"The Sinking City" by Christine Cohen

Christine Cohen received her BA from NSA in 2009 and completed the MFA program in 2021. She currently serves as the head of the MFA program and has three published works, with her fourth in progress.

1. How did you first come up with the idea to write The Sinking City?

Often, my book ideas come from reading another book and thinking, 'I want to do that with my own twist.' In the case of The Sinking City, that book was Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. She wrote an alternate 19th-century England during the Napoleonic Wars with rival magicians and a perilous fairy realm. I loved the rich worldbuilding, particularly her use of mirrors as the portal between worlds. I didn't want to reuse mirrors, so I made water the portal, which led me naturally to Venice. After that, I tried to craft something that felt like a dangerous fairytale (particularly the trope of a surprise curse on your 16th birthday) with nods to another one of my favorite stories: Howl's Moving Castle. 

2. How did your time at NSA help prepare you for writing and publishing?

The breadth of NSA's education introduced me to new and strange (and magical) things about the world. It's frequently said that NSA teaches you how to learn, and quite a lot of novel writing for me is research. I'm not intimidated by a large stack of library books that I have to read in order to understand 9th-century Norway or 17th-century Venice or 19th-century New York. In fact, I love it. 

NSA also taught me how to craft and carry an argument through a term paper, and in many ways, a novel is an argument advanced through fictional characters that sneak past the watchful dragons (as C.S. Lewis put it) of our inhibitions to sway our loyalties and emotions. The ability to think clearly, to write succinctly, and to argue persuasively are all skills I learned at NSA that translate into writing fiction.

3. Do you have any upcoming projects you'd like people to know about?

Yes! The Second Greatest Thief, my debut middle-grade novel, is coming out with Viking Penguin in the spring of 2027. It's the story of a 13-year-old girl in New York's thieving guild who signs up for a high-stakes airship heist, only to discover that her older brother--the city's greatest thief--is running the same prize; if she loses, she'll be expelled from the guild forever. It's advertised as middle grade because the protagonist is 13 instead of 17 (The Winter King and The Sinking City are both young adult), but it also has the biggest worldbuilding and cast of characters, so I'm hoping readers of my first two stories will love it as well!

4. What are you currently reading, or what was a book that you read recently and enjoyed?

I include all my recent reads in my monthly newsletter (you can find it at www.christinedcohen.com), but my most recent five-star book was Time of the Child by Niall Williams. It's exceptionally slow and exceptionally literary (as in, you could fit the plot of the book on a post-it note), but I loved the prose and the setting so much. I also read a short story collection by Susanna Clarke called The Ladies of Grace Adieu that was very well done.