Linda M. Castellitto

Children's & YA

Charise Mericle Harper

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Charise Mericle Harper’s new book, Just Grace Goes Green, is printed on 100-percent recycled paper—perfect for a story about a girl whose teacher announces that her third-grade class will be going green.

The cover of Just Grace Goes Green is just right, too, for a story about eco-conscious kids: the book jacket is Kraft-paper brown, decorated with little hand-drawn bottles and recycle icons. Peeking through a die-cut is Grace, who holds the smiling Earth above her head.

“I love the discovery of new things, and that translates into the cover,” Harper says in an interview from her home in a suburb of Manhattan, where she lives with her husband and two children. “And I love the book’s format . . . you can do so much with the combination of words and pictures.”

Harper’s skill at telling an engaging story—and augmenting it with appealing illustrations, lists, photos and diagrams—is drawn from her lifetime love of reading (“I always got the maximum 10 books from the library,” she says) and other creative pursuits. The author/illustrator grew up in Vancouver, and moved to Chicago in her early 20s. There, she drew illustrations for magazines and newspapers, and had a weekly comic strip, too.

In 2000, Harper asked an agent to help her publish a comics compilation, and he asked if she’d ever try a children’s book. “The fact that he was an agent and saying that to me made me think, if he thinks I can do it, maybe I can!”

And she could: six months later, she sold one book to Little, Brown and another to Chronicle. Since then, Harper has published more than 20 books, including the Just Grace series (Just Grace Goes Green is volume four; volume five is in the works) and the Fashion Kitty graphic novel series.

While the prospect of juggling so many projects might seem daunting, Harper says she’s found her rhythm. “I’m really good about self-imposed deadlines,” she says. Part of Harper’s job as an author is to plan the projects her characters enthusiastically create. In Just Grace Goes Green, Grace and her friends host a rummage sale, offer helpful ideas to family members and create a diorama in which clay eco-superheroes save the red panda. Harper made and photographed the diorama (see page 99 for the end result).

The character who stars in her series—nicknamed “Just Grace” by a teacher who has several Graces in her class—is a funny, curious kid who mixes over-enthusiasm with empathy for her friends, and the Earth. Having a daughter who is Grace’s age gives Harper insight on the kid’s-eye view of things, but she thinks she’s retained that kid-like worldview herself. “Sometimes, I still can’t believe I’m a parent!” she says. “I feel that, with Grace, I can be the mom and the girl at the same time.”
That helps make Just Grace Goes Green a fun read for kids and adults. For example, Grace becomes determined to save electricity by turning off lights in her house. She wishes that her parents would forget about lights so she can turn them off, and, in her zeal, accidentally leaves her mom in the dark in the basement.

Harper’s daughter is similarly vigilant. “She’s aware you shouldn’t run the tap while you’re brushing your teeth,” she says, adding, “Kids today are being brought up so they won’t have to think about [recycling and the like].”

The author acknowledges that it’s not easy to change long-held habits, but offers a tip: “If I were to pick one thing to start with, [this] would be it—to try not to buy bottled water. If you do buy it and there’s no place to recycle it nearby, you have to decide to carry it home with you.”

Although carrying a reusable bottle or remembering to turn off lights can be tough at first, it’s worth it, Harper says—just look at the happy Earth on the cover of Just Grace Goes Green, or the trees holding hands on the back.

“I love the whimsy of the Earth smiling and talking, the trees saying ‘Thank you for saving me!’ ” But taking a light-hearted look at going green is more than whimsical. After all, as Harper says, “It’s a way of making a bleak topic a lot more approachable and not so scary.” The Earth and the trees would be proud.


Linda M. Castellitto recycles and totes a stainless steel water bottle in North Carolina.

Charise Mericle Harper’s new book, Just Grace Goes Green, is printed on 100-percent recycled paper—perfect for a story about a girl whose teacher announces that her third-grade class will be going green.

The cover of Just Grace Goes Green is just right, too,…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Eileen Spinelli

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Eileen Spinelli is not afraid of commitment. She has belonged to the same Wednesday-morning book group for 20 years. And, since the age of six, she’s been committed to the idea of working with words for a living.

“I fell in love with books and words as a child,” she says. “As I grew older, I wanted to be a poet and wear big hats and long dresses like Edna St. Vincent Millay.”

Although the author wasn’t wearing dramatic attire when she spoke with BookPage from her home near Philadelphia (where she lives with her husband, author Jerry Spinelli), she did share tidbits from her bibliophilic childhood.

“My best friend Gladys and I—she was eight, I was six—would walk to our town library and spend the day. It had swings, we’d bring a lunch, and take the allotted 10 books home in shopping bags,” she says. “The library was my amusement park, my mall—it’s where we went for fun. I grew up in that little world of books.”

Sixty years and 50 books (plus six children and 17 grandchildren) later, the author has created her own world of literature, including the new picture book Princess Pig, which tells the story of an accidental porcine princess.

One day, a hearty gust of wind yanks a “princess” sash from a parade participant and deposits it in Pig’s pen. She takes the sash as a sign—deciding that she is, in fact, Princess Pig—and sets about living the life of a royal. But as the obligations pile up (she must spend hours in the sun posing for a portrait, and she can’t roll in the mud anymore), Pig realizes her new role is a difficult one that’s alienating her from her friends. Ultimately, she tosses aside her teacup crown and cavorts with her barnyard pals once again, happy in the knowledge that a non-princess Pig is a good thing to be.

The author says, “I try to write about things I’m already interested in, or want to know more about.” Princess Pig was sparked by a combination of imagination plus reality (in the form of a documentary Spinelli watched about the royal family). “They work very hard—princesses have a lot of work to do, sometimes five appearances a day,” she says. “And I wanted to show it’s OK to be a pig, or a princess . . . it’s OK to be whoever you are.”

That message is shored up by Tim Bowers’ artwork, full-page illustrations that demonstrate his intuition and skill: the animals’ faces are expressive—hilarious, adorable and kind. Each page bears detailed, appealing art that meshes with the characters’ vivid personae and the book’s engaging rhythm.

Spinelli says of that rhythm, “Writing a picture book is a lot like writing a poem. Language is very important to me, and a lot of my picture books are really poems.”

Spinelli’s first book, 1981’s The Giggle and Cry Book, was a poetry collection, in fact, and numerous picture books and chapter books (including the Lizzie Logan series) have followed. “Every book has a different voice and calls for a different mode of writing,” she says. “I don’t set out to do one or the other, it’s more, how am I going to do this particular idea? The more you do it, the more you have a feel for what works.”

