About Being an Author

To my readers--

It is very exciting for me to share about a great visit I had with a high school in the Columbus area earlier this month. This was a first for me.   I was invited to share about being an author, and to talk about my book, Nazar's Journey, with sophomores, juniors, and seniors who are studying literature and creative writing.  

I began my presentation by showing them on paper the original fictional short story I had written during my senior year at Yale.  It is about a little boy who was searching for his father in the midst of the chaos of the Vietnam war.  The story is written with an old fashioned typewriter, and has illustrations done in watercolor by a friend who was learning  art techniques in high school. There was no computer or internet when I wrote this Vietnam story, and I was in a rush to finish it as graduation was near, so the story was never revised satisfactorily with better historical/ cultural details.  I didn't try to get it published with everything else going on in my life at the time.  Still,  I preserved the document with a few revisions. along with the drawings which were done so many years ago, fifty years, to be exact. 

So I started out my presentation by letting the students see the original story, and explained how several elements of the story found their way into Nazar's Journey, which, as you may know,  was published just about a year ago, in May, 2024. Then, I showed the students on the large screen several of the expressionist paintings which Qais Al-Sindy, the accomplished Iraqi-American artist, had done specifically for my book.  We talked about the symbolism, the global themes, and the spiritual content of the paintings.  I very much enjoyed hearing the students tell me what they saw in the paintings, what emotions they expressed, and why they thought it was important that these unique and powerful paintings be included in my book.  We also talked about how these paintings are different from the typical illustrations they will find in other books. 

Since the students had read chapter two of my story in advance, and had formulated their questions for the author, we were then able to have a very free flowing discussion about the cultural/ historical context of the story, why I wrote the book, what messages I wanted to convey to the reader, the process of creating the work, the time involved, as well as the global and spiritual themes. 

It was a very worthwhile use of a day.  I not only enjoyed the interaction with the students and their literature teacher, but I learned that my book can easily be read and enjoyed by high school and college age students, even though I designed it initially with the adult reader in mind.

If the opportunity arises to do more of these school-related presentations, I will definitely be on the lookout for them. 

Paul T. Mascia