Archive for the ‘writing colleagues’ Category

In conjunction with the release of Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature (March 1), I have arranged some stops on a virtual tour. Today, I am visiting Mary Ann Rodman on Teaching Authors. I met Mary Ann when she came to Lemuria to sign her first novel, Yankee Girl. I invited her to Davis Magnet School a few times to talk about two of her books, My Best Friend and First Grade Stinks. She’s been an inspiration and generous with helpful advice and encouragement. I hope you’ll come over and read the interview. I included a few activities for using photography to teach writing.

This month, I am the featured guest on WritingSnacks.com, a website with lots of useful information for writers. Dana Cleveland Konop and Melissa Thomas-Dubois, two of my colleagues in the Southern Breeze region of SCBWI, created the site.

As the title would suggest, one of the things you’ll find out in the interview is my favorite writing snack.

Big news today for Hester Bass! Her book, The Secret World of Walter Anderson, won the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children. This is wonderful news for Hester, for the book, and for the legacy of Walter Anderson. Many, many more people will learn about his extraordinary life and art. Way to go, Hester!

In November, I talked with Hester about the book and featured a video of her reading the opening lines. Click here to see that post. Hester also presented at my sons’ school, Power APAC, which I wrote about here. During Hester’s visit to Jackson, a crew from Mississippi Public Broadcasting filmed an interview for their online feature Don’t Lecture Me!

I am so pleased to learn that it’s good for the brain to learn new things. In order to keep up with technology, I have to learn new things all the time. Today, I am figuring out how to use tiny urls so I can put internet links into my tweets. I also linked my tweets to my facebook page. They will appear as status updates. I read a recent New York Times article, suggesting that twitter is here to stay and also very useful. I am still learning how to put it to good use. I’d appreciate any tips from my readers.

My blog traffic surged on the day I posted the interview with Irene Latham. When I mentioned this to her, she said she had tweeted about it. Perhaps that drove some of the traffic. I also have a hunch that video is a draw.

Even though I have a Google alert set up for Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator, I still miss things. The staff at Horn Book magazine printed a list of Mind the Gap Awards, a humorous awards list, in the July/August 2009 issue. Wolfsnail won in the category of Scariest mollusk. In this case, I missed it in two formats: online and in hardcover. I am a subscriber and I know I read that issue because it included the acceptance speeches for the major ALA awards.

In unrelated news, Richard, who designed my website and blog, just finished re-designing a website for zata3, a political consulting firm that specializes in phone services like polling, virtual town halls, and get-out-the-vote.

Leaving Gee’s Bend is a just-published middle grade novel by Irene Latham, a Birmingham author I met through SCBWI-Southern Breeze. Irene and I have a few things in common: a house full of sons, a fondness for seamstresses and quilters, and a love of words. While I haven’t yet read Leaving Gee’s Bend, I am looking forward to it. I decided to interview Irene during launch week. I asked her about things I am curious about, but if you post your questions, I’m sure she’ll pop in and answer them.

Tell me what Leaving Gee’s Bend is about.
Leaving Gee’s Bend is a heart-touching tale of unexpected adventure in the vein of such classics as Sounder, Little House on the Prairie and Stone Fox – stories rooted in history that families can read and enjoy together. It’s about a determined, ten-year-old girl in Depression-era Gee’s Bend, Alabama, who sets out to save her sick mother and records her adventures in quilt pieces. It includes the real-life 1932 raid on Gee’s Bend and subsequent Red Cross rescue.

How did you choose your topic?
It really chose me. I was inspired to write this book in 2003 when my husband and I traveled to New York City and viewed the Quilts of Gee’s Bend art exhibit at the Whitney Museum. Although I live only 120 miles from Gee’s Bend, it wasn’t until then that I became aware of the art and history of Gee’s Bend. Something happened to me as I walked through those rooms… I was moved by the quilts and by the voices of the quilt makers. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know.

I asked Irene about writing about such a different time, place, and culture. Here are some of her thoughts about that and an excerpt from the book.

The biggest challenge when writing across time and culture is fear:  what if I get it wrong?  What if it doesn’t resonate with the African American community in general or in particular, the quilters of Gee’s Bend?  Anytime one is writing a historical piece there is a strong responsibility to be as accurate as possible, which means research must be thorough, diligent, and intense.  Fortunately for me, the history of Gee’s Bend has been well documented.  In order to capture an authentic voice, I spent hours and hours listening to audio recordings of the quilters telling their stories.