Good information for aspiring writers, to be sure, and Spinelli hasn’t stopped trying new things, either: her first collaboration with husband Jerry, Today I Will: A Year of Quotes, Notes, and Promises to Myself, is due out in October.
“It was great working separately and then coming together and critiquing, but not great being in the same room working on the same book,” she says with a laugh. “I’m really pleased with how it turned out.”

Attentive readers may be wondering how Spinelli’s childhood friendship with Gladys turned out. That story, too, has a happy ending: the girls lost touch when Spinelli’s family moved to a new town, but several years ago, the women reunited at their beloved library.

“That children’s department is now a storage room,” Spinelli says. “The places where the stacks were, and Mrs. Armstrong’s desk—it’s so tiny! But to me, it was the biggest place in the world.”

Linda M. Castellitto is pretty sure her cat is a princess.

 

Eileen Spinelli is not afraid of commitment. She has belonged to the same Wednesday-morning book group for 20 years. And, since the age of six, she’s been committed to the idea of working with words for a living.

“I fell in love…

YA FictionYA

Kristina Springer

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Kristina Springer is unequivocal and unabashed about her love of coffee. She drinks it often, her kitchen is espresso-themed and she’s a devoted customer of her local Starbucks. In fact, during the horse-and-carriage segment of her wedding, she and her husband halted the horses so they could pop in to get coffees and take photos.

It’s fitting, then, that Springer’s debut young adult novel, The Espressologist, is set in a coffee shop—and was written in one, too. Plus, a coffee-related skill Springer possesses was imparted to her main character, 17-year-old Jane Turner: the ability to size up people based on their choice of coffee drink.

“When we were dating, my husband and I would go to coffee shops to hang out and people-watch,” Springer said in an interview from her home just outside Chicago, where she lives with said husband and four young children. “After a while, it occurred to me that I could tell what people will order.”

What remained entertainment for Springer became a matchmaking tool for protagonist Jane. During her shifts at Wired Joe’s, Jane keeps careful notes about customers’ quirks, preferences and characteristics and uses her coffee clairvoyance to steer them toward potential romantic partners.

Jane keeps her unusual skill a secret from mercurial manager Derek, until he overhears a fellow barista refer to Jane as an “Espressologist” and, ever alert to ideas that might boost sales, demands to know the details. That’s all it takes to make the nickname official: Derek decides that, on Friday nights, customers can come in for a coffee and Espressology, courtesy of Jane. Not surprisingly, all sorts of interesting situations ensue.

Springer does a spot-on job of creating those situations, not least by speaking fluent teenager. Anyone who’s worked in a service-industry job will nod in recognition while reading passages about snarky customers and cranky coworkers—and anyone who’s been a teenager will relate to the romantic tension that builds as Jane makes matches for her friends but doesn’t realize she’s overlooking her own perfect romantic partner.

The atmosphere of Wired Joe’s is just right, too. The book’s pages aren’t coffee-scented, but they could be, considering every word was crafted in that favorite Starbucks. Springer says, “I think people thought I was crazy. . . . I was always looking at customers, and I’d hang over the counter after someone ordered a drink and watch how they made it.” She adds, “After a while, I told [the Starbucks employees] what I was doing, and they were very supportive.”

It’s an approach and environment that works for Springer; she says that, although she’s only able to set up at the coffee shop a couple of times a week for a few hours each time, she’s written several novels, including a middle-grade novel due out next year called My Fake Boyfriend Is Better Than Yours.

Now an avid writer of fiction, Springer says she’s long been a devoted reader: “I read tons of books as a young adult; I really liked series. I read 100 of the Sweet Valley High books, and The Girls of Canby Hall books. I was drawn to female authors and characters as a kid.”

Speaking of female authors, Springer says she didn’t have Jane Austen’s Emma in mind when she wrote The Espressologist, but when the book was previewed at the American Library Association conference last summer, Austen fans noticed the similarities and were eager to meet her. When it’s pointed out that she was a bit Austen-like in writing the book—sitting back, quietly observing and writing about people—she says laughingly, “It wasn’t intentional!” But, like Austen, she says, “I eavesdrop all the time. It’s part of the [writer’s] job description.”

Springer adds, “I still don’t know how I did this. I never thought I’d be good at writing fiction,” particularly after obtaining a nonfiction-centric master’s degree in writing and working in technical writing for many years.

“Maybe I just found the right genre and age group,” she says. “My natural voice must be the teen voice.”

Linda M. Castellitto is a former barista who favors tea over coffee.

Kristina Springer is unequivocal and unabashed about her love of coffee. She drinks it often, her kitchen is espresso-themed and she’s a devoted customer of her local Starbucks. In fact, during the horse-and-carriage segment of her wedding, she and her husband halted the horses so…

YA FictionYA

James Patterson

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Motivated by a desire to interest his son, Jack, in reading, super-successful author James Patterson took his first step into young adult fiction in 2005 with the Maximum Ride series, which—like his books for adults—soared straight to the top of bestseller lists. Now the seemingly tireless Patterson is launching a new series for teen readers with the supernatural adventure story Witch & Wizard. The heroes are 15-year-old Wisty (a witch) and 17-year-old Whit (a wizard), a sister and brother whose teenaged existence is rudely interrupted by the arrival of henchmen representing The New Order, a totalitarian regime bent on suppressing any hint of nonconformity. We reached the prolific Patterson at his home office in Palm Beach, Florida, to ask about the new book, his efforts to get kids excited about reading and more. The New Order likely would not approve.

Witch & Wizard paints a foreboding picture of what the world would be like if innovation and curiosity were criminal. What inspired you to tell this story?
The idea for The New Order came about after thinking, what would it be like to have all art, music and freedom of expression taken away? And what if the youth were somehow enabled to fight back for these freedoms that they hold so dear?

What sort of research did you do for the book?
You’ll find that the book is eerily similar to a lot that has happened in recent history. It’s real scary stuff—and scarier still is that people really have enforced such laws outside of Whit and Wisty’s fictitious world.

What do you hope readers will get out of Witch & Wizard?
I don’t really do messages, but I do like a good story. And I hope readers get lost in this one. The book introduces a new world—or worlds, actually—and a strong, fiery brother-and-sister duo. They learn they are a little different when their powers start up, powers that are enhanced as the world around them gets more dangerous. For those who have been waiting for a series as mouthwatering and addictive as Harry Potter, this’ll do it.

