Meet the Grad: Katie Kunz

July 19, 2015, on the final day of the upcoming residency, the MFAC program will have a Graduate Recognition ceremony to honor the men and women who have just completed their studies and will receive an MFA from Hamline University. Between now and residency we'll be posting interviews with the grads. Katie (Katherine) Kunz is today's grad; she lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

What do you do when you’re not working on packets?
I’m a high school English teacher, so that takes up a lot of my time. When I do have free time, I spend it with the people, stories, and dogs I love.

How did you hear about the Hamline MFAC Program?
On the Internet. Like a little squirrel, the ad just kept popping up; kept running around in my head. I gave it a lot of thought, met with Mary [Rockcastle], and sat on it. Then, in the middle of subbing for an unruly eighth grade class, two days before the May application deadline, the ad popped up again. And I thought, “You know what? That little squirrel is pretty awesome.”

What was your writing experience prior to entering the program?
I started a comic about a boy named Stuart the summer before 6th grade. At 17 I made the decision I wanted to be a writer, and I practiced the rest of high school. Then I took undergraduate courses in creative writing at the University of MN. After teaching and trying to write in NYC for three years, I moved home to Minneapolis. Here I took a class at The Loft Literary Center and wrote two picture books. (I just found one this spring. It’s awful! Ha!) Three years ago I wrote a middle grade novel. After that was done, that little squirrel popped up.

What do especially remember about your first residency?
I remember feeling very out of place. Feeling a bit like a fraud, like I got in as a charity case or something. Everyone was brilliant and confident. I was not; I am not. But I did feel like I found a very special place in Hamline by the end of that residency. I also battled at bit of homesickness, which is ridiculous because I live about 10 miles from campus and stay at home. After graduation I expect I’ll suffer from MFAC-sickness.

Have you focused on any one form (PB, novel, nonfiction; graphic novel) or age group in your writing? Tried a form you never thought you’d try?
I came in with that middle grade novel I had written in 2012 and revised that in my first semester. I also started a graphic novel—which I never thought I would do. In my second semester I wrote the draft of a second middle grade novel, this one for the younger set in that audience. I started a third middle grade novel in my third semester. This, my final semester, I revised and revised and revised and revised one more time (thank you, Jackie) my second middle grade novel. I also drafted four picture books and revised and revised and revised two of those.

Tell us about your Creative Thesis.
It is a story of a nine-year old New Yorker named Moon who struggles with chronic pain and lonesomeness due to an undiagnosed blood disorder. She forms an unlikely friendship with a rambunctious pony she names Cheese, and when their friendship is threatened, she discovers who she is and what she can do. She gets help along the way from a pair of Adidas shoes, a wise, Chinese boy named Sying, a dragon kite, an iPad, and a chicken named Banana Cake. I also wrote a picture book about little girl named Ruby who believes in her super-ness, and another picture book with an embedded nursery rhyme about a little girl, Greta, who builds a moat to protect the animals in her kingdom from an evil witch.

What changes have you seen in your writing during your studies?
There are so many! For example, now I can see craft elements in my stories more clearly and analyze them for intention. Before I just ran with the feelings I had. Now I am more objective. Although my feelings are valid, I know if I can’t justify why something is necessary—despite my undying love for it—I let it go. I also understand my own process much better. I get the importance of a finishing a shitty rough draft, however embarrassing it may be. Until my third semester I didn’t know if I could revise, either. But I guess I can. So that’s new. Finally, en medias res, running your character up a tree then bringing on the storm, and plotting (arcs, scenes/summary, acts, chapters, etc.) were also critical lessons that have helped cause change in my writing.

Any thoughts for entering students or for people considering the program?
I have a few. Yes, it may be a chunk of change. Yes, it may be time-consuming. And, yes, you will more likely than not cry, especially at residency. But let me ask you this: How much more does it cost to defer a dream? What better way to spend your time than with an art you love and believe in? And aren’t tears—happy tears, nervous tears, proud tears, grateful tears, the myriad types of tears you shed being part of the Hamline MFAC program—an unabashed reminder of the importance and the joy of writing our hearts out for our children?   

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The public is welcome to attend the graduate recognition ceremony on Sunday, July 19, 3:30pm, (Sundin Music Hall, Hamline University). Tim Federle is the speaker.

Faculty Voices with Mary Rockcastle: Graduate Recognition Ceremony

(This week’s Faculty Voice post shares the complete text of the talk given by Mary Rockcastle at the Graduation Recognition Ceremony January 18, 2015.)

