CREATING A
MEANINGFUL MESSAGE
Young author Akiva Splaver wrote his first book, "The Stutterer's Apprentice" as a 17-year-old high school student. His inspiring and unique narrative was encouraged by his family and driven by his own experiences of isolation, trial, and ultimate victory over stuttering.
ABOUT AKIVA
I’m from Hollywood, Florida and plan on attending The New School next year in New York.
I just graduated from high school and am now an intern at a film company evaluating submitted scripts and novels for potential production. I enjoy that I get to work with other people passionate about creating great stories.
I have two older brothers and a younger sister.
My hobbies include flying flight simulators, writing, skiing, and improv acting. I am passionate about learning as much as I can.
If anyone has questions, comments, or suggestions for the book, you can reach me at
splaverakiva@gmail.com.
Do you remember when you first began to stutter? I’ve stuttered for as long as I can remember. The degree, though, has changed a bit. Sometimes it feels like peanut butter is chronically stuck in my throat and other times like a malfunctioning record player repeating the same word. In short, it has a mind of its own. When I'm more relaxed, though, the stuttering improves.
Does stuttering run in your family? Did you seek treatment, and did it help? I don’t know of any relatives who stutter. My mother sought out treatment for me. She always said, “Akiva, if people only knew the real you like I do, you would have so many more friends,” thinking that stuttering prevented me from connecting with people. She wasn’t wrong. We would spend summers driving to speech therapy programs and practicing the techniques. It was a lot of fun, almost like a game, stretching words out, breathing from the diaphragm on my bedroom carpet, and seeing how the efforts paid off. The exercises helped, but I stopped practicing them. Because I had stuttered for so long, it felt awkward speaking any other way.
Tell us about your experience with stuttering as a child. I could tell if I was going to stutter before I said something. So, as a child I honed into that feeling, only speaking when I felt more fluent. This worked for casual lunchroom conversation, when saying a sentence or two. But when it came to class presentations in middle school, I couldn't limit the speaking time. I remember on the last day of school, my history class required a final presentation and I volunteered to go last. I made sure to have the font extremely big, hoping others would chime in, reading from their seats and relieve me from speaking. But the teacher insisted that I do it alone. All the “um, you know, and like” word fillers and foot tapping came out. It was a stuttering free-for-all, while I looked up at the ceiling wishing I could be anywhere else but there.
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