Did your son give you any interesting and/or surprising feedback?
Jack is a tough critic. I usually come to him with the finished package and pray that he likes it.

Were you an avid reader as a child?
Although I was a very good student (and high school valedictorian) growing up in Newburgh, New York, I had very little interest in reading for enjoyment—at least initially. I only read when I was required to read. Later in college, when I took a night-shift job at a local hospital to help pay my tuition, I started reading a lot. That’s when I fell in love with books.

How does the child and teen you were then inform your books for young readers today?
I always had a creative spirit. It was when I was older, working at that hospital, that I realized I couldn’t go any longer without writing down all the wild stuff I was witnessing.

What kills me is that so many kids, like me as a boy, miss out on the joy of reading. I believe we should spend less time worrying about the quantity of books children read and more time introducing them to quality books that will turn them on and then them into lifelong readers—they’ll thank us for it.

Do you have a different approach to writing your books for young readers vs. writing your adult fiction?
I don’t discriminate against ideas on the basis of the audiences they’re best for.  I like to think I do romances when it’s a romantic storyline, I do thrillers when they’re thrilling, and I write for kids when the idea for a story would work best with them. The various characters bring about the books’ differences more than a conscious decision to write a different way.

What do you hope to accomplish with your children’s book website, ReadKiddoRead.com?
We need to let parents know on a regular basis that “good parents give great books.” It’s surprising how many people don’t really think to do that; they rely on schools, or think the reading habit will kick in on its own. ReadKiddoRead lists only the best books out of the thousands of children’s books published every year—it’s an easy tool for parents to see what’s out there that will actually work to get their kids engaged. I also talk to a lot of great authors, and we give away free books every month.

Will there be more Whit and Wisty books? Any tidbits you can share?
Assuming they make it out alive in the first . . . yes, there will be more.

What’s next?
Stay tuned for an illustrated series I’m working on about middle school. And the sixth book in the Maximum Ride series, Fang, will be out in March.

Photo by Kelly Campbell.

CORRECTION: This article has been updated to reflect the fact that the book's main characters are siblings but not twins.

RELATED CONTENT

Our 2009 holiday interview with Patterson
Review of Patterson's first nonfiction book, The Murder of King Tut
 

Motivated by a desire to interest his son, Jack, in reading, super-successful author James Patterson took his first step into young adult fiction in 2005 with the Maximum Ride series, which—like his books for adults—soared straight to the top of bestseller lists. Now the seemingly…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Rita Williams-Garcia

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

When she began to write her eighth novel, Rita Williams-Garcia decided to try something different. “Every writer should get a little antsy once they get too familiar with the worlds they create—if that happens, you’re not working hard enough, and there’s not enough in it for you as a writer,” she says in an interview from her home in Queens, New York. “I have a very different background from the kids I tend to write about, so I thought, for a change, why not tap into the childhood I did have?”

And so she did, setting One Crazy Summer on the West Coast rather than in her usual locale of New York City. “My sister, brother and I were always amusing ourselves in the wide-open spaces of Seaside, California. I was determined to have the three girls in my story run around outside in California in the 1960s, too.”

Eleven-year-old Delphine and younger sisters Vonetta and Fern live in Brooklyn with their father, Papa, and grandmother, Big Ma. The adults decide to have the girls spend the summer of 1968 in Oakland, California, with their mother, Cecile, who left them after Fern was born. Big Ma has never forgiven her, but Papa prevails, and off they go.

The scenes depicting the girls at airports are just a few of the many moments in One Crazy Summer wherein the author’s gift for combining everyday settings with social commentary and wry wit make for memorable, but not heavy-handed, reading. Delphine rolls her eyes (and bites her tongue) when she and her sisters are stared at as if “on display at the Bronx Zoo,” and the girls engage in what Williams-Garcia calls “colored counting.” It’s an activity she and her siblings “did everywhere. It was a time when, in public places, you might not see a lot of African-American people. We’d count how many of us were there, how many words we got to say on TV.”

These small but telling moments are the ones that most interest Williams-Garcia. “Usually I don’t like to do ‘the race book’ because it’s not how people live,” she says. “Not to say racism doesn’t exist, but it’s not this moment-to-moment consciousness. I like to include the domestic, intimate things about race and identity that never really make it into books or media—you mainly get big or dramatic events of racism, violence or discrimination.”

Thus, when none other than the Black Panthers become part of the sisters’ everyday lives, there aren’t cinematic goings-on at every turn. Sure, the girls initially are anxious when Cecile sends them on all-day visits to the Panthers-run community center, where they have free breakfast and learn about the group’s political causes and views. And the political rally at book’s end certainly is exciting.

But in between, the children develop friendships and enjoy being part of something larger than themselves, even if they understand only some of what’s going on at the center. Cecile keeps a printing press for the Panthers in her kitchen, which she fiercely protects as her own space for working, thinking and writing her poetry.

Cecile and the other women in One Crazy Summer—smart, strong, often unrepentant—are in many ways like Williams-Garcia’s own late mother, whose influence was central to another change in approach for the author. Her previous work—including the 2009 National Book Award Finalist Jumped—“always seemed to mourn the loss of childhood,” she says. This time, “I decided to celebrate my experiences. My mother was the super-mother of all mothers; she made it clear there was only one woman in her house, and my sister and I did not qualify.”

With that in mind, she wanted to have a chasm between mother and children in One Crazy Summer. “I respect the difference between parent and child. Delphine and her sisters haven’t earned their mother’s story, and she hasn’t earned their forgiveness.”

Ultimately, what is attainable for Cecile and her children is a truce of sorts, one characterized by hope for mother and daughters, as well as the America they’re living in.

As for Williams-Garcia, herself the mother of two daughters, she’s hoping to challenge herself even more via her next book, a gaming novel: “I’m estrogen-ed out—it’s time for me to write about a boy.”

Linda M. Castellitto writes from North Carolina.

When she began to write her eighth novel, Rita Williams-Garcia decided to try something different. “Every writer should get a little antsy once they get too familiar with the worlds they create—if that happens, you’re not working hard enough, and there’s not enough in it…

YA FictionYA

Lynne Rae Perkins

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

The writing and artwork in Lynne Rae Perkins’ books spring from her ever-creative, Renaissance-woman brain—but her family has played a role in many of her works, too, from 2006 Newbery winner Criss Cross to her new teen novel.

