The Black List recently announced the seven winners of its inaugural Unpublished Novel Award, introducing the world to seven writers across various genres from children’s and young adult fiction to adult crime, horror, and literary fiction.
Debutiful recently chatted with all seven winners and is excited to introduce the world to each writer, discover why and how they write, and learn more about the book that won them the award.
Meet Cam Terwilliger, winner of the Literary Fiction award for his manuscript, White Flame. Terwillger lives in Brooklyn, where he currently teaches at New York University. His writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Electric Literature, Gettysburg Review, and Narrative, where he was named one of Narrative’s “15 Under 30.” With an MFA from Emerson College, he has also received support from Brown University, the Fulbright Program, James Jones First Novel Fellowship, Massachusetts Cultural Council, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Public Library, Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, and the Bread Loaf, Tin House, and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences.
We asked Terwilliger to give readers a brief insight into his writing life and his Unpublished Novel Award-winning manuscript, White Flame.
Can you introduce readers to who you are as a writer and what interests and informs your writing?
My novel, White Flame, is a literary historical novel set in the colonies of New York and Québec in the mid-1700s, a time when these colonies were locked in a war of imperial ambition. Ever since college I’ve been a devotee of the South African novelist J.M. Coetzee—the way he marries sharp lyricism with an exploration of the moral cost of empire. At the start of this project, I asked myself: “What if there were a novel like Coetzee’s, but focused on the history of the United States?” White Flame is my best attempt at an answer.
The announcement over at Lit Hub gave a quick preview of what your book is, but I always like to ask the writer what their book is really about. So, what’s your book?
The protagonist of White Flame is a Manhattan physician named Andrew Whitlaw, who—after an ongoing struggle with syphilis—must relocate to his wealthy brother’s estate in the Hudson Valley to recover. While living at the manor, Andrew grows interested in Indigenous medicine, hoping it might offer a cure to his disease. As a result, he begins writing a treatise on the subject by studying with a nearby community of the Mohawk people.
From this starting point, the plot follows the narrator as he grows embroiled in his older brother’s obsessive pursuit of a man named William Bell, a counterfeiter costing the Whitlaw family trading business dearly with his false bills. When it becomes clear Bell is operating among the Mohawks, Andrew is pressured into assisting the manhunt. Eventually, serving as a translator, he accompanies an expedition to find Bell, during which he learns Bell’s story is even more complicated than it first appeared.
White Flame is based on over a decade of research and many of the characters are composites of real-life historical figures, creating a well-rounded, multicultural cast. On the level of story, I hope the mystery of William Bell provides a sense of suspense and momentum as the plot dramatizes the web of power and culture that gave birth to our country. As the book progresses, its underlying theme rises to the surface, reimagining canonical stories of colonization such as The Last of the Mohicans in order to critique settler colonialism and white supremacy.
How did this story come to be? What were the highs and lows (so far) of writing it?
The research has been the most satisfying aspect. I’ve had the good fortune to meet some incredible experts, visit a range of historic locations, and research in some stunning archives. I did much of the initial exploration as a fellow at the American Antiquarian Society, a research library focused on American history, reading eighteenth-century narratives about the New York frontier. What I learned led me to further research as a Fulbright Scholar in Canada, where I studied at the cultural center of Kahnawà:ke, a Mohawk community outside Montréal that was originally a Jesuit mission and plays a significant role in White Flame. One thing led to the next and in the following years I continued to investigate different facets of the novel at Brown University, the Huntington Library, the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and a range of other archives.
In all of these places, I learned to approach primary sources as a novelist, scouring them for singular, emotionally resonant details. Drawing on the accounts of Jesuit missionaries, travelogues of naturalists, narratives of the once enslaved, and newspaper advertisements, I aim to render a human-scale experience. The sights, smells, and sounds. The psychologies. The relationships. All the ways this history is both very familiar and very different from our contemporary experience.
The biggest challenge has been all the years of persistence required. I’ve spent many moments with my forehead pressed against my desk. It’s been hard to craft an elegant dramatic container for so much important material. Simultaneously, it’s been difficult to depict such a range of characters with full and surprising dimension. It’s been a long journey, but I think I’ve now found an approach that fulfills the story’s potential and honors the lives from which it draws its inspiration.
What has this award opened for you? Where are you in your journey now?
It’s been extremely validating to receive such a vote of confidence and to hear from interested publishing industry professionals. I’m in the final stages of polishing and tightening the manuscript and this award has motivated me to get to the finish line.
What can we expect from you in the future?
I’ve so thoroughly fallen in love with the world of this novel that I hope to write a sequel focused on some of the younger characters twenty years later, at the opening of the American Revolution. The story would start in Montréal during the months it was occupied by the American army and I imagine the novel would serve as a bookend to White Flame. The events of the first novel would loom over the sequel while the new story would move from Montréal to New York, the geographic reverse of what occurs in White Flame. The Inferno was a kind of tonal influence on White Flame and I think Paradise Lost, with its focus on the nature of rebellion—Lucifer’s rebellion—might do the same for the sequel.