Interview with Lisa Samson

Throughout the year, we will be spotlighting nominated and winning authors through interviews and guest blog posts. These are interviews and posts that are original and created specifically for this challenge!

Today's interview is from multi- Christy Award winning and nominated author Lisa Samson, whose winning books include Songbird (2004 Contemporary) and Hollywood Nobody (2008
Young Adult).

Do you think the Christys are important?

Yes and no. Yes, it encourages writers who are nominated or who win. Yes, it creates a certain amount of community. Yes, it gives novelists something to look forward to if you work hard enough. Yes, it brings novelists together and, as a group, showcases their work to those who know about the awards. No, it doesn't mean God's blessing you more than someone who hasn't been nominated. No, it actually doesn't mean you're a better writer than the people in your category if you win since judges have different tastes and motives for reading. No, it doesn't necessarily mean your novel will have more Kingdom implications than those who haven't even been submitted for nomination. And I think that's what I like about the Christys in general. It's not so ministry-oriented, it's about the novel as an artform, a form of communication, pure and simple.

What does the Christy Award mean for you

It means I get to bite my nails waiting for a call to see if I've won or not. Mostly, the phone doesn't ring! But honestly, I really am honored to be a nominee. Gives me that "yes!" feeling inside.

Why do you write Christian fiction?

Honestly? Because I can't write anything else! I'm at the Oregon Christian Writer's Conference right now, and I was talking at breakfast about how my every artistic pursuit ends up being about God. And I'm not one of those people who draws a clear line between secular and sacred! It almost isn't fair, because I don't think a novel needs to be about God to be "about God." And yet, everything I put out has very clear spiritual themes and plotlines. I'm one of those people the more hip writers complain about when they talk disdainingly about having "overt spiritual messages." It's not like I'm preachy, but good grief, I can't write for a page without some member or the Trinity or the church showing up.

What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions surrounding Christian Fiction?

That it's a genre. I'm writing in a vastly different genre from Stephen Bly or James Scott Bell. And I'm not even going to get into the "sub-quality" yack-yack you hear on the internet. Lord have mercy! On all of us! Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.

What writers of Christian fiction do you think are influential?

I have no idea. There are so many different genres now, it's hard to say who's leading the way unless you're reading them extensively, and I'm a little-of-this, little-of-that kind of reader.

What do you think are the weaknesses of Christian fiction?

I would have said before the strictures, but lately, I don't know. We know what the rules are, what the game is. It is possible to work around it even though, every once in a while, you have the perfect word or phrase or line of dialogue and no matter what you think of to replace it, it's just not the same. But that's rare, maybe one or two times a book for me. What I've found most saddening is that now novelists are expected to have the same "platform" offerings as non-fiction writers. So I have to wonder if really great works are being turned away at the expense of a "name" that has a platform, can garner in more book sales, but isn't nearly the artist. It's a shame that the art of the novel is being compromised by this "platform" business. That may prove to be a real weekness if that sort of approach gets so widespread it compromises the entire Christian fiction ball of wax.

Besides your own book what is your favorite Christy nominated or award winning book?

All the Way Home, by Ann Tatlock

How did you feel when you heard you were nominated?

The first time, I was so excited. I'd never been nominated before. These days, I'm delighted too. Embrace Me was such an odd story, peopled with very strange characters, I was surprised the judges went for it, to be honest.

What inspired you to write the book you were nominated for?

I thought about a statistic I heard that within two or three years after an adult comes to faith, he or she has no more friends who are non-believers. And I thought about how in various kinds of churches, people all end up looking the same. You've got the mega church make up lady who's a size 6, or the emergent guy with the cool glasses and the hemp t-shirt, or the independent baptists with their denim jumpers or floral Sunday dresses, or the mainline man in khakis and a blue blazer. Somehow churches homogenize people. (Actually I think all groups do this.) Why? Shouldn't the church be the place where people can be exactly as God made them? It's not that I believe in hyper-individualism, I really believe we are a unit--Christ's Body; but what about individuality? So I wanted to explore that, but in an extreme way, around a mega church pastor, a biker-tattoed preacher working out of an old laundromat, and sideshow performers.

What are you working on now?

I'm rewriting my latest novel entitled "The Resurrection in May" about a woman who survived the Rwandan genocide, an old farmer who nurtures her, and a man who's on death row and refusing to appeal. Who'll bring who back to life?


Lisa Samson is a Christy Award-winning author of 19 books, including the Women of the Faith Novel of the Year, Quaker Summer. Lisa has been hailed by Publishers Weekly as "a talented novelist who isn't afraid to take risks."

Her novel Embrace Me has been named as one of Library Journal's books of the year.

She lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband and three kids.