In Criss Cross, a photo sequence shows a comb falling out of a character’s pocket. The model? Her husband, Bill. “We did a really low-tech staging session,” she says in an interview from her home in Northern Lower Michigan.

As Easy As Falling Off the Face of the Earth involved her husband (an anecdote from his father made its way into the plot), 16-year-old son (her research-road-trip companion) and college-student daughter (who suggested the book’s final line).

This dovetails nicely with the book’s themes, which center on family—both the blood-relatives kind and the true-friends sort. At the heart of the novel is 16-year-old Ry, who’s off to archaeology camp for the summer, until he learns the camp has shut down. When his train stops for a short break, he disembarks to call his grandfather, who is house- and dog-sitting while Ry’s parents enjoy an island vacation. Alas, Ry’s train leaves without him, he can’t get any cell phone reception, and he’s left alone many miles from the nearest town.

He presses on, though, moving from head-shaking disbelief to a sort of dream-state acceptance combined with a determination to get to his family, even if he has no idea how that’s going to work. Talk about a wacky summer vacation.

Perkins says the story began to percolate in her brain after she read Mark Salzman’s The Laughing Sutra. “I read a description that called it a ‘picaresque.’ I didn’t know the exact definition, so I looked it up, and the dictionary said it’s a story told in episodes with a rogue as the main character.”

“At the same time,” she says, “I was thinking about a friend who died in an accident when my son was a year old. He was a really interesting character and I wish my son could’ve known him. I thought I’d introduce them in the book.”

Indeed, when Ry meets Del, a smart, laid-back fellow with MacGyverish tendencies, his life gets even more exhaustingly exciting and surprising. Adventures range from a comical shoe-shopping expedition to falling out of a tree to a grand trek by air, land and sea.

But Ry isn’t the only one who finds himself engaged in assorted escapades: Perkins gives the reader dispatches from Ry’s parents’ vacation and his grandfather’s misadventures, the former amid palm trees, the latter, maple and aspen. And the dogs—oh, the hilarious dogs, whose exploits we follow via black-and-white comic-book-style panels tucked in among the text.

“[The idea for that] just popped into my mind one day,” Perkins says. “I was thinking about The Incredible Journey and how funny it would be if the dogs didn’t know where they were going. I sent scribbled sketches to my editor, and she went for it.”

Ideas like that are what sets Perkins’ work apart. Criss Cross was lauded for its mélange of words—including haiku and Q&As—and art. Like that book, As Easy As Falling Off the Face of the Earth combines imagery and words that illustrate what it’s like to be a teenager who longs for freedom and excitement . . . and what happens when he gets it.

Fortunately, Perkins’ longstanding relationship with Greenwillow Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, has afforded her artistic freedom. “Not that they’ll publish anything I do,” she says with a laugh. “But I’ve always felt respected, and they raise really good questions.”

Greenwillow gave Perkins a start on her unexpected path to becoming a writer. “I was trying to get work as an illustrator, and Ava Weiss at Greenwillow asked me if I wrote. I had a story I’d written just for the sake of doing illustrations for my portfolio, and they published it: Home Lovely, my first book, in 1995.”

Since then, Perkins has created six picture books and three novels, moving between age groups as well as juggling drawing and writing. She says, “I needed to reassure myself periodically because I was more confident about the drawing than the writing. I’m starting to feel more comfortable with writing, though.”

Her current project takes her back to art: illustrating a picture book by Esmé Raji Codell. “It’s my first time illustrating someone else’s book, which is what I originally wanted to do,” Perkins says. “Now I’ll find out if I really can do it.”

The writing and artwork in Lynne Rae Perkins’ books spring from her ever-creative, Renaissance-woman brain—but her family has played a role in many of her works, too, from 2006 Newbery winner Criss Cross to her new teen novel.

In Criss Cross, a photo sequence shows…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Cynthia Lord

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

There’s a slip of paper, pulled from a fortune cookie, taped to Cynthia Lord’s computer monitor. It says, “Someday your talents will be recognized and suitably rewarded.”

Happily, those encouraging words turned out to be prescient ones. “I put the fortune on my computer monitor as a joke,” Lord says in an interview from her home in Maine. “But I sold my first novel, Rules, two weeks later.”

That fortune was still around when Rules was named a 2007 Newbery Honor Book, and it remains with the author today. When it’s time to discard a computer monitor, “I peel [the fortune] off and apply it to the new one!”

The seeming magic of superstition doesn’t just figure into Lord’s life; it’s a central element of her heartwarming second novel, Touch Blue. The layered story is narrated by 11-year-old Tess Brooks, a smart, earnest girl who loves her island home and is determined to keep things they way they’ve always been, whether through wishing, working or some combination thereof.

Tess’ beloved island is off the coast of Maine, a place where lobster fishing is a common occupation and kids of all ages learn together in a single schoolhouse. Tess’ mother is in danger of losing her teaching job, and the community, its school: The state is threatening to close it down because of low enrollment. If the island doesn’t get more students, its residents will have to move to the mainland and leave behind their homes, livelihoods and special way of life.

Their solution? Take in foster children in an effort to save the school and do good at the same time. Although it might seem like a wild idea, “a little school in Maine in the 1960s did that to save their school,” Lord says. And she knows what it’s like to worry about such things, having taught at a Maine island school in her pre-author days. “My books always have personal experiences in them,” she says, adding that her commute from the mainland “was very romantic . . . except for December through March.”

In Touch Blue, Tess’ new foster brother arrives on a boat (in nice weather, fortunately), and she’s very excited to meet him, not least because she’s read books about foster children, like The Great Gilly Hopkins and Bud, Not Buddy. At first, she’s disappointed by 13-year-old Aaron’s reticence, not to mention his skepticism of her neighbors’ interest in knowing everyone’s business. But over time, despite run-ins with a bully and somewhat stressful preparations for a talent show, Tess learns she can’t control everything, and Aaron grows to like being around people who care enough to meddle.

Under Lord’s writerly hand, those realizations bring their own kind of comfort, the sort that even age-old superstitions cannot provide. “As a kid, you think you’re not in control of the things you care about. Superstitions are one way that people deal with that,” Lord says.

To that end, there are superstitious sayings at the start of every chapter in Touch Blue (finding them all, Lord said, “took a lot of research!”). The book’s title is drawn from one such saying—“Touch blue and your wish will come true”—and, in keeping with the book’s real-life feel, Lord notes that “lobster fishermen are often very superstitious.”

