Author interview: Youth facing challenges need ‘revolutionary changes’

Sara Cullen hopes her novel, 'Blood Red Sky', will cause policymakers and adult readers to reflect on how we as a society view young people who get into trouble

Sara Cullen taught English in Fife, Scotland, where she saw first-hand how difficult life was for teenagers in areas of high deprivation.

• Blood Red Sky
• Sara Cullen
• Arkbound, €14.50

Cork writer Sara Cullen spent 17 years working as a teacher and guidance counsellor in areas of high deprivation in Fife, Scotland. 

But her interest in social justice began as a 13-year-old student in Carrigaline Community School.

“My English teacher Declan Ryan, who is still there, he taught me To Kill a Mockingbird ... it totally fired me up about injustice,” says Cullen.

Soon after, she watched the film Dead Man Walking and wrote to Helen Prejean, the nun at the centre of the true story about a prisoner on death row. 

To her surprise, she received a reply, encouraging her to contact the Death Row Support Project.

“So I did that, and then I had a pen pal on death row. Would you believe it? Letters to and from Carrigaline to Oklahoma in the 1990s,” Cullen says.

Now, Cullen is channelling her experience and passion into her debut novel, Blood Red Sky. 

It tells the story of Aaron, a 16-year-old boy in Scotland, who is arrested when a fire breaks out at his school.

“He gets remanded, and he’s awaiting a trial, and then the pandemic hits, and all the trials are cancelled,” says Cullen. 

His brother and sister are at home with the mum and dad … it’s about their sibling relationship and how his life develops when he’s in this system.

It was inspired by what Cullen witnessed in the UK during covid, when teenagers were held in custody after arrest, with no trial date.

“[Being remanded] should be because it’s too dangerous to let you out the street, but actually sometimes it’s because your parents can’t have you at home, so it’s a place of safety,” she explains.

“There was quite a lot in the news about that at the time, and youngsters taking their own life in custody when they hadn’t been found guilty of anything.”

Aaron’s story is one that occurs in many families from areas of high deprivation in Scotland.

“Benefits stop when someone turns 16, so all of a sudden you’ve got less money coming in, but you’ve got an extra mouth to feed,” explains Cullen.

The book focuses on the bond between siblings, and Cullen has seen first-hand the impact incarceration can have on these relationships.

“One of the worst circumstances you can be separated from a sibling is prison, because you don’t really get any sympathy when someone’s in prison,” she says. 

Stigma of being incarcerated in prison

“It’s stigmatised, it’s quite lonely, it’s quite expensive to go and see them,” she says. 

“And if you’re 13 or 14 and your older brother’s in prison, you actually can’t go and see them unless someone brings you.”

Cullen studied English in University College Cork, and moved to Fife after completing her teacher training in University of Edinburgh. 

She lives there with her husband — who is from Fife — and their two children. 

“I started teaching English in Fife, but in areas of quite high deprivation … I was exposed to seeing how difficult life was for teenagers,” she says.

“Fife was a very big mining area, and the mines all closed in the 1980s, and some of the communities have never recovered … so there’s intergenerational unemployment, which creates intergenerational poverty.”

She witnessed the impact poverty had on children and families.

“If you are poor, your life expectancy is a lot shorter … you’re more likely to get excluded from school,” she says. 

Middle class teenagers get into trouble, but the difference is their families help them to turn it around.

As a teacher, she began to feel powerless to help teenagers coming from poverty.

“No matter what [the schools] do, it’s not going to reach past half three and I just couldn’t really get my head around this, because I was really invested in kids, and I was spending a fortune on lunches, coats … but it gets more and more hopeless as they turn towards 16,” she says.

“People tend to focus on babies and younger children. So teenagers kind of get left to their own devices, and then that’s when all the trouble starts.”

Cullen earned a qualification in child welfare and protection from the University of Stirling, and since 2019 has worked in the multi-agency Public Protection Unit, which she describes as a “powerhouse of child protection”.

She noticed a pattern in the cases she was seeing: “It was the same families coming through … no matter what the police and social workers and the teachers tried to do, it couldn’t be sustained.

“And actually the common factor, quite a lot of the time, was this intergenerational poverty and lack of infrastructure around families.”

It became clear to Cullen that things would only improve with policy changes on a societal level: 

No matter how much individual agencies are trying to do, unless there’s some kind of overarching, revolutionary changes for families and for people, the same kind of stuff is going to keep happening.

Cullen saw a gap for a compelling novel that captures the stories of young people caught up in the system: 

“Sometimes fiction can trigger something in people that non-fiction can’t.

“Because it’s more accessible … sometimes people need to read a story and see how they can apply it to real life.”

She spent five years writing the book, during which time she pitched it to numerous publishers. 

She almost signed with a literary agent, before deciding to opt for a charity publisher, Arkbound. Their approach aligned with Cullen’s vision for the book.

“I was never in this to make any money. You’ve more control with the independent publishers, so you’re really a team,” she says.

Cullen sent a copy of the book to Stephen Graham, the creator of the award winning TV series Adolescence, which also focusses on a teenage boy accused of a serious crime.

“We thought it might be up his street,” she says. 

“The thing about Adolescence, and the thing about this book, is that actually it’s about public safety as well … it’s not about having a soft touch for youngsters … it’s actually about prevention of crime.”

The book is written with young adults in mind, and Cullen wants the story to reach schools and youth detention centres in Britain and Ireland. 

She also hopes it will cause policymakers and adult readers to reflect on how we as a society view young people who get into trouble.

Cullen believes changing how we respond to young people who come in contact with the justice system will benefit society as a whole.

“I think everybody would like to see a safer community, nobody wants to see youth disorder at the level that we’re seeing it on the news at the moment,” she says.

The book is already set to make an impact with secondary school students in her hometown.

“Carrigaline Community School have ordered 200 copies of it. They’re teaching it to the whole of the transition year,” she says proudly.

While the story deals with serious topics, it is ultimately one of hope, says Cullen: 

“The book is uplifting and happy, and that took five years to get right. It’s about love and families … and how difficult it is to be a parent who actually can provide for their child, whilst at the same time getting blamed for your child’s behaviour.”