MyLinh Shattan's Raising Athena Launched at West Point With 500 Returning Alumni and an Audiobook Timed to the 250th

MyLinh Shattan was in the 12th class of women to attend West Point, an Army officer at the end of the Cold War, a 10,000-hour writer, and the mother of an oldest daughter who chose to follow her into the academy. She spent eight to ten years writing the memoir that Scribe finally published after six literary agents and the entire traditional publishing industry passed.

A Writer for 20 Years, A Mother for Life

MyLinh grew up between two cultures — an Irish American father and a Vietnamese mother from central Vietnam, "both storytellers in their own language." She graduated from West Point in the 12th class of women, reported in 1987, twelve years after Saigon fell, and went on to a career as an Army officer, a corporate professional, a college professor, and — across all of it — a writer. By her own count she has over 10,000 hours of writing experience: freelance journalism, a contest-winning column on deployed soldiers picked up by the Department of Defense, an MFA from Queens University in Charlotte, and twelve years running her blog and podcast at treehouseletter.com.

Then her oldest daughter, Kara, chose West Point.

"I could sleep on a dime, do everything, jump out of planes, rappel out of helicopters. But when she left, I just didn't sleep. It was the weirdest thing."

— MyLinh Shattan, author of Raising Athena

Why She Wrote It

She didn't sit down to write a book that the public would read. She sat down to figure something out for herself: what it meant to be one of the earliest women through West Point, and what it now meant to be the mother of a daughter walking the same path 30 years later, into a different Army with no real precedent for either of them.

"And to sustain a book, as you know, you have to have an intense level of passion. And so it was fear. I mean, honest to goodness, fear."

— MyLinh Shattan

A year after her first draft, she woke up one morning with a title: Raising Athena. Athena, who comes out of Zeus's head fully formed in body armor, with no mother. "I didn't have that," MyLinh said. "And so I was like, what do I tell my kid?"

Six Agents, Zero Traditional Publishers, One Yes from Scribe

MyLinh went through six literary agents, including a #1 nonfiction agent who loved the book and helped her learn what a book proposal was. The book proposal worked. The traditional publishers didn't.

"The traditional publishers — oh, it's not on their list. It's not on the list. I'm like, if I'm not on your list, like what the frick is on your list?"

— MyLinh Shattan

Scribe was the yes. Her Scribe senior editor pushed her on the manuscript's central weakness — her daughter Kara existed in the early drafts only as a "foil without a name." Over the final two rewrites, MyLinh developed Kara as a full character using her own language, her own essays, her own interviews.

"[The editor] at Scribe just reads a gazillion books. He said, we're all dying... to know who this Kara is. So one of the last, probably the last two rewrites, I developed her character."

— MyLinh Shattan

She named the broader problem directly:

"There's a real silo in publishing for — there are voices that aren't heard that Scribe is allowing to be heard."

— MyLinh Shattan

The Results

MyLinh launched Raising Athena at West Point on the 50th anniversary of women at the academy. Five hundred returning alumni came back for the reunion. She ran out of capacity to sign books.

"I launched it at West Point when the 50th year anniversary, the women, there were 500 people that came back for that. And I couldn't, people just walked away because I couldn't sign them. And I didn't even know how to charge. I was like, how does this work? I've never done this."

— MyLinh Shattan

The reception kept coming after the launch. Independent top-rated Goodreads reviewers — "very tough" reviewers, as MyLinh put it — said the book was working. She has speaking dates lined up at the Air Museum in California, the Women's Memorial, and as the featured speaker at Flag Day, an event MyLinh notes used to host Tony Orlando in front of crowds in the thousands.

"There's validation with like, okay, it's reaching people. They love it. They're reading it. I have pictures of them reading it."

— MyLinh Shattan

The audiobook drops July 7th — deliberately timed to the 50th anniversary of women at federal service academies and the 250th anniversary of the United States. No other Scribe author this season has a release timed to a national milestone.

"My audio book is released from Scribe on that day, 250th year anniversary of the country. These are the people that made our country. And now we are fewer than 1%."

— MyLinh Shattan

Looking Forward

MyLinh isn't done. Eight members of her family are on active duty right now. Her daughter Kara (Nora) ships out with the 173rd Airborne. Her son joins the 4th Infantry Division. The audiobook releases on a date that ties her family's service to the country's 250th year. And she's already begun the second mission of the book — convincing the 99% of Americans who don't serve to understand the 1% who do.

"America, because we're an all-volunteer force, just doesn't know who we are anymore. I'm telling you who we are."

— MyLinh Shattan