Like the fishermen—and the characters in Touch Blue—Lord loves the ocean. “I can even smell it from my front yard. It’s always so different. . . . Sometimes it’s blue, or gray or green. You never know what you’ll see.”

Her love for the water began in her childhood in New Hampshire, when she lived near a lake. It was part of everyday life, whether swimming or ice skating. “I was a voracious reader,” she adds. “I loved to lay down on the wharf and read all afternoon.”

Her next book will be set in New Hampshire, in “those beautiful mountains” around her childhood home. But first, she’ll be spending more time on the islands of Maine: Lord says she does some 40 school visits a year, and for Touch Blue she’ll go to schools like the one in the book.

Surely, thanks to what she learned writing Touch Blue—not to mention the fortune she has taped to her computer—Lord will keep in mind the superstition from chapter three: “Start your journey with your right foot and good luck will walk with you.”

There’s a slip of paper, pulled from a fortune cookie, taped to Cynthia Lord’s computer monitor. It says, “Someday your talents will be recognized and suitably rewarded.”

Happily, those encouraging words turned out to be prescient ones. “I put the fortune on my computer monitor…

YA FictionYA

Tim Tharp

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Tim Tharp didn’t start out writing novels for teens. But after visiting book clubs to talk about his first book, Falling Dark (winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize), he says, “I had such a good time talking to high school students about it, I thought, I’m going to write a novel for them.”

The idea stuck—and it’s been working well, to say the least. His debut YA novel, Knights of the Hill Country, was named to the ALA Best Books of 2007 list. His second, The Spectacular Now, was a 2008 National Book Award finalist and has been optioned for a movie.

His newest, BADD, is a creative and moving exploration of what happens when a young soldier named Bobby returns home from war, no longer able to relate to the life—or self—he’d left behind.

Bobby always was a rebellious sort, a charming risk-taker whose antics inspired the book’s title, as explained by narrator Ceejay, Bobby’s adoring younger sister: “He was wild and he was B-A-D-D, BADD.”  Things got worse when he stole a car; that’s when he had to choose between the army or jail.

But after several tours of duty, he’s finally coming home, and Ceejay is unbearably excited, not least because of her big plan: They’ll move in together, get jobs and escape their small town. She plans to surprise Bobby with the idea, but is herself surprised when she sees him in town—which can’t be right, because that’d mean he was home early, and didn’t tell her he was coming.

Soon, a lot of things don’t seem right to Ceejay, who’s already frustrated from her arguments with Captain Crazy, a wildly eccentric local man whose anti-war protests make her angry and defensive. Then there are her parents—her unfailing perky mom, and her dad, who doesn’t understand anything, least of all her.

The inspiration for BADD was drawn from a mix of old and new influences, Tharp says from his home outside Oklahoma City. “It was partially inspired by what’s going on in our country right now, but it was also a story idea I’d had in mind for years. This one was going to be a post-World War I novel.”

The idea morphed into something different when some of his students at a local community college began coming back from Iraq. “A few of them had post-traumatic stress disorder. . . . I started thinking that was something important to take a look at,” he recalls.

Tharp took an additional layer of care with an already delicate subject because “the suburb I live in is an Air Force town. There is that feeling of wanting to do them justice.”

In fact, the author’s father was a WWII veteran who told Tharp stories about his experiences. “I always thought having the perspective of a young person on a returning soldier would be interesting,” he says. “But really, the driving force was to investigate different aspects of courage, besides just facing physical violence like you see in movies.”

That off-the-field courage is a quality Ceejay possesses, though she doesn’t know it at first. She’s occupied with her confusion and hurt at the changes in her brother, who, to her shock, starts spending time with Captain Crazy. And her mother’s perkiness, at first annoying, reveals itself to be something else entirely: a choice to remain upbeat, no matter what—itself a type of strength.

“Ceejay has to rely on different kinds of courage, like perseverance and standing up behind someone you love. The kind she draws upon is something I think women have more access to than men, who are supposed to put on a tough act,” Tharp says. “Ceejay starts looking around and realizes she’s more like the women in her family than she thought she was.”

That’s a challenging emotional journey for people of any age, but Tharp said it doesn’t occur to him to shy away from what some might view as heavy topics for a YA book. “I grew up hearing those war stories from my dad, and both my parents died of cancer. I’ve gone through those kinds of battles myself, so I drew upon them.”

After all, he adds, “Kids do go through these kinds of things. I think it’d be good for them to have a book, so if they’re going through something, they see the characters are, too. . . And a lot of kids read adult novels. Why not bring that complexity to the YA novel itself?”

It’s the very complexity of BADD that makes it such a memorable read; amid the struggle and catharsis are humor, beauty, wonder and hope. Tharp says it wasn’t an easy book to write: “It was kind of draining, but satisfying at the same time, like doing a good physical workout.”

Turning the last page of BADD is sure to leave readers feeling the same—a little worn out, a lot more clear-eyed and suffused with the glow that comes from knowing they’ve just finished something important.

 

Tim Tharp didn’t start out writing novels for teens. But after visiting book clubs to talk about his first book, Falling Dark (winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize), he says, “I had such a good time talking to high school students about it, I…

LifestylesHealth & Fitness

Timothy Ferriss

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Timothy Ferriss published his first book, The 4-Hour Workweek, in 2007, and in a self-promotion tour de force, went from a little-known investor and business advisor to a best-selling author whose blog garners a million-plus visitors a month.

When it came time to find volunteers for his new book, The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman, hundreds of his fans joined experiments in diet, exercise, sex and more. But the title of head guinea pig goes to Ferriss himself. He underwent thousands of blood tests, traveled as many miles and compiled hundreds of case studies on everything from weight loss to sexual behavior to learning to swim in 10 days. Ferriss took some downtime to answer questions about the new book, his obsessions and why his methods are most likely to succeed.

Your first book struck a chord with readers. What made you write your second book about body rather than work? Did you view the change in topics as a risk or a natural progression?

The wider world thinks I’m obsessed with time management, but they haven’t seen the other—much more legitimate, much more ridiculous—obsession. I’ve recorded almost every workout I’ve done since age 18. Since 2004, I’ve tracked everything from complete lipid panels to free testosterone. I’ve had stem cell growth factors imported from Israel to reverse “permanent” injuries. . . . I’ve spent more than $250,000 on testing and tweaking over the last decade. And that was just to satisfy my own curiosity and improve my own physical machine.
 
