Q: ROS DEMIR IS NOT THE ONE  is your debut novel. What inspired you to tell this story, and what drew you to the YA genre in particular?

ROS DEMIR IS NOT THE ONE actually grew out of a short story that I wrote at Harvard, which was titled “Not a Romeo and Juliet Story”. That story, like ROS DEMIR, grappled with questions of multicultural heritage and identity, the roles of selfishness and selflessness in the act of loving someone, and the choices people have to make in their various relationships—both platonic and romantic.

I write both literary and young adult fiction, but YA literature has a special place in my heart because the period of my life when I was reading the most YA books was also the period of my life when I was most looking to art and literature to help me figure out how to be the type of person that I wanted to be. I think there’s something really powerful about writing for that age group.

Q: How do you hope young readers, especially those who might relate to Ros’s cultural background, will connect with her story?

It was central to my vision for the book that I write Ros as a messy, deeply imperfect teenager who makes mistakes. No one is perfect, and I think there’s a lot of value in writing characters who are still learning and growing—as most people are.

Additionally, like many kids who don’t often see their identities reflected in literature, as a young reader, I was really drawn to stories that in any way reflected my experiences with my identity. My mother grew up in Türkiye and my father grew up in Montana, and I spent many of my childhood vacations bouncing between the two. I saw myself in book protagonists with various family backgrounds, though never any quite the same as my own, who expressed a feeling of awkwardness in the space between cultures, and of searching for a way to define their identity and heritage. My hope is that many people who read this book see something of themselves in, and feel seen by, the various characters’ relationships to their family backgrounds and identities.

Q: The book is described as a "Turkish-American Romeo and Juliet remix." What elements or influences from the Shakespearean play did you utilize as you were writing, and where do you diverge from that influence into the remix?

The short story that the book is based on was inspired largely by the character Rosaline from ROMEO AND JULIET, and by the question “What would you do if you suspected that your seemingly perfect partner was actually fated to be with someone else?” The first draft of the book had a lot more in common with the play than the final version does, although the plot deviated significantly from the beginning—for one thing, I was writing a contemporary high school story about love and friendship, not a tragedy ending in multiple deaths. During the revision process, as the story came more and more into its own, it drifted further away from Shakespeare’s version, but it was important to me to keep some essential details the same, and to keep an eye toward the source material, leaving little allusions scattered throughout for readers to notice. For example, Aydın and Chloe, the Romeo and Juliet equivalents, have met well before the masquerade and the events of the book…but when they first met, they were thirteen years old, just like Juliet in the original play.

Q: Your background spans creative writing, screenwriting, playwriting, and journalism. How did these different disciplines shape your approach to writing this novel?

Although different writing disciplines often require different skill sets, I think that all of them are good practice for each other. I’ve always loved working across different artistic mediums, and I find that engaging in multiple at a time helps me to keep looking at each project with fresh and creative eyes.

My screenwriting and playwriting background has given me a strong sense for the shape of scenes, and how to make them feel self-contained and satisfying, as well as an awareness of pacing and concision. My journalism background, on the other hand, taught me about detail-oriented research (you’d be surprised at how much research can go into even an entirely fictional contemporary novel).

Q: You have a lot of experience performing on stage. Did your work as an actor and singer influence how you developed your characters or dialogue as you were writing?

My work as a performer and my work as a novelist absolutely inform each other. The core challenge of both, to me, is the same: to embody characters who are not yourself and to portray them in the most truthful, effective way to convey the story that you want to tell. I think this is one of the main reasons that I prefer to write in first person! I always want to dive as deeply into my protagonist’s mind as possible.

Additionally, I’ve always thought that my playwriting and acting experience gave me my ear for dialogue. It has always come easily to me, and it’s one of my favorite parts of writing fiction.

Q: How did your MFA experience at the University of Wyoming contribute to the development of this novel? Are there specific lessons or workshops that were particularly influential during your time there?

I drafted this novel the summer before I arrived at the University of Wyoming, and I revised it during my first semester there—but in secret! At the time, I was exclusively submitting literary short stories to my MFA workshops: I really wanted to keep my publishing life separate from what I saw as my academic literary life. During that first semester, I learned an incredible amount about craft and nurturing a writing practice from my professors and classmates. While I never submitted ROS DEMIR for workshop, I grew immensely as a writer during my time in the program, and I implemented the lessons I learned there in my revisions, as well as in the two additional novels that I wrote while I was in Wyoming. 

Q: Ros’s character arc involves recognizing and confronting the impact of her actions on others. How important was it for you to explore themes of accountability and growth in her journey?

I’ve always been drawn to messy, imperfect characters and antiheroines. I think it’s much more compelling to read about characters who have a complicated relationship with morality, or who want to be good but have a lot to learn, than to read about characters who already have everything figured out. I knew that I wanted Ros to be a bit of a problem, but I also absolutely wanted her to have a redemption arc: ultimately, she’s a teenage girl who is still trying to figure herself out.

Q: What was the most challenging part of writing this story? Were there any scenes or characters that were particularly difficult to get right?

Bouncing off of my previous answer: I think the most challenging part of writing this book was balancing Ros’s messiness with her sympathetic characteristics! People tend to have very strong reactions to her character, one way or the other. I knew that I wanted her to be the villain of her own story to some extent (that characteristic was central to my original imagining of her), but I also wanted her to have enough vulnerability that readers could see pieces of themselves in her and sometimes sympathize with her actions.

Q: What's next for you? Are there any upcoming projects or themes you’re excited to explore in your future work?

Right now, I have a lot on my plate with the launch of ROS DEMIR IS NOT THE ONE, and it’s been hard to find the time to devote to my other projects! That said, I have two complete drafts of new books that I’m very excited to get back to revising. The first is a spooky, culty, witchy YA book set in Wyoming—I’ve been labeling its genre as Western gothic. I wrote it while I was living in Wyoming and thinking a lot about the ways that nature inexorably exerts its power over humanity, and how that can be terrifying as well as beautiful and awe-inducing. The second book is a literary novel about mythmaking and complex grief, which I originally wrote as my MFA thesis. There are some themes that wind their way into almost all of my projects (e.g. multicultural identity, performances of gender, and the ways we conceptualize the narratives of our own lives), and there are others that didn’t fit into the scope of ROS DEMIR that I’m really excited to dig into in these next books.