Author Dashka Slater, New York Times best selling author and journalist, visited Niles West on Wednesday, Oct. 4 in the library during 8th and 9th period.

Slater comes to West to introduce her new book “Accountable,” which is a true narrative that focuses on a racist social media account created by teenagers to target other students at their school. The book goes deep into understanding the impact the social media account had on those directly targeted and other students who heard about this account. It also draws the question of what being held accountable truly means.

During Slater’s visit, she mentions the process she goes through to gain enough information to write a book like “Accountable,” which revolves around real life incidents.

“For me, to write a scene, there is so much research. Including interviewing with the participants for hours, days, weeks and month. I do first hand reporting, seeing stuff with my own eyes. People open up their phones so that I can see all their videos, photos and text messages. I interview experts, look through court records, official documents and so on,” Slater said.

Aside from collecting evidence, Slater finds it crucial to get to the core of the issue so that as an author, she is addressing a larger message.

“I really believe that there is a purpose beyond wanting the truth, and for me as a journalist, the truth is the most important thing, but the reason we want the truth is so that we can get the root causes,” Slater said.

Librarian Victoria Pietrus felt that the visit was very interesting and enjoyed learning about the work put into a book about real life events.

“I thought that Dashka was super passionate and informative about her topic. I was really grateful that she demonstrated some of her research approaches and skills because I think that’s cool for people to see. She was also really compassionate about her topics and the people she wrote about and overall it was very engaging,” Pietrus said.

Many students also checked out the authors visit and learned a lot about how much work gets put into developing a book.

“This was my first time visiting an author and I was fascinated by how much work goes into a specific page. It was really interesting learning the different kinds of methods she [Dashka Slater] used to compile evidence and bring it all into the form of a book,” sophomore Ibtihal Syeda said.

The book “Accountable,” truly showcases what it means to be held responsible for certain actions and wrongdoings. Slater emphasizes how society as a whole tends to view accountability as punishments, however that shouldn’t be the case.

“When I talk about the name of my book, I often have people say ‘well were they held accountable?’ and this is what they mean, they mean were they punished, were they kicked out of school, were they prevented from going to college, did somebody make sure they never got a job again? Those are the kinds of things people are thinking about. What I would say is, you could do all of this, but if you haven’t changed the person from the inside, what did it get you,” Slater said.

Slater has written numerous books including The 57 Bus that was based on a true narrative about two teenagers who are dealing with the aftermath of a crime they were both involved in. The book received the Stonewall Book Award given to books containing exceptional merit relating to the LGBTQ+ experience. This is a reason why this book was banned in certain school districts. Additionally, Slater was a nonfiction finalist of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA).

Students can check out the book “Accountable,” which is available at the Niles West Library.