Featured Interview With Augustine Sam
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I am an Italian citizen of African descent. I currently live in the Venice region of Italy and I don’t have any pets. By way of introduction, I’m a journalist by profession, a novelist by choice, and a poet by chance. I am a member of the U.K. Chartered Institute of Journalists, formerly special desk editor at ThisDay newspapers, an authoritative third world daily, first published in collaboration with the Financial Times of London. I am the author of Take Back the Memory, a contemporary women’s fiction that was awarded a 5-star seal by Readers’ Favorite. My poems have been published in two international anthologies: The Sounds of Silence and Measures of the Heart. One of those poems, Anguish & Passion, was adjudged winner of the Editors’ Choice Award in the 1998 North America Open Poetry contest, sponsored by the National Library of Poetry, USA. And on St. Valentine’s Day this year, my complete collection of poems, Flashes of Emotion, was released.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I had a passion for writing when I was a kid. I remember that while some of my friends kept toys I kept piles of notebooks where I wrote short stories that I invented mainly for the pleasure of my two sisters who, by the way, were my first real fans and readers. Back then, we used to sit by the radio every Thursday evening and listen to the radio theater, which was very entertaining. One day, I told my sisters that I wanted to write a play for the radio. Mercifully, they didn’t dismiss it as an untenable dream. So, I converted one of my short stories into a play and took it to the radio station. The producer of the radio theater, who was used to receiving scripts from Theater Arts students and lecturers from the local university, tried her best to be polite, took the script from me and sent me home.
A week later, I went back to see her, half-expecting to be politely dismissed. I was pleasantly surprised when she told me that she had actually read and enjoyed the script and then scolded me for giving her a script with no phone number or a forwarding address attached. The next Thursday evening, when we sat by the radio and heard the words: “The Breaking Point, a play for radio, written by Augustine Sam,” my sisters and I just looked at one another and started screaming.
I think what inspired me to write was my first literature textbook in school, which coincidentally, was a novel set in the port city where I grew up. It was the story of a one-eyed, shabby, old man, who spent his days at the harbor contriving different kinds of mischief that enthralled the local population. I had seen him at the harbor a few times when I was a kid. So, reading about him in the literature textbook triggered my fascination with storytelling and gave me a whole new insight into how the written word can actually capture reality.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favorite authors are Oscar Wilde, Umberto Eco, Frank McCourt, Arundhati Roy, and Scott Turow, to name but a few.
My favorite genres are mystery/thriller, contemporary women’s fiction, and poetry. But I read literary fiction as well. Sometimes, even romance and/or chicklit when the premise of a book intrigues me.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Flashes of Emotion, a book of poetry collection, is my latest book. While some poems in it were just creative explosions that occur as part of my constant mental process, others were directly inspired by events, people, and situations around me over a period of time. This collection follows Take Back the Memory, which was released shortly before it. It is a psychological exposé on love, betrayal, vengeance, and a heart-wrenching secret.
Interestingly, it started as part of a chapter in another story I was working on. Initially, I wanted to use it in a chapter about a date night to portray a particular scene from a movie that affected the protagonist of the original story, but somehow I couldn’t. The more I worked on it the more it expanded and soon began to detach itself from the original plot. I contemplated it for a long time and then it occurred to me that the story of Paige Lyman could actually be a novel on its own. As a writer, I usually let my inspiration dictate the direction of my creative endeavors, so I suspended the original story and began to focus on plot development for what later became Take Back the Memory.
Connect with the Author on their Websites and Social media profiles