And then I took a leap into imagination.  I asked myself questions like this: What if your community was so remote and isolated that it didn’t have a doctor, and your mother was seriously ill? What if you were black and you saw a white person for the very first time? What if you thought the whole world was just like what you saw from your front porch and found out it wasn’t? What if you wanted to make a quilt but didn’t have anything but scraps of cloth to work with?

Next, I spent a great deal of time doing exercises in empathy.  I used poetry to help me connect with my characters on the most basic level.  Even though I did not grow up without shoes in a place remote as Gee’s Bend, I found Ludelphia and I still had a great deal in common.  Male, female, black, white, 1930s or now, we’re all human.  What connects us all is our ability to FEEL things.  So I focused heavily on the emotional lives of my characters.  One exercise I found particularly useful was writing a poem in two voices, inspired by Paul Fleischman‘s Newbery Award winning book, Joyful Noise: Poems in Two Voices.

How important were images during your writing process?
I lived and breathed those quilt images in the beautiful coffee table books that accompanied the art exhibit.  Any product you’ve ever seen with a Gee’s Bend quilt on it?  I own it.    And I was able to see the quilts on exhibit several times while working on this project.  A theme in the book is “every quilt tells a story.”  And it’s really true!  The bold colors and geometrics of the quilts had a huge impact on everything from character development to plot lines.

Well, I’ve decided to stop being a chicken and post some writing goals for 2010.

1. Launch Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature, putting to use all the things I’ve learned since Wolfsnail debuted nearly two years ago. This time we’ll have a book trailer, a blog tour, sunflower seeds, and a presentation at a national conference.

2. Meet twice a month with my critique partner to make progress on items 3 and 4 below.

3. Write and photograph nonfiction picture book number 3. Subject is chosen and living (happily, I think) in a container on my living room bookshelf. It’s lots of fun to watch and to photograph.

4. Write first picture book that I won’t be illustrating with photographs. This story is near and dear to me. I think I am ready to commit it to the page.

5. Write regularly on my memoir. I started writing this for an online course through Gotham Writers’ Workshop. It was an excellent introduction to memoir and I am very happy I took the class. Now, I’m going to write, write, write.

Of course, I’ll also be mothering, teaching (2nd graders and 5th graders in separate photography and writing projects), gardening, exercising, cooking, fellowshipping, blogging, and (hope springs eternal) de-cluttering.

What are your writing goals? Does it help to make them public? I’d love to know.

Update: How’s this for coincidence? Within the hour of posting, I received an email rejection of a piece I had submitted to the online magazine Brevity. I had been encouraged to submit by Kyle Minor, who taught my memoir writing class in the fall. I gave the memoir snippet (about 450 words) to my Dad for Christmas; I asked Richard to typeset it and paired it with a black and white photograph of Richard’s. I am glad Kyle encouraged me to submit the piece. I learned about an interesting online magazine and I gained the confidence to keep writing. Eventually, this snippet will take its place in a larger work.

Hester Bass did a fabulous job at Power APAC today introducing visual arts students from grades 6 through 12 to the creative process of writing picture books. In the above photograph, she is reading from The Secret World of Walter Anderson, which was recently named one of Kirkus’ Best Children’s Books of 2009. Because she worked so closely with her fantastic illustrator, E.B. Lewis, she also shared much about the process of illustrating a picture book with watercolor paintings. Power APAC students had studied Walter Anderson’s work prior to Hester’s visit and had also done some historical research, but her tale sparked a renewed interest in his work and life.

Hester’s publicist at Candlewick worked with Mississippi Public Broadcasting to set up an interview for an online program titled Don’t Lecture Me. The show will go online in about two weeks.

Students provided a back drop for a mini-set on the Power APAC stage. It was a pleasure for me to see Hester in action. I always learn from my colleagues in this business. Hester’s stage presence was obvious from the moment she stepped in front of the students. She sang and she read. She encouraged the students to read, to write (and sketch) in journals, and to set goals. She got questions about publishing and about Walter Anderson. One student wanted to know about the Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs.

