Sequoia with his agent Annie Hwang ( Ayesha Pande Literary). Our conversation revealed just how much of himself he had poured into HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK, the unique challenges he faced editing a novel post-COVID about a fictional pandemic conceived and written pre-COVID, and how the book’s journey has changed him. This is why I quickly reached out to Sequoia when I started this artist interview series and screeched (more or less), “Sequoia said he was down, Sequoia said he was down!” to my wife when I got his message that he was willing to let me interrogate him. More, it was just a stunning piece of speculative fiction, superbly crafted and written. HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK landed in my lap, as it did for many readers, at the height of COVID and provided me a cathartic experience I desperately needed. The book is a meditation on grief, collective trauma, our species’ misplaced priorities, and, most of all, the sustaining and ultimately transformative power of hope when despair and surrender make more sense. This is the set-up to Sequoia Nagamatsu’s debut novel HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK, which was penned before a real-world pandemic blew up the early twentieth-first century. The mummified remains of an early human child are discovered when global warming releases it from its permafrost tomb…a pathogen lying in wait inside the mummy’s brain is released…an Arctic Plague quickly spreads, mutating human organs, producing strange glowing constellations under our skin, and killing tens of millions.
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