Interview by Michael James Werner

Edward Humes (edwardhumes.com) is the critically acclaimed author of seven works of narrative nonfiction, including the recently released Monkey Girl: Evolution. Education, Religion and the Battle for America’s Soul. His other books include Street of Dreams, Baby ER, No Matter How Loud I Shout and Mississippi Mud. A former newspaper reporter, Humes won a Pulitzer for specialized reporting. In January of 2007, he led an advanced workshop for University of Oregon Literary Nonfiction graduate students entitled “Writing about Education.”

Several of your books, including No Matter How Loud I Shout and School of Dreams, were works of immersion journalism. Would you tell us how this process of immersion works?

The short answer: I talk my way into places journalists aren’t normally allowed, and then I just won’t go away.

This is only half as facetious as it sounds. Access and time are critical elements of immersion journalism. The goal is to bring readers inside worlds they normally cannot enter, in order to tell an important story from within.

For me, these worlds have included places with which most readers are unfamiliar – a cutting-edge neonatal intensive care unit (Baby ER), and the normally confidential inner sanctum of the juvenile justice system (No Matter How Loud I Shot). It takes time, patience and the slow building of trust, all part of the immersion "process.” to get such stories. The usual journalist's argument that “the public has a right to know” simply doesn’t apply to such stories – certainly not to witnessing the anguish of a parent who must testify against her own child, or the searing moment when a doctor advises two young parents that their newborn is about to die, and would they like to hold him one more time?

There are also places, people and institutions most of us think we know well. The challenge to the immersion journalist then is to reveal the new and unfamiliar within those seemingly familiar worlds. This was especially true for my book, School of Dreams. I spent a year at California’s top public school, where I opted to go to class every day with the kids, all day (I also taught a writing workshop after school). This might sound fairly routine (or, as the kids would say, “Why would you come here if you didn’t have to?”), but the funny thing is, journalists may write endlessly about education, but few of them actually spend any time in a classroom or a principal’s office or perched next to a counselor’s desk. School is a place we all think we know by virtue of our own experiences, yet it is rife with surprises, hidden corners, and issues many outsiders never consider..

Parents can’t go to school with their kids to see this, and students and teachers are too busy doing school to sit back and watch school with an outsider’s detachment, humor and compassion. The immersion journalist is uniquely positioned to fill that void. Getting inside Whitney High allowed me to see that much of our conventional wisdom about what’s working and what’s failing in our schools is impractical or simply wrong. Many of our reforms aren’t reforming, many of our new tests are testing the wrong things, many of our leaders (and therefore most of the public) don’t (or won’t) hear painfully obvious truths. These are realizations that come from spending time inside, watching and listening to the students and the teachers going about the real business of school. That’s the value of immersion journalism, and why it can bring something new and valuable to the table.

What type of fact-checking goes into these works? Does that play any part in a source’s or institution’s willingness to participate in these immersion projects?

I used a detailed fact-checking process with all principle sources in my immersion books, for both accuracy and fairness -- not just regarding biographical information of characters portrayed in my books, but also to be certain that scientific, legal and other "expert" topics were depicted correctly. Book publishers (unlike major magazines) do not as a rule impose any fact-checking requirements on nonfiction authors beyond a basic legal vetting for libel, so this is strictly my own practice.

The promise of a robust fact-checking process prior to publication is also useful in gaining access to normally closed places. During negotiations for access, the question inevitably arises: How do we know you're not going to spend six months or a year with us, then do a hatchet job? Answering, "Trust me!" only goes so far. Asking for access to sensitive locations in courts or schools or hospitals is asking a lot, and you have to give something back to get there -- without surrendering or compromising editorial control of your work. A fact-check process that is sensitive to issues of accuracy AND fairness (but with the understanding that the author always has final say) has usually assuaged those concerns.

You come from a newspaper background and have said that you had to relearn how to interview for your literary nonfiction projects. Can you explain how your technique has evolved?

After ten years as a newspaper reporter, I was an experienced interviewer, for both hard news, investigative and feature stories. For my first book project, a true crime work entitled Buried Secrets set on the US-Mexican border, I conducted extensive interviews with all the major characters. I got the whole story, or so I thought: their biographical information, their accounts of the key events, and more, just as I had always done. And when I came home from that first round of research, I had everything I needed -- for a really good magazine piece or newspaper series. But not for a book. Not for a work of literary nonfiction.

Missing were all the little (and not so little) details one needs to set up and write a vivid narrative -- the inner dialogue, the fight some main character had with her husband two hours before the critical events, the conversations that were occurring at the bar just before the villain walked in -- all the back story and side story and context that narratives demand. I just didn't realize how much I was missing until I sat down and tried to write the opening chapters of my book. For Buried Secrets, it became painfully clear that I needed to drive my characters insane with many more and seemingly irrelevant questions in order to construct a compelling narrative. I had to head out for another round of interviews, a humbling but valuable lesson.

I've gotten better since then at extracting the necessary level of detail and background from interview subjects. Interviews sometimes last for days with important sources and characters. I have two hundred pages of typed, single spaced notes from the main character in Mississippi Mud. Still, as I write, I inevitably will have to make calls to various sources in order to complete scenes. That's just the nature of narrative nonfiction writing.

You’ve said that the first 100 pages of a book are the most difficult for you to write. What techniques do you use to get started and get through those initial chapters?

Copious amounts of coffee. Seriously.

Sadly, there is no other trick. For me, the initial outline of a book is a best guess. I write one sentence to describe what I expect to cover in each chapter, and then begin the heady task of proving that the outline, at least, is a work of fiction.

My method is governed by the fact that I cannot just get something down and keep going during those first 100 or so pages. I have to get that first chunk of words just right before I can move on. I rewrite, rethink and reshape those early pages many times. It is my least favorite part of the work (my wife, kids and dogs would probably concur -- I'm a wretch during those months). But then, one day, it clicks. I read over Part I and it actually says what I mean it to say. Then I seem to find a rhythm that allows me to write all day and make actual progress. With less coffee.