Today we’d like to introduce you to Byron Graves.
Hi Byron, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. My family spent time hunting, fishing, campfires, playing basketball, attending pow wows, and lots of time on the beautiful Red Lake beach. When I was a child my mother would make up bed time stories instead of reading them from a book. It didn’t take long before I was interjecting with cameo suggestions, and tweaks to her tales. She eventually got fed up and told me to write my own. I’ve been in love with words my whole life. I was initially the most attracted to poetry and song lyrics, before I fell in love with comic books, and eventually young adult novels. I’ve been writing novels and studying creative writing for over ten years now. A few years ago my social media attracted the attention of my current agent, and helped connect me with the young adult writing community. My debut novel, released in September of 2023, and has since won the William C Morris award and the American Indian Youth Literature award.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Finding my voice as an Indigenous author was a challenge. My first couple of attempts at writing a novel were culturally ambiguous and vague, which unbeknownst to me at the time, left a hole in my stories. One of the biggest writing tips anyone can utilize, is to write what you know. When I dug all the way, deep down into that piece of advice, I realized I needed to tell stories of my tribe, from my reservation. But I didn’t have a lot of templates to follow. I had through the list of the top novels in the history of literature, but most of them were from authors who had semi similar backgrounds. I was still lost as to how I would or could craft stories that took place on a reservation. So I hunted some down, and came across what turned out to be my favorite authors. Tommy Orange, Cynthia Leitich-Smith, and Eric Gansworth to name just a few. After reading and basically studying their writing style I could see the road map. But I was still shy of a story. I returned back to the write what you know tip, and decided to write a story about basketball, specifically based in a lot of reality of my sophomore year of basketball. I fell in love with SLAM! by Walter Dean Myers and read it and listened to the audiobook at least a dozen times. That became my blueprint for writing a high school basketball story. I found a lot of parallels between the character in his story, and the one I wanted to tell. Thanks to these authors, I was able to find my style, my voice, and my writing life.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Writing stories that center around the experience of being an Ojibwe teenager from my reservation. This can include intergenerational trauma, our culture and how that interweaves into our modern lifestyles, the echo effects of genocide and reservation life. It also includes lots of love, and joy, and community, and our pride, our language, and lots of “Indian humor”. I love the opportunity to present on panels, and especially love doing Q&A’s on aspects of my heritage, my writing style, and sharing a glance at the behind the scenes of writing a story.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
In the stories I’ve written I’ve always shared some of the darker parts of growing up on my reservation. Some of these topics and dynamics have included self harm, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, gang presence, swearing, and violence. These all felt like risks to share in a young adult story for a wide variety of reasons. It was scary to present, and I initially worried about how it could be taken. The last thing I wanted to do was reinforce negative stereotypes, or tired tropes of reservation life. But I wanted to show this side to illustrate a raw vision of the challenges faced by Indigenous youth on my reservation, while showing that as we deal with those struggles, we still continue to find hope, inspiration, and champion each other to chase our dreams.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://byrongraves.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/makwa_giniw
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorbyrongraves
- Twitter: x.com/byrongraves
- Other: https://linktr.ee/Byrongraves
Image Credits
Mike Finney in the last two uploads, the skateboard picture and the smiling picture