For me, a good novel is peopled by characters so real you feel you know them. This was how it was with Ray and Jose, the teenagers at the center of Paul Griffin’s Ten Mile River. The boys, who met and bonded during a stint in juvenile detention, have cobbled together a life on the margins in New York City. They steal food, grills, and cars, but they also share scarce food with a passel of mutts, wrestle and make jokes about body smells, noises and haircuts. Ray meets Trini during a trip to the braid shop for his weekly haircut. Though smitten, he introduces Trini to Jose and watches helplessly as they get together. Trini’s aunt Yolie, the big-hearted proprietor of the braid shop, offers the boys the closest thing to hope and normalcy they’ve seen for a while. Despite Trini’s urging and Yolie’s offer of honest work, the boys can’t quite extricate themselves from their thieving associates.

The narrative power of this slim volume is strong. I didn’t want to put it down; I devoured it in two sittings.

Luckily, I had Griffin’s the orange houses to pick up next. In it, I met the unforgettable Mik Sykes, Jimmi Sixes, and Fatima. I swallowed this one in a single sitting/lying down. Mik can’t hear well and likes to let the world fade into the background. Jimmi is a mentally ill vet and street poet. Fatima is a refuge from a failed African nation with a talent for folding paper. Griffin brings them together in a powerful story of friendship.

If I were teaching high school English or facilitating a book group with young adults, I would suggest these books. Griffin is a skilled writer who has spent enough time with adolescents in tough circumstances to pick up the lingo, to see through their tough outer shells, and to examine their deepest desires.

I am glad I met Griffin at the recent Mississippi Library Association conference. I’ll be keeping an eye out for more of his work.

My friend, Hester Bass, wrote an extraordinary picture book biography of Walter Anderson, a great American artist who did most of his work in Mississippi. Publisher’s Weekly called the The Secret World of Walter Anderson, published by Candlewick Press, “a powerful tribute to the lengths artists will go for their passions.” A starred reivew in Kirkus said it was “a gorgeous chronicle of a versatile southern American artist.”

The story is illustrated by E.B. Lewis; an additional 8-page author’s note gives more details about Anderson’s life and includes photographs of his paintings, linocuts, and decorations on pottery. I interviewed Hester last month at the Writing and Illustrating for Kids conference put on by the Southern Breeze regional chapter of SCBWI. Click on the play button below to hear why Hester wrote the book and to hear her read an excerpt.

Hester is heading to Mississippi next week for a brief tour that will include stops in Jackson and Vicksburg. She’ll be signing books at the Mississippi Museum of Art on Saturday, Nov. 14; Lemuria bookstore on Sunday, Nov. 15; and she’ll be doing a school visit at my kids’ school, Power Academic and Performing Arts Complex, on Tuesday, Nov. 17. You can catch her in Vicksburg at Lorelei Books on Monday, November 16. Click on Hester’s website or on the venue’s links to check times for the public events. Hester, who once delivered singing telegrams, is an engaging performer and her book would make an excellent gift for the kids, teachers, and art lovers on your Christmas list.

Please let me know if you like the video interview. I am experimenting with using more video on my blog. I’d like to use more video to show my work process with photography. Let me know what you think.

At the recent Writing and Illustrating for Kids (WIK) conference, I asked other writers with blogs to find me and give me a card. I wanted to collect posts about the conference in one place. In the end, not all of the writers/bloggers put up posts about the conference, but I thought I’d put together a post showing the diversity of blogs in our region. If you look to the left on my blog, you’ll see that I already list other Southern Breezers in my blog roll. When I get more time at home, I’ll add these new ones to that list. In the meantime, feel free to explore:

Pat Brannon, a writer in Amory, Mississippi, blogs here.

Rita Farin, a creativity coach, blogs here.

Heather Kolich, an author and photographer in Cumming, Georgia, blogs here.

Deborah Kauffman Miller, an author in Decatur, Georgia, blogs here.

Melissa Thomas-Dubois and Dana Konop, two authors in the Atlanta-area, blog at Writing Snacks.com.

Toni Rhodes, an author and iPhone app publisher in Stone Mountain, Georgia, blogs at RhodeSoft.

Kathleen Thompson, an author in Birmingham, Alabama, blogs here.

Al Waller blogs at Varmint Bytes.

If you are a writer in Alabama, Mississippi, or Georgia, and you write a blog, please post a comment letting me know about you.