An Interview with Award-Winning YA Author Francisco X. Stork

Let’s fly away from the DMV area, so I can introduce you to Boston-based YA author Francisco X. Stork. It’s difficult to be unbiased about his work because he is currently my writing mentor thanks to Latinx in Publishing and he has become a great friend and supporter (plus I love everything he does). I’ve been aching to write about him since I first read Disappeared, the prequel to his new book. Disappeared is a gripping story about two siblings who have to escape to the United States. My urge to praise him is genuine though. His unique stories are compelling and engaging and address different themes such as mental health issues, depression, immigration, and others.

Francisco X. Stork moved to El Paso, Texas from Monterrey, Mexico when he was nine years old. His journey as a writer didn’t start until later on in his life. “I wanted to be a writer ever since I was a small boy and I kept searching for the best way to write and support myself and I thought I could do it as a real estate lawyer,” he says.

“It didn’t quite work out that way until I was forty when, in the midst of a mid-life crisis, I decided to do it or quit calling myself a writer,” he says. Five years later, Bilingual Review Press, an Arizona State University press, published his first novel.

After his first novel, he continued working as a lawyer and writing whenever possible — early mornings and evenings — until five years ago when he retired. He has an M.A from Harvard University and a J.D from Columbia Law School. He worked as an attorney for thirty-three years, including fifteen years with an affordable-housing state agency, while writing six of his eight novels. Marcelo in the Real World is the recipient of the Schneider Award. The Last Summer of the Death Warriors received the Elizabeth Walden Award. The Memory of Light received the Tomás Rivera Award. His novel Disappeared is the 2018 recipient of the Young Adult Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and a Walter Dean Myers Award Honor Book.

You can learn more about his writing and his upcoming young adult novel, Illegal, that will be published by Scholastic this coming August 2020, in the interview below.

You can find him online on his website, Instagram, or Twitter.

His new novel is available at all the usual online places: Amazon, Barnes & Noble. You can also get a signed copy from the author’s local bookstore: Wellesleybooks.com

Can you tell us a bit more about yourself?

I was born sixty-seven years ago in Monterrey, Mexico. My mother, a single mother, married Charles Stork when I was six and three years later he brought his little family to El Paso, Texas where I grew up. Charlie Stork died in an automobile accident when I was thirteen and my mother and I stayed on in the United States. I made my way to Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, then to Harvard to study Latin American Literature in graduate school and then on to Columbia Law School.

What does Dignidad Literaria mean to you?

As a movement, it means that Latinx authors believe that our work deserves to be better received and better promoted by the American publishing industry. But the word “dignidad” has deep personal meaning for me. It means that I believe that my work as a writer is worth doing, regardless of how it is received or how I am perceived. It is what I am asked to do in this life.

What is your main inspiration?

I usually write about questions or situations that are intriguing or mysterious to me. These questions are like seeds in me that need the watering of my attention. Writing is a form of learning and discovery — not that I always come up with any answers, but the writing is a clarification of the mystery that has grabbed my attention.

If you could share one or two writing tips what would they be?

Writing is a practice. Practice as in sports where you repeat movements over and over again until they become spontaneous. We don’t expect someone to play Bach without hours of practice, but we believe that we can sit down and write a great novel on the first try. My tip for writers is to believe in practice. To enter a new relationship with time so that you see a novel happening over time, maybe even years. If you believe that writing is part of who you are, then the practice is also part of your life, for the whole of your life.

How would you describe your writing style?

I’m not aware of having any kind of writing style when I write. The sentences, the words, the rhythms depend on the characters and the particular narrator of the story. I try to be clear and to create an uninterrupted dream in the readers — so clarity and simplicity would be how I would describe my writing style.

Can you tell us about your upcoming novel Illegal?

Illegal is the sequel to Disappeared, which came out in 2018. In Disappeared, Sara is a reporter investigating the disappearance of so many women in Ciudad Juárez. When her investigation begins to uncover the criminal ring involved, she is forced to flee with her brother Emiliano into the United States and seek asylum. Illegal follows the story of Sara and Emiliano in the United States where their lives are threatened by an even more sinister and subtle enemy — one that uses power, bureaucracy, and corruption to inflict suffering. I wrote the book with the hope of diminishing the hatred that divides us.

What future projects do you have?

I have a book coming out in 2021 that I am now finishing revisions. And after that, I would like to work on a story I once wrote that could become a novel.

How is this pandemic affecting your work?

My daughter, her husband, and 15 months Willem are living with us now. My wife and I take care of Willem while my daughter and son-in-law work from home. So instead of three or four hours blocks of time, I have a half-hour here and there and people all around me. I’ve learned to change my views of what is needed to write.

How does your literary community normally look like? And how does it look like now?

Because I worked as a lawyer for most of my career, I did not have time to join writer groups. I have writer friends that I correspond with and we support each other in moments of self-doubt, but it is not really the same as an ongoing community. I wouldn’t recommend my way to young writers. I think having the support of writers you trust is important. My writing community now consists of my editor and my family who are kind enough to read my work after I finish a draft.

Do you have any how-to-deal-with-anxiety tips to share with the rest of us?

Only that your feelings about your work are not always reflective of the quality of your work. So, when you are full of doubts and are anxious about what you’re writing, it’s best to just push through. After you finish, let it sit for a while and if it still seems awful, you can revise. Anxiety about agents and publishers or how many books you are selling or how many followers you have on social media is not worth having. It’s best to just concentrate on your work. It was helpful to me to have a paycheck coming in every month (and now a pension) so that I could just write what was interesting to me and then let God take care of the rest.

How can we help you?

If you like a book I wrote recommend it to someone you think would also like it. What you are doing here with this blog is incredibly helpful to writers like me.

How can you help others?

The best way for me to help others is to mentor young writers.

What is your most essential comfort food?

Arroz con frijoles.

What are you currently reading?

I am re-reading a lot these days. One of the benefits of growing old is that a book I read five years ago is now like totally new. But when I re-read a good book (like right now I’m re-reading Charles Frazier’s Thirteen Moons) you get to spend a little more time trying to savor the beauty of the writing and trying to figure out how the heck the guy or gal does it.

Any books that you would like to recommend us?

I think that the Latin American classics: Borges, Cortázar. Gabriel García Marquez, Paz, and many others are worth reading and re-reading even if we are writing in English. Reading good books in Spanish will give us Latinx writers unique rhythms to our work.

Any TV shows/movies that you would like to recommend us? (We’ll add them to our social distancing list)

My wife and I enjoy watching Longmire (now on Netflix) — about a modern-day sheriff out in Montana.

What type of music is in your playlist?

I listen to classical music for inspiration and now and then to Trio Los Panchos when I get nostalgic.