In Episode 62 of Sno-Isle Libraries Check It Out podcast, co-hosts Ken Harvey and Tricia Lee talk to local author Stewart Tolnay and learn how he has used his study of American racial history to create interesting fiction and nonfiction. 

Tolnay is a Ph.D. professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Washington. His first fiction novel, “Less Than Righteous,” features a Black Vietnam War veteran, his white girlfriend and the struggles they face as an interracial couple in Everett in 1969. 

Tolnay is also the author or co-author of nonfiction works that include “The Bottom Rung: An African-American Family Life on Southern Farms”; “A Festival of Violence,” which analyzes Southern lynchings from 1882 to 1930; and “Lynched,” which studies the victims of Southern mob violence. 

Tolnay’s work resonated with Harvey, the Director of Communications for Sno-Isle Libraries. Harvey is Black. He grew up in Mississippi at the dawn of the civil rights movement when white supremacists killed Black people with near impunity. Lee, the Director of Inclusion, Equity and Development for Sno-Isle Libraries, wanted to know more about Tolnay’s work and research and how it dovetails with the library district’s goals and objectives. 

Tolnay said it took him years of his own academic work and encouragement from his wife before he could sit down and “write a novel.” 

“Actually, it had been brewing in my mind for years as I was doing my academic research and realized there are some really important stories, interesting stories here, that might take us into dark corners of the American past that many people aren't familiar with,” Tolnay said. “That’s what got me motivated to try my hand at fiction.” 

Harvey wanted to know which writing was harder: creative fiction or academic nonfiction? 

Academic writing is “kind of formulaic almost, a template of here’s the research question, here’s the evidence, here’s my interpretation of the evidence, here’s my conclusion,” Tolnay said. 

It’s nothing like writing fiction. 

“You start with a blank slate,” he said. “You have ideas about plot and characters in your head, but you somehow have to bring order to that chaos. I understand some authors begin with a very detailed outline of their novels. That didn’t work for me, so I had to kind of search and find my way along this story as I went from chapter to chapter.” 

Lee wanted to know how Tolnay translated “some very heavy topics” on racial violence into fiction. “Are there things that you found you couldn't express fully in nonfiction that you can express at a whole different level in fiction?” she asked. 

“The academics, especially those like me who typically do highly statistical, quantitative work can be sometimes accused of, ‘Well, you’re leaving the people out of this.’ We’re talking about patterns and trends and data, and where are the people? Where are the personal emotional experiences behind this?” Tolnay said. “That’s what writing ‘Less Than Righteous’ allowed me to do, is to take those conclusions that I had drawn from my nonfiction writing and research and bring it down to a personal level, to try to highlight it in a way that is really more accessible to most readers I think.” 

Tolnay knew he had to tread carefully as he wrote the novel. He’s white and privileged, and he didn’t want to be accused of cultural appropriation by telling a story of an oppressed social group. That happened to “American Dirt” author Jeani