Interview with Jane Christmas about her new book ‘A Flight of Saints’!

*SOME SPOILERS!* *CONTENT WARNING: FOUL LANGUAGE!*

Friends, I’m super excited to share this just-under-an-hour zoom interview I had with the incomparable Jane Christmas! Her new book and first foray into fiction, A Flight of Saints, is out in the world and you must read it!

Yes, there’s a different name on the cover of this book! Jane used the pseudonym Elizabeth Braithwaite when self-publishing this fantastic, feminist literary gem. We talk about this, about self-publishing versus traditional publishing, about agents, the creative processes, and the long, winding and frustrating road that led Jane to choose self-publishing to get this story into the world.

INTERVIEW WITH JANE!

Here are options for enjoying this interview! A text file and an audio file, not video!

Audio file only. JANE CHRISTMAS INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTDownload

To order a copy of A Flight of Saints, visit Jane’s website here! Also, her website is jam packed with easter eggs about the story, the characters and the impetus for using a pseudonym. Annnnd, all her other books are available to purchase as well! Woot!

Here’s my review of A Flight of Saints:

Jane Christmas seamlessly makes the leap from non-fiction (memoir) to fiction with her debut novel A Flight of Saints. Writing under the pseudonym Elizabeth Braithwaite, the choice to use this name was not “an attempt at subterfuge or trickery, but a genuine desire to be free from expectation and have new writing judged afresh.” Perhaps an even deeper-dive into ‘free from expectations’ and ‘writing judged anew’ includes the fact that this novel is self-published. In these regards, A Flight of Saints is truly an adventurous flight into new and exciting literary excellence for Christmas – and it’s already nominated for an award! 

A Flight of Saints is a female-centric, feminist, spiritual journey-driven story about five nuns who escape an abuse-heavy convent, traveling the harsh forests and dangerous edges of the Alps towards a convent led by their heroine Hildegard of Bingen. Each nun comes with a unique set of ideals, commitments to the cloth, and shifting self-awareness that bounce and bang against the harried treacherousness of twelfth-century travel (sans electricity, tents, even a good pair of boots!), challenging leadership roles, friendship, and sisterhood. Led by a steadfast, dedicated, yet flawed main character Sister Lucia, the internal conscience of this quest-driven tale spins like a determined dreidel. 

Layered with Braithwaite’s intelligent comedy, impressive knowledge of female saints, religious texts and well-researched settings in twelfth-century life, A Flight of Saints offers readers an adventure story that both frazzles and frees ideals and beliefs about religion, friendship, violence against women, motherhood, home, family, and the power of unconditional love – transcending time, and showing how antiquated experiences for women are comparable to contemporary realities, the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

A Flight of Saints is a fast-read, as Christmas’ narrative-driven, vulnerable-yet-sassy memoirist’s voice translates beautifully into Braithwaite’s fictitious world of arrive-at-all-costs, coming-of-age, we-can-do-it plot points that hit beats both emotional and physical. You care about the nuns, some more than others, but certainly there is relatability, and her well-timed, revelatory, origin story developments for each woman lift the storytelling into the realm of literary brilliance. 

It is a feminist move to self-publish, especially after being under the tar-feathered wings of a Big Five publisher. This active energy of perseverance, of self-preservation, of self-propulsion is a character in the story, for sure, and reflects Christmas’ personal experiences of reverence with nuns, navigating a sometimes dangerous literary landscape, Alp-like in its jaggedness, and a sexual assault that will forever resonate in her physical body…and her body of work. 

It’s no secret I’m a major fan of Jane Christmas, the writer, the mentor, the woman, the mother, but with A Flight of Saints in the world as yet another extension of her bravery and storytelling prowess, I’m feeling more disciple than fan! There are many, many instances of outstanding writing throughout the story that stopped me in my reading tracks to gush and cheer. For example, this bit exemplifies the depth and the courage of not only the women, but of authorial voice:

“This was the true nature of our origins: We were all scourged by the loss of home and family. None of us belonged to any place or to anyone. And I realised that, broken as we were, they were all I had, and I was all they had. We were all saints because we had suffered.”

Kudos extend to the linocut artist who created the cover art was Haychley Webb, map and cover designer Stephanie Hofmann (yes, there’s a stunning map at the beginning of the book!), and book designer Dinah Drazin  for adding visual beauty and fun to the book.