All Lit Up: Tell us about your new book, Disruption. What can readers expect?
STELLA LEVENTOYANNIS HARVEY: My novel is a work of fiction but at the heart of all my work is a topical political or societal issue I’m grappling with. Disruption is my attempt to understand what increased surveillance, through simple things we take for granted, such as cell phones, means for us as a free society and what has happened in our world today where we are seeing the resurgence of far-right movements and the unlawful imprisonment of the innocent, including children.
You will see references to old songs in my novel and how they were used to carry messages without detection. Songs were used in this way in Ancient Greece where paean were either songs of warning or of celebration during wars. The song “Whistle While You Work” has a dark history prior to being made famous in the Walt Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. During slavery, slaves were told to whistle while they worked. If the whistling stopped, the slaves were punished.
The other songs in my novel are old protest songs sung by Woody Guthrie, who was labelled a communist by his government.
I am grateful that I can use this history in my novel to raise the issues close to my heart. Still, it’s unfortunate that we continue to live in a world that, as my character Kitianna notes, can’t learn from the mistakes of their past. Stories remind us of what memory lacks. That is the power of story.
ALU: What was your most rewarding moment as a writer?
STELLA: After the release of my second novel, The Brink of Freedom, which, although fiction, deals with the refugee crisis in Greece, I was invited to a book club to discuss the novel. It was a lively and interesting discussion. But near the end of the discussion, one person in the book club said, “Your novel made me feel for people I don’t even see.” It’s this and other comments from readers I receive that keeps me writing.
ALU: Why do you write?
STELLA: I’m a social worker by training, so most of my writing grapples with social issues that I’m trying to understand and make sense of. My projects start with a ‘why’ question, why this or that, and then I go digging to see if I can create characters and a storyline which will help me find answers to those questions and maybe, if I’m lucky, help my readers also find their own answers after reading my novels. I write to figure out something that is bothering me. It’s at times a slow start with an outline and only a few ideas about the characters I’m creating. But as I get the words on the page and my characters come to life, they refuse to let me go until their stories are on the page. Their voices persist in my head. This is another reason I write.
ALU: What books have you read lately that you can’t stop thinking about?
STELLA: My mother passed away in 2011 and at the time I could not write and I stopped reading completely. It took everything I had to deal with my own grief and to help my father with his. But a friend and author, Sarah Selecky recommended two books to me at the time after I told her what I was experiencing. Those books were Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge. Both novels helped me see the power and importance of story to make a positive impact in a reader’s life. That got me back to reading and my own writing.
ALU: Are there any real-life experiences or people that have influenced your storytelling?
STELLA: I am Greek and Lebanese by my culture and an immigrant to Canada to boot, so I grew up with stories, family stories, stories of conflicts and displacement, and stories of finding a place of belonging. I cherished all the stories I grew up with because I didn’t grow up with an extended family or a community of Greeks and Lebanese. Although born in Cairo, Egypt, I was raised in Calgary, which at the time didn’t have a big Greek or Lebanese population, so I grew up with the stories my parents told and I imagined their different lives. Later I told my own stories both in high school and university, but didn’t come back to those stories and the page until I’d pursued my other careers. I returned to writing and story when I moved to Whistler and made the time to write.
ALU: How do you overcome creative blocks when they arise?
STELLA: Many times, especially when I’ve been away or in the past when I’ve taken care of my parents, I would have periods of time when I didn’t write. Coming back to it was always painful. So, what I typically do is have a timer on my laptop in those first few days after I return to my routine. I set it for between 10 minutes to 20 minutes, and I don’t move until the timer rings. If that means I get one sentence down on the page or even a word, it’s a start. I do this every day for several days until I come back to the story without the need of a timer. I also think, as I’ve indicated before, once you get the story started and going, the characters will not let you go until you get their story on the page. Momentum, through showing up day after day, keeps me and the story going.
ALU: What does a typical writing day look like for you?
STELLA: My days start early, i.e., around 4 am or so in the morning. I am a morning person and I like the dark and quiet of the early morning. It helps me hear the voices of my characters and their stories. I begin with a short meditation to clear my mind and then I go to my desk and begin. I reread what I wrote the day before, then continue from there. On a good day, I work until about 8 am or so. And then continue with the rest of the things I’m involved with in any given day. On a great day, I come back to do a bit more writing in the afternoon or evening. This is rare for me because again, I’m a morning person. But at times, especially as I’m getting to the heart of a novel, it won’t let me go so I get ideas no matter what other things I’m doing. I’m compelled to come back and get those ideas down.
ALU: Do you have any rituals that you abide by when you’re writing?
STELLA: I start early in the day as mentioned because that is when my mind is the clearest and I’m not fussing with a to-do list. With new projects, I typically outline the story and create character profiles. Both the outline and the character profiles are high-level, and then I revise both as I get to know the story and the characters better. If I get stuck, I print whatever I have and read it first as a reader, then as a writer with a pen and editing in mind. At this time, I also revise my outline with what I know so far about the story and the characters. This opens new avenues I need to explore and helps me add to the story. I rework several drafts until I feel I got it. With my current novel, Disruption, I think I wrote some 25 drafts. And some of those drafts were started from the beginning; yup, you heard me correctly. I put the pages I’ve printed to the side and restart the novel on page 1. This sometimes helps me see a new perspective of the story I’m writing.
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Stella Leventoyannis Harvey was born in Cairo, Egypt and moved with her family to Calgary as a child. Stella founded the Whistler Writing Society, which each year produces the Whistler Writers Festival. Stella is a fiction writer whose short stories have appeared in The Literary Leanings Anthology, The New Orphic Review, Emerge Magazine, and The Dalhousie Review. Her non-fiction has appeared in Pique News magazine, The Question, and the Globe and Mail. Signature Editions published her first novel, Nicolai’s Daughters, in 2012 and Psichogios Publications of Athens published the Greek translation in 2014. The Brink of Freedom was published in 2015 and Finding Callidora in 2019. Disruption is Stella’s fourth novel.
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