Before We Disappear is a work of fiction. However, the 1909 Seattle world’s fair was an actual event that took place between June 1, 1909, and October 16, 1909. I wanted to be as true to the spirit of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition as possible without feeling bound by it.
Many of the locations and exhibits I wrote about in the book were real, pieced together from photographs and descriptions I found in newspaper articles and souvenir guidebooks. The University of Washington Digital Collections and the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America project, which has digitized thousands of newspapers going back to the 1800s and made them available and searchable, were invaluable to this story, especially near the end when leaving my apartment to do research in person became impossible due to the pandemic. Any errors, historical or otherwise, are mine.
However, at the end of the day, Before We Disappear is a fantasy. As much as I tried to remain true to history in some places, there were others where I left reality behind. There was nowhere in the United States in 1909 where Jack and Wil or Ruth and Jessamy would have been able to openly have a relationship with one another. The only people who lived lives free of discrimination in 1909 were cisgender heterosexual white men, and none of my protagonists fit into that category.
But I wanted to tell a story in 1909 that was full of queer joy, so I took a whole lot of liberties with regard to what marginalized people in 1909 would have been allowed to do, and I’m not sorry. We were there in 1909 whether people knew it or not, and while Jack and Wil’s story isn’t true, I’d like to think it could have been.