John Sayles: Push Forward and Get the Rough Story Down
In this interview, author John Sayles discusses writing and researching concurrently for his new novel, Crucible.
John Sayles is an American independent film director, screenwriter, actor, and novelist. He has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, for Passion Fish (1992) and Lone Star (1996). He has written seven novels, the most recent being Yellow Earth (2020) and A Moment in the Sun (2011).
In this interview, John discusses writing and researching concurrently for his new novel, Crucible, his hope for readers, and more.
Name: John Sayles
Literary agent: Anthony Arnove
Book title: Crucible
Publisher: Melville House
Release date: January 20, 2026
Genre/category: Historical Fiction
Previous titles: Pride of the Bimbos, The Anarchists’ Convention (stories), Union Dues, Thinking in Pictures (non-fiction), Los Gusanos, Dillinger in Hollywood (stories), A Moment in the Sun, Yellow Earth, Jamie MacGillivray, To Save the Man
Elevator pitch: Detroit as the crucible for American criminal, labor, and racial unrest from the 1920s to WWII, parallel with Henry Ford’s doomed attempt to grow rubber in the Amazon.
What prompted you to write this book?
I got interested in how one city could become a battleground for economic and cultural forces in our country, and I found Ford’s adventures in Brazil to be a great metaphor for America’s often whimsical foreign policy.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I woodshedded the idea for a couple years before deciding to sit down and write it. Once I started, though, I wrote fast and concurrently with my research, one aspect of the job feeding the other. It took about 10 months and was already finished nearly a year before To Save the Man, my last novel, came out. Because I’m still doing research as I write, these historical stories tend to expand—when I started writing I didn’t know about the terrible 1941 race riot in Detroit, the details of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo’s stay in the city, the assassination attempt on Water Reuther, or several other events I discovered were important to cover in the book.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
This is the third book I’ve done with Melville House, so that part was fairly familiar. New “policies” adopted by some of the bookstore chains haven’t been happy developments for any author.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I did quite a bit of research in the Detroit newspapers of the period I cover, and it’s always interesting to see the way breaking news is covered as opposed to history written with much more time to dig up the facts. And I hadn’t realized how important Detroit, given that it sits across a river from Canada, had been as a conduit for illegal booze during Prohibition—with all the gangland mayhem that goes with that.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
The book is full of characters, historical and invented, and I hope readers will get involved in their stories, argue with them, root for them, follow them to interesting places physically and emotionally. There are also some troubling parallels to what is happening in our country now that need thinking about.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Don’t expect your writing to be brilliant on any project right away. For me the reason to write has always been to have something to rewrite—I find it best to push forward and get the rough story down, then go back and make things better.