Then I had a conversation with a WIRED magazine writer, in which we joked that the main fears of modern men and women could be boiled down to two things: e-mail overload [addressed in The 4-Hour Workweek]and getting fat. Shortly thereafter, I realized I had to write The 4-Hour Body. It is, without a doubt, a natural progression, a risk and the most important thing I’ve ever written.

Any book that addresses eating and exercise is met with skepticism, most likely because people find it difficult to remain motivated. How will your approach be more effective for readers?

Big changes seldom work. The 4-Hour Body is intended to answer one question: What are the smallest changes that produce the biggest physical changes? To illustrate the point: Even if someone has 100 pounds to lose, I wouldn’t have them start diet and exercise at the same time. Why? The exercise often triggers “reward” meals, more overeating and abandonment of the new program after a few weeks of plateauing. Instead, I have them focus on one small change that can produce three to five pounds of fat loss in a single week, such as changing breakfast to include at least 20 grams of protein. Using this small-step approach, compliance is incredible: 58 percent of test subjects I tracked indicated my diet was the first diet they’d ever been able to follow. Many lost 20 pounds the first month, and some lost 100-plus pounds total.

You recommend a Slow-Carb Diet, and characterize it as “better fat-loss through simplicity.” Tenets include avoiding “white” carbs, eating the same few meals and cheating one day a week. Why are these practices so effective?

Because the diet removes any paradox of choice. The more decisions someone has to make, the more they’ll make mistakes or give up and revert to old behaviors. The Slow-Carb Diet removes the need to think, and offers one day a week to do whatever you want. That one day—a stress release valve that also accelerates fat loss—means you’re not giving up your favorite foods forever, just six days at a time. After testing all the diets and fads, this is the best, most enjoyable approach I’ve found for sustained fat loss. I’ve been doing it for more than five years.

You’ve included explicit sexual advice in the book. Why? Did anyone try to discourage you from being so detailed?

Sex is a fundamental part of life, but there’s very little mainstream discussion of how to improve sex with real specifics. Also, most sexual advice is based on a footnote from a book, based on yet another book—there’s no testing. I tested it all, and had others replicate my success with things like the 15-minute orgasm. For many readers, this will easily be the most important part of the book. But did my publisher let me include my explicit photos? Nope. We had to make them detailed illustrations.

Anything I haven’t asked that BookPage readers should know?
At least 50 percent of the case studies are women. This isn’t a book only for 30-something guys. It’s for anyone who’d like to become the best version of themselves possible. 

 

Timothy Ferriss published his first book, The 4-Hour Workweek, in 2007, and in a self-promotion tour de force, went from a little-known investor and business advisor to a best-selling author whose blog garners a million-plus visitors a month.

When it came time to find volunteers for…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Rick Riordan

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Rick Riordan’s writing space is not decorated with images of mythical creatures or epic battle scenes—what one might expect from a teller of fantastical, dramatic tales like The Kane Chronicles trilogy.

The first book in the best-selling series, The Red Pyramid, debuted last year, and book two, The Throne of Fire, was released May 3. But despite the book’s title, there is no fiery throne—the author sits on a regular desk chair. “My office is pretty nondescript,” he says in an interview from his home in San Antonio, Texas, “just a room with a computer.”

 

"It's a typical week in the life of the Kane family," Riordan laughs. "Gods are annoying that way."

And he laughs when asked if he’s an exceptionally organized person. He’d have to be, in order to write two children’s book series at once (The Kane Chronicles and The Heroes of Olympus), hard on the heels of an earlier series (Percy Jackson and the Olympians), plus helming a multi-author series (The 39 Clues), not to mention doing plenty of signings and events, right?

“Not really,” Riordan replies. “I’m very easily distracted and don’t normally sit for 10 hours at a stretch staring at the screen. I do hit-and-run writing.” He adds, “I’m writing a book every six months now. I wanted to see if I could pull it off. It’s made me a lot more disciplined and productive.”

Riordan is no stranger to such brainbending scenarios—before he started writing for kids, he was a middle school teacher and the author of the award-winning Tres Navarre adult mystery series. “When I got the contract to write kids’ books as well, I didn’t want to leave teaching, but I felt like I had one too many balls in the air,” he says.

And so, after some 15 years as an English and history teacher, Riordan left to pursue writing full time. Thanks to his books’ popularity, though, he’s found himself in classrooms, libraries and bookstores all over the country, meeting eager young fans that often number in the thousands.
“I’ve had amazing crowds,” Riordan says. “Thanks to my teaching background, I like to give every kid my attention, and I don’t always get to spend the one-on-one time I used to be able to have. But the kids are so great—even if they have to wait in line for a long time, they’re so excited to be there, they jump up and down.”

Books didn’t make a young Riordan jump for joy, however; at least, not at first. “I really was a reluctant reader in elementary school,” he says. “Dyslexia runs in my family. I was never diagnosed, but I have a feeling it maybe was part of my struggle.” Eventually, book recommendations from his teachers (“I had wonderful English teachers—they got me into mythology”) and maternal encouragement turned Riordan into an avid reader. “My mother got me interested in storytelling; she was really instrumental in my path as a reader and writer,” he says.

It’s fitting, then, that a character inspired by his mother is at the heart of The Kane Chronicles: Sadie Kane, a confident and clever 12-year-old raised in London by her grandparents after her mother’s death. 

“My mom was an Air Force kid who grew up in London and moved back to the U.S. in high school,” Riordan says. “She felt she didn’t really belong in either country and was caught between two cultures. It was an interesting dynamic for me to play around with.”

Sadie’s 14-year-old brother, Carter, stays with their father, a globe-trotting Egyptologist who, after six years apart, reunites the siblings on a Christmas Eve trip to the British Museum. No boring excursion, that: It touches off a series of ever-wilder events and revelations, including the fact that they’re descended from ancient Egyptian pharaohs and have special powers that they must harness so they can use them to save their father from the angry Egyptian gods he has unleashed.

And that’s just book one! In book two, The Throne of Fire, the Kanes discover that Apophis (who’s even more evil than the kids’ nemesis, Set, in The Red Pyramid) wants to “come back, rule the world, swallow the sun and ruin everybody’s day,” Riordan says. The only way to stop Apophis is to bring back his archenemy and find the Book of Ra . . . in one week. “It’s a typical week in the life of the Kane family,” Riordan laughs. “Gods are annoying that way.”

