Eli Sanders Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Eli Sanders discusses how his experience as news and features editor for newspaper The Stranger led him to write his debut book, While The City Sleeps

What made you decide to cover this story for The Stranger?

I was a news and features writer for The Stranger in 2009 when the crime at the center of this book occurred. An editor there read a short account of the crime and soon I was on my way to the neighborhood where it happened. Honestly, I did not want to go. I had been a journalist in Seattle for ten years at that point and was feeling at my limit in terms of covering tragedies.

There were only sketchy details about what had transpired, who had been killed, and who had survived. I wrote a story that was set in the neighborhood, where people were dealing with intense fear, learning about the women who'd been attacked that night, and watching a police manhunt and the arrest of Isaiah Kalebu unfold. The depth of grief in the neighborhood shook me out of my reluctance. The things I learned about the women's strong connection to their community and that they had been planning a wedding before a man broke into their small house while they were sleeping—it brought the purpose of this kind of work back into focus for me. It also defied doing just one story and moving on. I began another story, this one about Isaiah Kalebu's trajectory in the months leading ...