Author of Officer Friendly and Other Stories and Water Dogs, Lewis Robinson is the winner of the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award, a Whiting Award, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His writing has appeared in Sports Illustrated, The New York Times Book Review, and on the National Public Radio program Selected Shorts. He teaches at the University of Maine at Farmington and lives in Portland, Maine with his family.
Ahead of his release of The Islanders, we asked Lewis Robinson some questions about writing, what inspires him, and what he would say to his main character.
The Islanders is set on a fictional Maine island called Whaleback. Were you inspired by any real-life places?
Whaleback Island is a place I made up based on the time I've spent on several Maine islands: Hurricane, Monhegan, Isle au Haut, Matinicus, and Graffam. I worked for a few summers on Hurricane Island as an instructor for Outward Bound, and Whaleback Island has a perimeter trail like Hurricane's. Monhegan (I worked for a summer as a deckhand on the ferry to Monhegan from Port Clyde) is whale shaped. Isle au Haut is roughly the size of Whaleback, and has some big houses along its coastline. Matinicus is far enough off shore that it has a libertarian ethos, and Graffam--a small island owned by some family friends where I've camped out many times over the years--is the island I often pictured when describing the moss beds and spruce trees of Whaleback.
What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve been given?
Consider the internal pressures a character is facing, as well as the external pressures. Having clear access to a character's inner world is what I love about reading, so I always want to think about how I'm conveying interiority when writing.
What’s the worst?
Don't have kids.
If you could meet your main character, Walt McNamara, what would you say to him?
So much! I would tell him to consider therapy. And I would tell him that I love and admire him, that he should avoid punching anyone in the face ever again, and that the better he gets at talking to people, the better his life will be.
What was the hardest scene to write in The Islanders? What was the easiest?
I rewrote the opening scene many times, always trying to capture Walt's emotions during his earliest encounter with the WILD program without giving too much away. The New Hampshire scenes help to characterize him--they offer a lot of background info, and they show him making decisions and reacting to difficult circumstances--while the Whaleback scenes, especially the early ones, show Walt passively hanging back and observing. It's more difficult to reveal who someone is in those kinds of scenes.
It was easy and fun to write the first sailing scene, when the Huddle encounters the whales. I could see it all very clearly and like how it shows who they are as a group, and who Grunewald is.
What do you hope readers take away from your novel?
That's a tough one. I mostly hope readers feel part of the group of kids. I hope they see them as real, and that they enjoy their company. And perhaps indirectly, that young people deserve to be taken seriously, and that those of us who are older should feel responsible for making the world a better place for them.
Why do you write?
I love to read, and I love that feeling of being in conversation with the soul on the other side of the page. When I'm reading, that soul on the other side of the page is not necessarily the author, but it's the interior life of the character. How amazing is that? As a writer I want to find that place inside the mind of my character and make it real for whoever encounters the story I've written.
Shaken by problems at home, confused by the motives of a new love, and reeling from a public meltdown, high school hockey star Walt McNamara joins an exclusive new leadership program controlled by the ultra-wealthy summer residents of Whaleback Island, a granite oasis off the coast of Maine. But this is no paradise; secrets lurk in its murky waters. As Walt and his fellow misfits, including the determined Aubrey and fierce Tess, are pushed physically and mentally by ex-military instructors, exposed truths from the island’s past and present slowly reveal the reasons behind their intense training. With danger mounting, Walt, Aubrey, Tess, and the others must use their new skills to sort friend from foe and find a way to survive. In The Islanders, award-winning author Lewis Robinson has crafted a suspenseful reckoning of class conflict in America, with a vivid tale of friendship and family at its heart.
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