Meet Tommy Orange, author of the year's most galvanizing debut novel

If you haven’t heard of Tommy Orange yet, you soon will.

In a summer season full of anticipated debuts and new voices, Orange still stands out.

As to how Orange is feeling about all of this attention: “mixed.”

Credit: Elena Seibert

Read on below, and order your copy ofThere Therehere.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You didn’t grow up a reader.

Why turn to literature, specifically, to tell this story?

Penguin

I just had a lot of experience in the community.

I was not a reader.

I wasn’t sure exactly of the nature of what was going to happen at the Powwow.

I just knew it wasn’t going to be a great thing for everybody involved.

And I was working a lot then.

But the following year, I just started writing into that basic concept.

Can you expand on that?

For Natives growing up in the city, you don’t even see it in other Native art.

I wanted to write into the void of that.

These families go way back, and I’ve known many of them.

Did that inform your process?

It’s only something that I’m finding out through others, like you right now.

But it’s all unconscious influence.

I don’t go to sentences in the same way that I approach the piano.

(I write compositions for the piano as well.)

It’s a totally different process for me, and I feel like that comes from different places.

The prologue stands out.

What made you decide to start the book on such an ambitious note?

I’ve always loved what prologues can do, the way they can contextualize.

Either it’s covered up or it’s a downright lie about how things went down in American history.

To a large extent, the collective American consciousness still buys into somewhat of a heroic past.

Similar to calling Native people resilient, it’s become its own problematic thing.

Where does the deep sadness come from?

Why are people struggling?

It’s all part of what makes a person.

Did any of these characters reflect your own experiences?

All of them have me in them, and details from my actual life were put into them.

And it did help me a lot getting the funding all of those years.

You mentioned this process took six years.

For you, writing over that time, what was the emotion and process?

I wanted to earn the right of everyone sharing an arc and bringing the whole thing together.

Lots of despair there in the middle, and struggle.

You’ve been positioned as one of the summer’s authors to watch.

Are you comfortable with that attention?

How do you feel now, talking about the book as it builds buzz, and reflecting on it?

The feeling is mixed.

I’m not the kind of person that really wants the attention.

But I want to support the book in the best way that I can.

I approach it differently all the time.