The gods may be, but the books sure aren’t—whether it’s sibling rivalry, talking animals or learning that parents are only human (or are they?), The Kane Chronicles are exciting, edifying and enthralling. Readers will learn about mythology and geography, ponder family and identity, and thrill to the suspense that builds with the turn of every page.

As readers join Carter and Sadie on their adventures in The Throne of Fire, Riordan will be working on book three of The Kane Chronicles and book one of The Heroes of Olympus (a sequel series to Percy Jackson and the Olympians). He’ll also be spending time with his family and fitting in book tours, too.

For now, though, most of Riordan’s time will be spent in his nondescript office. “I’ve had to cut back on the amount of visiting I do,” he says. “For now, the best way I can communicate [with my readers] is writing the best books I can as fast as I can.”

Rick Riordan’s writing space is not decorated with images of mythical creatures or epic battle scenes—what one might expect from a teller of fantastical, dramatic tales like The Kane Chronicles trilogy.

The first book in the best-selling series, The Red Pyramid, debuted last year,…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Kathryn Erskine

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

For Kathryn Erskine, art imitates life—deliberately. “I love reading and learning things from fiction,” she says, “and I figured others would, too.”

They certainly do: Her third novel, the 2010 National Book Award winner Mockingbird, features a fifth grader named Caitlin, who was inspired by Erskine’s daughter; both have Asperger’s syndrome.

In Erskine’s engaging new novel, The Absolute Value of Mike, the main character has a math-related learning disability that creates friction with his engineering-obsessed father. Once again, Erskine drew on the experiences of a family member—her son, who has a learning disability. The author says she’s learned a lot from him and wanted to incorporate those lessons in The Absolute Value of Mike. “I was a kid who got straight A’s, and thought that’s what you should do, that it meant you were smart,” she says by phone from her home in Charlottesville, Virginia. “My son does fine, but he’s not a straight-A kind of kid, and I realized he has all these life skills—he understands people, and he’s a problem-solver. I’ve learned great grades don’t guarantee success.”

The author wants kids to understand that, too. “I see children with learning disabilities or other issues who are down on themselves,” Erskine says. “I’d like them to take the message away that we all have something to contribute, and we need to follow whatever our passion is.”

Young readers will empathize with Mike’s frustration at his father’s insistence that math would be easier if he only tried harder—and they’ll share his trepidation when he’s sent to stay with relatives in rural Pennsylvania for the summer and work on an engineering project.

Mike becomes impatient with the project, but he is intrigued when he learns of a town-wide effort to raise money to adopt a little boy from Romania. Readers will be moved as Mike becomes part of something bigger than himself—and gains self-confidence in the process.

While a young Erskine wouldn’t have been daunted by a Pennsylvania trip (she lived in several countries as a child, thanks to her parents’ foreign-service jobs), she does know about international adoption—both her children are from Russia. “[Adoption] is something I thought others might not know that much about, but they’d be interested.”

Right now, Erskine is herself interested in a few different projects: an adult novel “for a change of pace”; a picture book “as an exercise to force myself to use very few words to get my point across”; and historical fiction for middle-grade readers.

“I don’t even want to use the h-word, because it turns kids off sometimes, but history is like a fantasy world—except it really happened!” Readers won’t need convincing. Thanks to books like Mockingbird and The Absolute Value of Mike, it’s clear that, if anyone can make learning an enjoyable experience, Erskine can.

For Kathryn Erskine, art imitates life—deliberately. “I love reading and learning things from fiction,” she says, “and I figured others would, too.”

They certainly do: Her third novel, the 2010 National Book Award winner Mockingbird, features a fifth grader named Caitlin, who was inspired by Erskine’s…

YA FictionYA

Lauren Kate

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Being 17 and in love can be glorious, but what if the object of your affection is a fallen angel? And you’re both beset by an ancient curse? No wonder Lucinda “Luce” Price spends a lot of her time feeling confused and frustrated in Passion, the latest installment in the Fallen series by Lauren Kate.

If fan enthusiasm and sales figures are any indication, readers will thrill at re-entering the dark, dramatic world Kate has created, all the better to cheer on their beloved Luce as she sets out on a quest for clarity, safety and love. The first two books in the series, Fallen and Torment, were New York Times bestsellers, and Kate routinely gets eager crowds at book signings here and abroad.

In an interview from her home in Laurel Canyon, California, Kate says it was at her very first signing that a reader uttered the “best question [she’d] ever been asked.” The author recalled, “I read this really frustrating, annoying fight scene between [the characters], and their special love isn’t really visible if you read the scene alone. But an 11-year-old girl came up to me afterward—she waited until everyone was gone, and then asked quietly, ‘Do you really think a love that beautiful exists in the world?’ ” 

“It was amazing,” Kate recalls. “That she could see into it, and was open enough to imagine what lay beyond those pages, was really cool.” And yes, the author adds, “I do believe in that love very strongly. When Fallen came out, I’d been married for three months.” 

Nearly two years later, even Kate’s husband sometimes gets to feel the affection of fans: “We went to the Philippines for a book signing, and there was a long line. People went up to him, saying, ‘I’ll never get to the front, can I just take a picture with you?’” 

Kate’s belief in a “magical connection that’s gorgeous and attainable” resonates in her voice when she talks about her husband—and her characters, Luce and Daniel, who in Passion demonstrate their willingness to take all manner of risks in service of being together. 

In Fallen, Luce finds herself in reform school in Savannah, Georgia, where she meets Daniel and his friends, “and realizes she’s been swept up in a longstanding curse,” Kate says. Luce parts from Daniel and goes to California in Torment; “it’s a growing-pains book, an awakening book that prepares her for the excitement of discovering her past.”

And discover it, she does: In Passion, the boundaries of the U.S.—not to mention time and space—are roundly broken when Luce travels from Kentucky to England to China to Israel to Egypt, and from 2009 to the 1700s to 3100 BCE, among other locations and centuries. She and her friends (and enemies?) do so by way of Announcers, shadowy supernatural entities that serve as unusually swift, albeit unpredictable, modes of transportation. 

Luce’s and Daniel’s quest to understand and break the anti-love curse makes for an exciting pace, with plenty of surprises and humor to balance the agony and fear the two experience as they jump through time. They never know where they’ll surface (the bathtub? A war zone? The edge of a cliff?). Then there’s Bill the helpful gargoyle, who does a fabulous job as Luce’s stylist (he specializes in “un-Anachronizing”). Is he as nice as he seems?

