{"id":14149,"date":"2025-03-05T14:40:17","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T19:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/?page_id=14149"},"modified":"2025-03-05T14:40:19","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T19:40:19","slug":"adam-schuitema","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/adam-schuitema\/","title":{"rendered":"Adam Schuitema"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I\u2019ve been a faculty member at an art school for almost two decades, teaching mostly fiction writing, modern lit, and narrative studies. Every so often in the classroom\u2014even as I\u2019m speaking to the students\u2014I\u2019ll have the experience of looking at myself in the third person and a little voice saying, \u201cYou get paid to talk make-believe all day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m fortunate. I get to teach these students for a living, and all the while, of course, I\u2019m learning things from them. Some will become graphic designers, fashion designers, and photographers. Others will have careers making narratives: animations, graphic novels, and video games. What\u2019s incredible is how\u2014every semester\u2014there are a few who arrive in my classroom with stories they\u2019ve been creating, in some capacity, since they were fourteen or fifteen years old. Reems of notebooks. Infinite character sketches. Tons of lore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These students are serious worldbuilders, and they\u2019ve helped me to appreciate how all stories, to varying extent, are about the building of worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a lifelong Michigander, and when I first got serious about writing, I told stories set on the shores of the Great Lakes. Like a kid making sandcastles, I took the existing land and built something imagined on top of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for my second book, a novel, I decided to go bigger\u2014something I cursed now and then for all the challenges it caused. I again set my story in Michigan, but this time I created a whole town from scratch. Carved it out of forest on the Lake Superior coast. Like my students, I invented a history for my storyworld. A geography. I named every street and every business, even if those names never made it to any draft of the manuscript. I even drew a map on a posterboard and then hired a student illustrator to make it look amazing for publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, I got older. I became a father. My real world got bigger, and so, too, did the worlds in my fiction. For my third book, the stories branched off in farther directions. Stories set in other countries. Stories spotlighting folks of all ages. One story was set eighty years in the past, in a war-torn part of the world far from where I live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s exciting to stretch the limits of these written worlds, even as they require research and travel and new story puzzles to solve. The result is that I\u2019ve now written a novel set about twenty-five years in the future, in our soon-to-be world. And this time, it wasn\u2019t enough to build just a small Midwestern town. This time (God help me), I built a nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, I\u2019ll admit, it\u2019s a small nation. One of the smallest on Earth. A tiny chain of islands in the middle of the Pacific. But it was once a beautiful place. And now it\u2019s drowning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half a Million Minutes<\/em> (forthcoming from Regal House in spring 2027) allowed me to world-build in wholly new ways. There\u2019s alternate history. Speculative technologies. Global conspiracies. And at the heart is a retired schoolteacher named Hazelmary who discovers that the history she\u2019d taught to generations is a lie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the surface, she and I are very different. But what we share is a love of teaching and for the thousands of students whom we\u2019ve taught. With whom we\u2019ve shared stories. By populating my fictional islands with Hazelmary\u2019s former students\u2014and by having them fight side by side for what\u2019s good and right\u2014I was able to channel the connections and gratitude I feel as a teacher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I spent ten years writing this book, and over time I feel like I built this character into my real<\/em> world, if you know what I mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to Half a Million Minutes<\/em>, I\u2019m the author of the novel Haymaker (2015)<\/em> and the collections Freshwater Boys<\/em> (2010) and The Things We Do that Make No Sense <\/em>(2017). My works have twice been named Michigan Notable Books by the Library of Michigan. I\u2019ve had stories in journals such as Glimmer Train<\/em>, North American Review<\/em>, Indiana Review<\/em>, TriQuarterly<\/em>, and The Southern Review<\/em>. I earned my Ph.D. and MFA from Western Michigan University. And I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I\u2019m a Professor at Kendall College of Art and Design, Ferris State University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I\u2019m not writing or teaching, you can find me traveling, gardening, filling birdfeeders, or hanging out with one of my favorite mammals: my partner, Abby; my daughter, Elizabeth; or my cat, Benny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can also find me online at adamschuitema.com and on social media as @adamschuitema.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been a faculty member at an art school for almost two decades, teaching mostly fiction writing, modern lit, and narrative studies. Every so often in the classroom\u2014even as I\u2019m speaking to the students\u2014I\u2019ll have the experience of looking at myself in the third person and a little voice saying, \u201cYou get paid to talk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"post-14149","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","5":"entry"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P9DpGh-3Gd","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2085,"url":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/pieter-de-koninck\/","url_meta":{"origin":14149,"position":0},"title":"Pieter de Koninck","author":"Jaynie","date":"September 27, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Pieter was born on Long Island, NY and his family later moved to central Mexico, the south of France and Belgium. 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