I first encountered Diamond, the narrator of Essie Chambers’s much-acclaimed debut novel Swift River (Simon & Schuster, 2024), a decade ago. Diamond’s voice struck me right away in its refreshing honesty, intelligence, and humor. You see, Essie and I had been in thesis workshop together in graduate school in 2014. As she read pages of my first novel, I excitedly read hers. I was delighted then, to hear that her novel would be published in 2024. Finally, I thought, I’d be able to learn what happened to Diamond. Swift River is a tender, expansive, and necessary story about a mother and daughter mired in grief as they navigate one significant summer. It is a coming-of-age story about finding one’s place in the world. It’s a historical novel, told through letters. It’s a story about lineage, loss, family love, friendship, and what it means to move through life as the ‘other.’ Essie Chambers has packed so much into these pages, and it is a glorious, sumptuous, hilarious read.
A week before the announcement that Swift River was the Read With Jenna pick for June, I spoke to Essie over Zoom about story origins, what is left off the page, starting from the image, the importance of humor in narratives, and more.
–Crystal Hana Kim
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Crystal Hana Kim: I first met Diamond in 2014, in our thesis workshop with Ben Metcalf. I remember her so vividly—Diamond’s plan to lose her bike because she is fat and can no longer ride it, her secret driving lessons with Shelly, her complicated relationship with her mom. It was such a specific pleasure returning to these scenes in Swift River, tracking what stayed the same and what changed. Can you tell us more about the origin of this story?
Essie Chambers: I always knew that I wanted to tell a story about being the only one in a world where no one looked like you. More specifically, the only person of color in an all-white town. That was my growing up experience, and so I wanted to figure out a way to capture it. I understood that with that experience comes a tremendous amount of isolation, so I was I was trying to figure out—will a family be at the center? A single character? I was playing around with different story strands and different characters and honestly, an image came to me of Diamond and her mother on the side of a road. I didn’t know what it meant. But in a small town, two people walking when everyone else is driving would make them so vulnerable. What would it feel like to be that exposed? It made me feel instantly emotional and protective of them. It was a spark, like, I have to write to this image.
Hana Kim: That’s amazing. So the image of Diamond came to you first.
Chambers: Diamond with her mother walking on the side of a road.
Hana Kim: What was the process of writing a story around that image and turning it into a novel?
Chambers: It actually started out as a short story. I wanted to figure out: Why are they on the road? Why are they not driving? Diamond is so limited by her size that she can’t even do this thing that she loves anymore, which is to ride a bike. That first sentence set the story in motion, in that she had gotten to the point where she was so big that she got rid of her own bike. I thought it was a weird twist, that she would let her own bike be stolen. It’s showing both agency and also desperation at the same time. I wrote to the image, and that set the story in motion. And those first two sentences were what really helped me understand her voice.
Hana Kim: When did you start the novel and when did you finish it?
Chambers: I started this story, actually, many years before. I had this whole other life—I was a TV executive in kids TV and then later a documentary filmmaker. When I was still working in teen television, I was lucky enough to be part of an adaptation of a Jacqueline Woodson book called Miracle’s Boys. We became friends, and she had a bunch of other friends in her life who, like me, had creative careers where they were helping other writers tell stories, but they were neglecting their own stories. My whole life, writing was the first thing that I ever wanted to do. I just never gave myself permission. She created this writers group for her friends who all were not tending to their writing. She was like, You all are going to tell your stories. And we’re going to hold each other accountable. That’s when I first I gave myself permission to think of myself as a writer, when I first developed a writing practice. It was my first writing community. The seeds of Diamond were planted then, all thanks to Jackie. Then years later, the actual writing of the book began in grad school. Grad school was the best gift that I’ve ever given myself. Not everyone needs it, but I did. I needed the discipline and the structure and the community. It’s where I developed my craft in a way that I wasn’t able to do on my own. That was, what, 11 years ago?
Hana Kim: Yes, eleven years ago.
Chambers: It took me almost nine years to finish.
Hana Kim: Back in grad school, I knew that Diamond was special. Her voice was so specific and unique. One thing that I realized when reading Swift River now is that there are three interwoven parts—Diamond’s narrative in 1987, letters from her Auntie Lena in 1987, and found letters from her great aunt Clara in 1915, through which we learn about the history of Diamond’s hometown. How did you decide on this structure?
