annie's observing her but Seema has agency in that scene, she was absolutely right.
Lainey Cameron
And there's a beautiful quote from from the person you're talking about on on your book, where she describes it as I thought that was lovely that your your educated beta reader was able to say that, like this book portrays friendship across divides, which is one of the beautiful things to me about it, it's you've got this incredibly strong badass character, right. I mean, there's no other way to describe Annie Hawkins Greene, who is like charging him towards war zones as a photo journalist, but she's dealing with her own trauma. She's got a teenage daughter, she is trying to work out romance and how you can even have a romantic angle in your life when that's what your life works looks like is putting yourself at risk every day, not to mention how can you be a mom when you're dealing with that? And she's dealing with her own past trauma and PTSD from some really horrific things that she's seen in her past? And so you bundle all of this into this character? And it's like she's fighting battles on so many different levels, right? How do I battle to be a good mom? How do I battle to have ros in my life? How do I manage through that relationship? And how do I build these friendships right with these Muslim Muslim women in this country that I am a guest in you managed to kind of balance and portray all of that so well in a way that kept you really gripped and like gripped and every page I wanted to know what was going to happen.
Jeannée Sacken
Thank you so much. You really got it. I really appreciate that. A lot of people talk about her romance with Cerelli in both books for me the primary relationship certainly in Behind the Lens is her close intense friendship with her former college roommate and best friend, Daria Faludi. That to me is the love story that takes front and center place in behind the lens. And then in Double Exposure, she becomes very close friends with go Sean who is the English teacher at the local school for girls.
Lainey Cameron
So I'm interested in if someone hasn't read either book would you recommend a read them in order? What what are you recommending to people?
Jeannée Sacken
I just saw a TikTok on Instagram about my book. And it's such a great tick tock, and it starts with the woman leaning into the camera and said, It's a rule, you don't have to read a series in order, she had read double exposure first, and then was going back to behind the lens. One of the things I'm trying to do in this series, which most series writers don't do, most series writers, if there is a romantic through line, they will follow that through the entire series. But then each individual book, as far as the rest of the storyline is a standalone. In my book, what my series what I'm doing, is, each book can stand alone. But there are also through lines that carry through the entire series.
Lainey Cameron
I'm really interested in this community aspect of like, what have you learned from the writing community? And advice do you give to other writers who might be trying to take something on that's just as difficult.
Jeannée Sacken
The number one piece of advice I give to every writer starting out, is read in the genre that you want to be writing in. I used to be the leader of a roundtable critique group, and there would be people who would come in with a wonderful short story or a novel or a YA or whatever. My first question was, do you read short stories do you read YA, I think you'd better start there, you really need to know the expectations of the genres. So that is Annie says in her photography workshop and behind the lens, you know the rules well enough that you can break them that you don't need to think about them anymore, and you can break up. But also, you need to know where your book is going to sit on the shelf in a physical bookstore, or how Amazon is going to sell it. However much we all love writing. It's a business, any bookstore, any publisher, Amazon wants to be able to sell it and they need to know how to sell it. So read in the genre.
Lainey Cameron
So is there a gutsy badass women shelf in the bookstore?
Jeannée Sacken
That's my favorite kind of character. I love badass women. I love women who are complex, who are not the good girl who does the right thing, who are flawed characters. They're just so much more interesting. They have something to say.
Lainey Cameron
We talked about advice, what about reading? Have you read anything that you would recommend to our listeners?
Jeannée Sacken
I absolutely am haunted by Deborah Thomas's novel Luz. I think it is so truthful, it is about another culture. And it's just lovely. I also very much like what Maggie Smith does in Truth and Other Lies, how she portrays the challenges that journalists, especially print journalists face.
Lainey Cameron
We had Maggie Smith on the podcast, so I'll put the link to her episode on the episode page as well.
Jeannée Sacken
Great. I also am a huge series reader. And the most recent book I read in any series is Anna Lee Huber's A Wicked Conceit which is a fabulous historical mystery series set in mostly in Scotland. In the 1830s. It is meticulously researched, there is a whole social to other books, one book that really inspired me, well, two books, Pam Jenoff often says that her favorite books that she has written are almost home. And I'm blanking on the name of the second book, but it's a duo. And I think her work is phenomenal.
Lainey Cameron
I will put the name of both of those of all of these on the episode page at best of women's fiction.com. So folks can find them as well.
Jeannée Sacken
The last book that I have been reading recently because it's part of my research is, I Am the Beggar of the World. A collection of long days from contemporary Afghanistan are to line 22 syllable oral poems composed by it was Pashtun women who compose them. They are oral because Pashtun women were never allowed to learn to read or write it was considered dishonorable to the family. And even to this day, these lawn days, if their family discovers them, the family may do an honor killing, and one of the most prominent lawn day writers was in fact killed by her family in 2017, that recently, these Alon day actually in Pashto is also a very poisonous snake. These brief poems can be beautiful love poems written for the beloved, that a woman's family will never allow her to marry and she sings it to him, but they can also be toxic and snake like and very cutting they are in some ways reminds me of Emily Dickinson's poetry, that same really honed gem like verse. And what I discovered last days through pure serendipity, when I was researching something about food and Afghanistan, and as soon as I discovered them, I said these have to go in the book. And I use them in several ways. I use them as a plot device to reveal hidden relationships between some characters, but I also use it even though it's traditionally women who write and sing these long days. I have the Auntie's love interest Captain Finn Tsereteli. Being an incredible lawn day writer and he pens these lawn days or says them to Annie to move their relationship along. Wonderful, because I am working as we speak on book number three. I was once again reading I am the beggar of the world.
Lainey Cameron
Is there anything I haven't asked you before we wrap up that you love for folks to know about you or about your books?
Jeannée Sacken
Well, yes, about me. I have a background in academia. I have a PhD in English. I directed a writing program at Rochester Institute of Technology for a number of years. And that gave me a profound commitment to education, my work in photography. traveling around the world, photographing women and children gave me an even more profound commitment to education of girls, especially in countries where that education is illegal. That is really one of the cores of both of these books. And he shares that commitment to education for girls, for the girls in Afghanistan, where a very large percentage of girls are still without education. nation and now that the Taliban have come back into power as of August 15 2021, girls will only be allowed at most to be educated through grade six. So a portion of the proceeds goes to various charitable organizations that promote the education of girls and women.
Lainey Cameron
Okay, yeah, it's so sad. If folks want to follow you learn more about these causes that are near and dear to you. And let me see some of your photography. Where do you recommend? I think Instagram is where I love following you, but uh, where do you hang out most?
Jeannée Sacken
O Instagram and Facebook, Instagram is @authorJeannéeSacken Facebook is just @JeannéeSacken and I also have a website, which is just my name JeannéeSacken.com. I have information about the books but I also have galleries of my images,
Lainey Cameron
Beautiful work, beautiful work. I love your photography as well. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. And I encourage folks to go pick up either of these books and either order I read them from from the first to the second, but I agree that you don't have to.
Lainey Cameron
And so I definitely would encourage folks pick up one or the other they are beautiful well researched gripping books you won't be sorry.
Jeannée Sacken
Thank you so much it's been a thrill talking to you.