Thao Thai: Hold Your Own Feet to the Fire
In this interview, author Thao Thai discusses the transformation from thriller to literary in her new novel, The Seekers of Deer Creek.
Thao Thai is the author of Banyan Moon, the July 2023 Read with Jenna title, Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, and Book of the Month selection. Banyan Moon was also selected by booksellers as an IndieNext pick and longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. She was the recipient of the 2024 Ohio Arts Council’s Individual Excellence Award, and her work has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, WIRED, Elle, Lit Hub, and other publications. She lives in central Ohio with her husband and daughter. Follow her on Instagram.
In this interview, Thao discusses the transformation from thriller to literary in her new novel, The Seekers of Deer Creek, her advice for other writers, and more.
Name: Thao Thai
Literary agent: Abigail Walters (David Black Agency)
Book title: The Seekers of Deer Creek
Publisher: Mariner (HarperCollins)
Release date: August 4, 2026
Genre/category: Literary Fiction
Previous titles: Banyan Moon
Elevator pitch: The Seekers of Deer Creek is an evocative novel about two estranged sisters on a quest to find a painting by a forgotten Vietnamese artist that holds the truth of their family’s fractured past.
What prompted you to write this book?
The idea for this novel came to me around seven years ago, during a game of hide-and-seek with my daughter. I was folded into a tight little laundry room for an absurdly long time. (I suspect she’d gotten distracted by a toy on the way to search for me!) As I sat there in the dark, I thought about the particular thrill and suspense in childhood games of hide-and-seek, how they end with this moment of discovery and revelation, how the act of subterfuge is itself underlined by a desire to be found. I began to wonder how that dynamic might work in adulthood between two sisters who are still engaged in a game of hide-and-seek, but with much higher stakes. I asked myself what might happen if the sisters were looking for one another, along with another precious object that ties them together. This genesis of an idea became the faint starlight that continued to beckon me throughout the years.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
Nearly a decade, if you count all the times I thought about the story before even turning to the page! When I first conceived of The Seekers of Deer Creek, the novel was structured much more like a thriller, with twists and big bangs, timely explorations of AI in art, and a prototypical villain. I suppose I wanted to take a big swing in an opposite direction from my debut, Banyan Moon. In the end, that first version of the story never sang to me in the way that the final version did, which is much more focused on the sisters and their family, along with deep interrogations about the role of art in shaping identity. I think if you compared my initial draft to the book you’ll hold in your hands, you might find a total of 10 pages that have remained intact. The story had been hiding from me; I became a seeker, in the most rewarding of ways.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
I had the pleasure of working with three brilliant editors and benefiting from their varying perspectives on the story. I always say that my acquiring editor, Molly Gendell, believed in the seed of the idea. My second editor, Kate Nintzel, asked me crucial questions about the writer I wanted to be. And my final editor, Jessica Vestuto, pushed me to polish the story until its heart became visible to readers, as well as myself. Writing seems very solitary, and for much of the process it is, but I was lucky enough to experience the joy of collaboration in this book.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
So many! The most notable surprise for me came with the late-in-game addition of Calla, one of the sisters, to the narrative. Initially, the book was structured so that Calla was largely absent in the present day, flitting from the grasp of her frustrated sister, Vivi. But eventually I realized that the story would never find its full momentum until Calla entered the narrative, as a challenger and advocate for Vivi. Their complicated sisterhood drives the novel, and I couldn’t be happier to hear Calla’s voice on the page at last. Together, she and Vivi form a chorus that has become truly memorable.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
This has always been a tricky question for me. It’s largely out of my hands after the story transforms from idea to object, which is both a blessing and a curse. With The Seekers of Deer Creek, I hope readers will get what it is they need from Vivi and Calla’s whirlwind quest, whether that’s entertainment or discovery or some resonance that brings them a bit closer to home, whatever the word means to them.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Hold your own feet to the fire. Where you find yourself trying to escape the story, glossing over a moment or hiding from your reader, find the courage to swerve back to that place of hesitation. Dig deeper. Write the thing that scares you. I promise you’ll learn something new about yourself and the story you are trying to tell.