Another big question: Is it the curse that’s keeping them apart, or is there some larger message about love between an angel and a mortal, and connections between the heavenly and the earthly? Such matters first pinged on Kate’s writerly radar in graduate school, when she took a course in the Bible as literature.

“I was kind of at a wall with another romance novel I was working on. It was just about these two people, and was insular in a confining way. I wanted to do something that would implicate a lot more people, even the entire world,” she says. 

References to angels in biblical texts piqued her interest, and she began to have regular conversations with her professor, who made a statement that became a turning point for the author. “I was struggling as I read different texts, with all these discrepancies [about angels]. I asked her what to do, and she smirked and said, what do you think Milton did? Just pick what’s relevant to you and the story—you’ll never find definitive answers for reasons that defy explanation.”

And with that, Kate’s writing took off. “It empowered me to say, this is my story. I will do research and pick the pieces that fit,” she says. 

One way of doing that: layers of references to other books she’s loved and learned from, particularly novels. For example, in preparation for writing about Milan, Kate read A Farewell to Arms; for Moscow, The Master and Margarita; and for 1600s London, she turned to her Shakespeare-scholar husband (he’s pursing a Ph.D. in poetry). “It was fun to look back and realize these incredible novels I already love are set in time periods I could explore in Passion, and my husband is probably one of my best readers.”

He’ll soon have more work to do, because Kate is in the midst of writing Rapture, the final book in the series (due out in 2012). Just as Passion elevates the series onto an even more dramatic and exciting plane, Rapture represents yet another new frontier. 

“At the beginning of the series, I wondered—am I going to go there, and have Lucifer and God be characters? It’s challenging . . . it feels strange to imagine your own version of heaven and put it on paper. And the godly force, the physical reality of God, I’m working on that. It’s a very delicate balance, still.”

There’s one area in which Kate is unwavering: She loves writing about 17-year-old girls. “That age is very inspiring to me. To be 17 holds so much gravity, so much possibility. So many fraught situations are going to be inevitable at that age, that liminal place between girlhood and adulthood.” 

It’s a time her readers know, or remember, well. And they’ll be happy to hear that Kate has no plans to shift her focus:  “I can see myself writing about this age forever.”

 

Being 17 and in love can be glorious, but what if the object of your affection is a fallen angel? And you’re both beset by an ancient curse? No wonder Lucinda “Luce” Price spends a lot of her time feeling confused and frustrated in Passion,…

Fiction

Hillary Jordan

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

We’ve heard of suffering for your art, but writer Hillary Jordan took things to a new level while researching her latest novel—she almost got herself arrested by suspicious border guards.

In an interview from her home in Brooklyn, the author says she likes to “get a feel for the landscape, how people speak, how things smell,” as she did for her first book, the bestseller Mudbound, and again for her provocative new novel, When She Woke. 

That’s where the almost-arrested part came in. Jordan had been “in the throes” of finishing When She Woke during a five-week -writers’ retreat, and “by the end, I was literally almost out of my mind. But I needed to go to the Canadian border, because that’s [one of the places] Hannah goes in the book.”

When the border guard asked why Jordan was there, “I said I was researching my book, looking at how to get my heroine across illegally.” An on-the-spot investigation ensued: “They went through my entire car, my papers, and found evidence that I’m not a drug trafficker—just a complete idiot,” she recalls.

Jordan’s provocative new novel is a politically charged re-imagining of 'The Scarlet Letter.'

Of course, Jordan has clearly proven that she’s no dummy: Mudbound, a novel set in the tense racial landscape of post-World War II Mississippi, garnered critical acclaim and won Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize for fiction dealing with social justice issues. Her new novel, When She Woke, is another thought-provoking story—one that will have readers thrilling to its suspenseful plot even as they re-examine their stance on everything from religion to social stigma to our prison system. 

The aforementioned heroine, Hannah, is at the heart of this engrossing dystopian story—which is, Jordan says, a “re-imagining or riff” on The Scarlet Letter. Like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s heroine, Hester Prynne, Hannah finds her personal business made painfully public. When the novel opens, she awakens to discover her skin glowing red as punishment for having an abortion—a crime in the near-future society Jordan has created. 

Through Hannah, Jordan paints a vivid, disturbing picture of a time and place where church has melded with state and privacy is only for the privileged. Like Hannah, offenders must wear their actions via a damning color-coded system implanted in the skin—and the condemned aren’t imprisoned, but released to fend for themselves among hostile, often violent, fellow citizens.

This frightening state of affairs took shape in Jordan’s mind in 2007, when she found herself “concerned about what was happening in our country: the muddying of the line between church and state, attempts by many states to limit women’s reproductive freedom, governmental intrusion on people’s civil rights.” 

Although both of her novels address controversial social issues, Jordan doesn’t see herself as a political writer. “I feel I’m first and foremost a storyteller,” she says.

She emphasizes that, in When She Woke, “I’m not condemning faith in any way. In fact, the presentation of the abortion issue is not black and white at all, although it’s less black and white than I feel: I’m pro-choice, and feel abortion should be legal and rare. But I tried to portray the difficulty and agony of it for people, and I think it’s a subject about which people can disagree.”

As she wrote about characters who question the belief system in which they’ve been raised, Jordan found herself rethinking things, too. “It was an exploration of faith for me as well, which was interesting,” she says. “I’ve written two books about people of faith, but I’ve always been an agnostic, pretty much. I’m still figuring things out.”

The importance of taking time to figure things out—and staying open to the possibility of being wrong about something—are central themes in When She Woke.

Jordan says it’s unlikely she would have written this book without having gone through her own awakening, during which she left behind her life as an unhappily married, unfulfilled advertising copywriter. 

“I didn’t want to wake up at 60 and not have done this thing,” she says. “I didn’t want an ordinary life, I wanted the crazy, insane life of a writer.” 

And so, over the course of a year, she got a divorce, quit her job and moved from Texas to New York to attend graduate school at Columbia, where she wrote Mudbound and the first pages of When She Woke. 

Jordan has certainly been embracing the writerly life: She has completed 10 writer’s residencies and is about to embark on an “epic” tour to promote her latest novel (following on the 80-event tour she did for Mudbound).

After that, she’ll work on her third book. “I have something in mind for it, but I’m still deciding. I’m so upset about so many things right now,” she says with a laugh.

We’ve heard of suffering for your art, but writer Hillary Jordan took things to a new level while researching her latest novel—she almost got herself arrested by suspicious border guards.

In an interview from her home in Brooklyn, the author says she likes to “get a…

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