Chambers: Those other two layers didn’t come until much later. There is the frame story, which is about Diamond in this one very fraught summer. There are a couple central questions. What really happened to her dad? She wants to leave, wants to learn how to drive. So will she leave? Will she stay? But I knew that there needed to be other layers, an emotional journey. At the start, the only family she has is her mother, and she has very little understanding of her father’s family history. I knew that I wanted to find a way to give her roots and give her more connection. Letters felt like a great way for there to be story movement, for there to be conversations across generations, while still maintaining that sense of isolation for Diamond and her mother. A letter allowed for all of these seeds to be planted and then show up as ripples in Diamond’s life as she was impacted by what she was learning. I also got to tell two other completely separate stories. Auntie Lena and Clara both had their own stories.
Hana Kim: I love epistolary novels, so I was excited. Though we get to read Auntie Lena’s letters to Diamond, we don’t get to see Diamond’s letters back to Lena. Did you ever write those letters?
Chambers: I love this question so much, and I’ve never actually been asked this before. I did write letters, actually. They were exercises only. I didn’t want to weigh the book down with more letters back and forth, but there was so much happening to Diamond in in her present and her past. I wanted to understand how this newfound discovery of Lena was changing the way that Diamond felt about herself. The exercises were almost a way of working through what that meant to her. I wrote letters to both Lena and Clara because this is a 16 year old girl, and it’s a moment in life where you’re experiencing all these things in this very big way. You know, emotionally, everything feels like the beginning and the end of the world, but you don’t really have an emotional language for it yet. I wanted to work through what Diamond was feeling so that I could then sprinkle it into her life and the reader could see how she was changing, but to do it in subtle ways.
Hana Kim: I love when writers create that foundation. I love doing the work that doesn’t get into the book, but informs the book. I could see how intentional you were, in everything from character to structure, and how you move the reader from one section to the next. For example, we move from a scene where Diamond is at a party to a letter about a party that Clara attends. There are these parallels and reveals throughout the book. How do you organize or think about structure?
Chambers: I really have to give credit to my agent, Julie Barer, and my editor, Carina Guiterman. I knew that the book needed to be ordered in a way that it felt like we were being propelled in one direction, not back and forth in time, so that we were going wide and deep. I thought a lot about what I wanted readers to feel from one place to the next. Julie and Carina were instrumental in figuring out how—particularly with the beginning, when to introduce the first letter from Lena. At what point does the book announce itself to be a book that has letters in it? My organizing principle was: What do I want the readers to feel and know at each moment?
Hana Kim: One thing we learn through Clara’s section is about how Diamond’s hometown was a sundown town. What was the research process like for you? Did you always know that that was going to be an element in the book?
Chambers: I had no idea. It is one of those great examples of where research led me to the thing that really cracked the book open. I wanted to root the father in his own history, and I went looking to see: Would there have been Black communities in New England at the turn of the century? I didn’t want him to be a transplant. I wanted him to have roots there. I really wasn’t finding much. Then I discovered this book called Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by Dr. James W. Loewen. As far as I know, it’s the only book written on the history of sundown towns. There are sundown towns in literature and movies, and I thought I understood what they were, which is there are these all-white towns by design, whether that’s by laws and ordinances or violence and terrorism. I understood them to be a Southern thing, and I was shocked to discover that it is primarily a Northern thing. They are mostly in the North, in the Midwest, in the Northwest, in part in response to the Great Migration. Thousands of these towns were formed, between 1890 and the 1960s. As I was reading, one part jumped out at me, which is that sometimes, a person of color is allowed to live in an otherwise only-white town if they were domestic or serving some kind of essential function to the white community. I thought, what if I make Diamond a descendant of this person that was allowed to stay behind? That is how Clara was born. That felt like such a rich opportunity to tell these two very different stories about what it’s like to be the only one.
Hana Kim: The novel deals with a lot of difficult topics. At the same time, Diamond is such a funny, wry character. I also think that her mom is funny, too. Did you intentionally want to infuse the novel with humor, or are you naturally a funny writer?
