The Author: Yasmin Zaher
The Book: The Coin (Catapult, 2024)
The Elevator Pitch: A Palestinian woman moves to New York City, living off her inheritance and teaching at a middle school. Her unorthodox teaching methods backfire.
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The Rumpus: Where did the idea of your book come from?
Yasmin Zaher: I had just moved to New York City, and it completely freaked me out. I thought I was a tough girl because I’m Palestinian and I grew up in Jerusalem and all that, but what I saw in New York was very different, and it gave me a lot of ideas about contemporary society and civilization.
Rumpus: How long did it take to write the book?
Zaher: Six months to write, six years to edit.
Rumpus: Is this the first book you’ve written? If not, what made it the first to be published?
Zaher: It’s the first book I’ve finished. The openness of the voice, because it’s colloquial and confessional, allowed me to write about many subjects—from education, to perfume, to washing machines—and it carried me ’til the end. A book is a lot of words. Choosing an expansive voice helped me accumulate material.
Rumpus: In submitting the book, how many no’s did you get before your yes?
Zaher: I got an immediate yes. Maybe I didn’t have to suffer through a sadistic submission process, but I did go through years of editing with my agent Monika Woods before we felt that the book was ready for submission. They were long years of self-doubt and uncertainty, it wasn’t at all easy.
Rumpus: Which authors/writers buoyed you along the way? How?
Zaher: Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz. I read it in one sitting, while I was writing the first draft. After reading it, I told myself I want to write like Harwicz, I want to write a book that is like a bullet, fast and deadly, and you don’t know where it came from.
Rumpus: How did your book change over the course of working on it?
Zaher: It almost doubled in length and the plot was thickened. It became less experimental, more traditional.
Rumpus: Before your first book, where has your work been published?
Zaher: Nowhere.
Rumpus: What is the best advice someone gave you about publishing?
Zaher: If one of your characters is based on someone you know and you’re worried about having portrayed them negatively, then at least describe them as extremely good-looking. They’re going to be so flattered that they’ll forget about the rest.
Rumpus: Who’s the reader you’re writing to—or tell us about your target audience and how you cultivated or found it?
Zaher: I’m the reader I’m writing to. I try to appeal to my own taste and sensibility. If I thought too much about audience, or audiences, I think I would encounter too many opposing demands and the writing would end up average.
Rumpus: What is one completely unexpected thing that surprised you about the process of getting your book published?
Zaher: I was initially frustrated by how long it was—two years from acquisition to publication, in my case—but the process is very psychological too. In that time, you have to let go of the project. You do it gradually: giving up control first to your editor, then to the book cover designer, then to publicity, who send it to a few strangers, etcetera. The process is long but gentle.
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Author photograph courtesy of Yasmin Zaher
