Today we are very excited to share an interview with Author Nova Ren Suma (WAKE THE WILD CREATURES)!
Meet the Author: Nova Ren Suma
Nova Ren Suma is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling The Walls Around Us and A Room Away from the Wolves, which were both finalists for the Edgar Award. She also wrote Imaginary Girls and 17 & Gone and co-edited the story & craft anthology FORESHADOW: Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading & Writing YA. She has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University and has taught creative writing at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Vermont College of Fine Arts. Originally from the Hudson Valley, she spent most of her adult life in New York City and now lives in Philadelphia. Find her online at novaren.com and @novaren.
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About the Book: WAKE THE WILD CREATURES
This extraordinary, timely, and must-read novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Nova Ren Suma explores freedom and rage as a young woman plots her way back to her hidden mountaintop home after her mother’s arrest for murder.
Three years ago, Talia lived happily in the ruins of the Neves, a once-grand hotel in the wilds of the Catskill Mountains, with her mother Pola and their community of like-minded women. Some came to the Neves to escape cruel men, others to hide from the law, but all found safety and connection in their haven high above civilization, cloaked by a mysterious mist that kept intruders away. But as their numbers grew, complications followed, and everything came crashing down the night electric lights pierced the forest. Uniformed men arrested Pola, calling her a murderer and a fugitive, and Talia was taken away.
Now sixteen, Talia has been forced to live with family she barely knows and fit into a world scarred by misogyny, capitalism, disconnection from nature . . . everything the women of the Neves stood against. She has one goal: to return to the Neves. But as Talia awaits a signal from her mother, questions arise. Who betrayed her community, and what is she avoiding about her own role in its collapse? Is it truly magic that keeps the hotel so hidden? And what does it mean to embrace being her mother’s daughter? With the help of an unexpected ally, Talia must find her way to answers, face a mother who’s often kept her at arm’s length, and try to reach the refuge she lost—if the mist hasn’t swallowed her path home.
Fierce and lyrical, unsettling and tender, Wake the Wild Creatures marks the long-awaited return of one of the most distinctive voices in young adult literature.
Publisher * B&N * IndieBound
~Author Chat~
YABC: What gave you the inspiration to write this book?
Wake the Wild Creatures was sparked by a birthday present. It was a piece of art, a pen-and-ink drawing called “Daughters of the Forest,” by an artist named Megan Eckman, and seeing it sent me down the most wondrous rabbit hole of story discovery, which is the best gift you can ever receive, in my humble option. A print of this drawing was given to me by a friend and fellow author, the brilliant Libba Bray, and you can see it here if you’re curious. [link: https://www.instagram.com/novaren/p/CgVC3uMA-vn/]
YABC: Is your main character like you?
Talia carries so much of me inside her—or maybe I carry pieces of Talia? Wake the Wild Creatures begins on the frightening night Talia is captured from the community she’s always known deep in the mountains and is forced to enter the outside world. As a child, I used to run free in the woods where I grew up, and I often felt like an outsider in the rest of the world. But the difference between me and Talia is that as a teenager I desperately longed to escape the mountains for the big city, and I made a life for myself amid the noise and concrete. Talia would never do something so terrible. I understand her and why she wishes to stay, but I don’t think she could ever understand me.
YABC: How do you know when a book is finished?
I know a book is “done” when I feel a kind of singing inside my rib cage. It’s a calm, almost indescribable feeling that I can hear with every part of my body. With this book, I revised and revised and revised and revised. Then when I read the whole final draft aloud and heard the song, I knew it was time to let go.
YABC: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
I began writing short stories and poetry in junior high school, and it was around then that the dream to become a writer really set in. I was painfully shy and often unable to speak up in groups, but when I was alone with myself and my notebook I was able to say what I couldn’t otherwise. I came alive. I knew I had to become a writer in some capacity, even if I was never able to publish. I couldn’t imagine living as anything else.
YABC: How do you keep your ‘voice’ true to the age category you are writing within?
I try to reconnect with the emotionally charged moments of my own past to breathe something true into the voice of a character. One way I do this is to listen, on repeat, to songs that were connected to certain memorable points in my young life. That helps transport me back in a way that can then infuse the voice and enhance a scene, even if it has nothing to do with the novel itself. Another way I do this is to reread my teenage diaries. It’s painful, and at some point I need to burn them in a barrel or something, but they do help me inhabit a set of feelings and experiences that can sometimes feel very far away.
YABC: What type of scene do you love to write the most?
I love when a narrator gets angry. Incandescent rage is a glorious thing to craft on the page.
YABC: Which character gave you the most trouble when writing your latest book?
You know how I said that my main character, Talia, is like me in some ways? Well, she’s as stubborn as I am, and doesn’t like to be contained to a straightforward plot, so she was incredibly difficult to rein in.
YABC: What word do you have trouble overusing?
Sorry. It may not be something I overuse in my books—I try to write unapologetically wild and strange stories that don’t ask for permission. But in the world outside my books I seem to apologize too often, for unnecessary things, until the apology becomes meaningless. I’m sorry about it and am trying to stop.
YABC: What is your favorite reading space?
I have a perfect reading chair in a corner of my writing room. It’s blue and is just the right size to curl up inside and get swallowed by a book. But what I’ve found is that when the book is good enough—when it has its grips in me and won’t let go—I can read it anywhere, in the most uncomfortable of positions, even standing up and walking around because I can’t put it down.
Title: WAKE THE WILD CREATURES
Author: Nova Ren Suma
Release Date: May 6, 2025
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Genre: YA fiction with magical realism
Age Range: Ages 14+
