On October 8th, the North Branch of the Berkeley Public Library hosted an author talk with Dashka Slater, author of “The 57 Bus” and “Accountable”.
Slater is an Oakland based, award-winning journalist and author. She has written for publications such as The New York Times and has won many awards for her books. Slater has been referred to by some as a “triple threat” due to her accomplishments in journalism, adult fiction and children literature. During the talk, Slater mostly answered questions relating to two of her books: “The 57 Bus” and “Accountable”.
“The 57 Bus” is a deep dive of a true incident in which a boy, while on a bus in Oakland, held a lighter up and lit the skirt of an agender teen. The case got international coverage, changing the teenagers’ lives forever. “Accountable” is also a true story regarding a the surface of a racist social media account and the teenagers whose lives it affected. The books discuss heavy themes such as identity and reconciliation.
“I think (Slater’s writing) is phenomenal. Her books are about really hard topics-- they're really intense, but the way she writes makes them very readable, and (makes) the information easy to digest,” said Robyn Brown, the event organizer of the talk.
The event was teen moderated, with three Berkeley High School students from the Right Writers Club interviewing Slater. “I was a little nervous because she's a very popular author, but she was super nice, the audience was also very chill, and it was just a good experience,” Lea Hireche, one of the student interviewers, said.
One topic that was deeply discussed during the interview was why Slater chose to write these books and why she thought readers would find them interesting. Slater said while investigating these events as a journalist, she had a lot of mixed emotions. These emotions led her to wanting to write about the events.
“I had all of these emotions … And am I a bad person for feeling one way or the other? That, to me, is journalism gold that says there's a story here,” Slater said, “If I'm finding it confusing and trying to figure out how to make sense of it, then readers are going to be engaged in that same way.”
Another heavily discussed topic during the talk was the challenges associated with writing the books. “Writing nonfiction means that you don't have to make anything up. You literally can't (because) every word has to be true, otherwise it's fiction,” Slater said. The negative aspect of writing nonfiction is that sometimes Slater didn’t have enough information to set a scene or paint a picture of the environment the characters were in. Even if she believed something was true, if she couldn’t verify it, it couldn’t go in the books.
Another challenge of turning controversial events into books was that, in order to protect sources giving information on the story, Slater had to keep many identities and conversations confidential. “My number one goal is that they get to have lives that are not defined by some terrible thing that happened to them or some terrible thing they did,” Slater said.
Slater gives credit to her husband for being an outlet she could talk to. “My husband is just amazing, like the other half of my brain,” Slater said, “Being a sealed vault was really, really important. I'm living with these conundrums, (but) I had one person that I could talk it through (with).”
After the panel was done interviewing Slater, questions were opened up to the audience for a quick Q&A. Questions came from audience members of wide age ranges, including a middle school teacher and her students. After the Q&A, audience members were able to get their books signed by Slater.
According to Brown, author talks like these are important to not only host a fun event for audience members but to also inspire them to write or become authors. “It's really cool to be able to meet an author, especially a really successful, bestselling author,” Brown said, “It's really quite an experience to meet someone who does something that you're interested in doing, if you want to become an author.”
Hireche conveyed a similar sentiment. “I noticed there were a lot of middle schoolers there during the interview, and I feel like (talks like these) can inspire other young writers,” Hireche said.