Chambers: There are two Post-its on my computer at all times: “Tell the truth” and “Make yourself laugh.” The humor was intentional not because I wanted to soften what was heavy. I don’t want people to look away. I want them to see. But I do think that I’m very drawn to dark and funny. Life is tragicomic, the way that we experience life with joy and pain sitting so close together. I wanted Diamond to embody that. It also comes from, my background in film and television. You want to move people through these scenes in a way that feels compelling. Humor is part of what makes a character compelling to me.
As I was creating Diamond’s voice, she came to life in the specifics, and the specifics were always funny to me. I think that that’s where so much of comedy comes from—really specific details and choices. That’s almost always how I would look at a scene: Well, how is this going to be funny? But I wanted to be careful not to make her the fat funny girl. She’s so smart and emotionally intelligent. I wanted humor to be a part of her filter, not just an avoidance tactic. I tried to have there be comedic relief in other ways too. Sometimes we’re laughing at characters, sometimes we’re laughing with them. I knew that white people couldn’t be cartoon characters, even though they are incredibly ignorant in many scenes. I wanted to make sure that all the laughs weren’t coming at their expense, because then I would miss out on the nuance in the way that we actually experience white people who are ignorant.
Hana Kim: In the beginning, you talked about Diamond as a rootless character, and something we discover along with her is her figuring out her lineage. How do you decide what’s left out of the narrative?
Chambers: I’m usually guilty of leaving too much out. One of the most rewarding parts of the editing process was trusting my agent and my editor about where to be a bit more obvious. It’s always about figuring out what is the filter. What would Diamond understand, and if she didn’t fully understand, what would she see? How could what she sees help the reader get the subtext?
Hana Kim: What you’re talking about is recalling such a powerful scene towards the end, with Diamond and her mom and her dad after a disastrous barbecue. You captured Diamond’s confusion, layering in young Diamond’s understanding of what was going on with her family.
Chambers: I really appreciate that. I write with a couple of books with me at all times, and If You Leave Me is one of them.
Hana Kim: Wow, I’m honored. In the last chapter, Diamond speaks directly to her mom. This moved me incredibly. I’m always so interested in endings. They’re usually my favorite parts to write. When did this last section come to you?
Chambers: I also loved writing this ending. I dreaded it until I knew how it was going to end. This is a mother and daughter story in so many ways, and Diamond and her mother spend a lot of time in their pain, in grief, not looking or speaking directly about the horror that they went through. They both are mourning so differently, and they don’t really talk about it. So I knew in the end, Diamond had to tell the truth in a way that she’d never done before. She’s a character that’s so honest and emotionally intelligent. Part of her growth from beginning to the end is bridging that gap between what she knows and what she says, and how to deliver a truth to someone. Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous took my breath away. That was what inspired me to have Diamond speaking directly to her mother in a sort of letter. I wanted it to seem like it could have been something that Diamond said to her mom, or not. The reader won’t know either way, but it has the texture of feeling free enough to say the truth because you may or may not send it.
Hana Kim: This is a novel about grief, mothers and daughter, lost fathers, the heavy toll of racism, lineage, the body. It’s a coming-of-age story and a historical novel woven together. There’s so much to hold onto. What do you hope readers will take away from the novel?
Chambers: I’m going to give you two answers. I think with Diamond, she is at the intersection of all these different ways of being “other.” Whether or not you are Diamond or you are a person that is staring at Diamond as she walks by, she’s often a person who’s not humanized. If you’re Diamond, I want you to feel empathy for yourself. If you’re not Diamond, I want you to feel empathy for Diamond and see her. More broadly, I hope that readers think about their own families, their roots, what they inherit from their parents and from history. What we carry around and what we have to let go of in order to kind of become who we’re supposed to be in the world.
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Essie Chambers is an award-winning writer and producer. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and has received fellowships from the MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, and Baldwin for the Arts. She previously held senior creative executive positions at ViacomCBS (Paramount), and was a producer on the documentary Descendant, which was released by President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground and Netflix in 2022. Swift River is her debut novel.
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Author photographs courtesy of Crystal Hana Kim and Essie Chambers