Mary Rockcastle

Welcome to Hamline and to the sixteenth Graduate Recognition Ceremony for the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. I’m Mary Rockcastle, Director of The Creative Writing Programs, and I’m very happy to be here celebrating the accomplishments of our graduates. They have completed five marathon residencies and four demanding and, I hope, transformative semesters. The picture books, novels, and nonfiction they wrote for their final thesis projects show mastery of the craft in their chosen genres and are light years ahead of the writing they submitted when they applied to the program. I want to thank the family members, friends, and other loved ones who are here today helping us to honor our graduates. I also want to thank the faculty who worked so generously with them during their time at Hamline.

Eudora Welty calls “place” one of the “lesser angels” watching over the racing hand of fiction. It certainly has been the primary angel on our minds over the course of this residency. In her essay, “Place in Fiction,” Welty writes: “Place in fiction is the named, identified, concrete, exact and exacting, and therefore credible, gathering spot of all that has been felt, is about to be experienced, in the novel’s progress. Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable as art, if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else.”

The writer often starts a literary text from a seed: an image, a person, a memory, an overheard conversation, an idea, a galvanizing incident. I’m a writer deeply inspired by the physical world. Both of my adult novels started with place. I took a turn in my latest novel, About Face, by writing not from a place I knew well but about a place I knew little about and a world I’d never experienced: a London hospital and its environs in the final months of World War I. The seed was not a place but an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum on prosthetic masks made by artists for soldiers wounded in battle. I soon realized, however, that my ability to create was tied to how deeply I was able to ground myself in the novel’s time and place. I can’t say for sure whether this is just me and my predilection for place or the writer’s essential need to see, hear, touch, and feel the physical world of the story. To do this, I dove headfirst into research in every way Claire Rudolf Murphy talked about in her lecture this week.

Eudora Welty writes not just about the craft value of writing about place but the larger social value we can derive from effective world building. “Mutual understanding in the world being nearly always, as now, at low ebb, it is comforting to remember that it is through art that one country can nearly always speak reliably to another, if the other can hear at all. Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, indeed, but truth.”

I believe that if you effectively capture the individual’s unique voice on the page, you in fact can convey the voice of a community.

This individual voice is shaped by the world he or she is part of. “Location,” Welty writes, “is the ground conductor of all the currents of emotion and belief and moral conviction that charge out from the story in its course. These charges need the warm hard earth underfoot, the light and lift of air, the stir and play of mood, the softening bath of atmosphere that gives the likeness-to-life that life needs.”

Flannery O’Connor, another Southern writer, was interested not in external habits but in what she called “the habit of art.” “The person who aims after art in his work,” she wrote, “aims after truth, in an imaginative sense, no more and no less.” In her essay, “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,” she referenced the writer Joseph Conrad, whose goal as a fiction writer was to render the highest possible justice to the visible universe. From Conrad:

“The task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there . . . encouragement, consolation, fear, charm—all you demand and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.”

As you’ve been learning since you started the program, our business as writers is to distinguish what is significant from what is not, to select, to find the telling—not the random and extraneous—detail. Each choice you make as a writer affects the ones made earlier and the ones that come after. Sometimes you make these choices in the first draft; often the choices become clearer during revision.

Everything you know and feel and believe about your novel—its characters, action, style, voice, underlying meaning—is part of building the world. Place makes the characters real and keeps them that way. The characters’ inner and outer worlds define them.

In my novel, I wanted to know what it was like to live inside a country at war. Partly I wanted to better understand the lives of my two grandfathers, both of whom had served on the Western front. My maternal grandfather was gassed on the eve of a ferocious battle that took the lives of most of the men in his infantry brigade. Had he not been gassed and taken to a military hospital, I might not be here. The experience of being a soldier and living in London during World War I felt completely alien to me. I thought I could harness that alienated feeling by telling the story from the point of view of an American teenaged boy thrust into the daily life of a military hospital during that time.

Marsha Chall quoted the German artist Paul Klee, who wrote: “Art is making the strange familiar and the familiar strange.” Anne Ursu calls it defamiliarizing the familiar and quoted the writer Zadie Smith: “A great piece of fiction can demand that you acknowledge the reality of its wildest proposition, no matter how alien it may be to you. It can also force you to concede the radical otherness lurking within things that appear most familiar.”

My own alienation from the world I was creating helped me to inhabit the body and consciousness of my teenaged protagonist. If I can make the strange world of a 1918 hospital ward familiar to the reader, I might be able to bridge the gap between the first World War, and its lessons, and a 21^st century reader.

As it has done for me, and as your books have done and are doing for you, we hope they do for our readers—take them into a new and foreign world and make it real. So the world shrinks, understanding grows, empathy builds.

In her kick-off lecture, “Worldbuilding in Fiction,” Laura Ruby used Tolkien’s concept of the “secondary world,” the one enchantment produces, which is an amalgam of setting, rules, language, and theme. Every secondary world has its own rules, Laura says, whether magical, scientific, and/or cultural. Each of these rules has implications and costs for your characters. The set-up of these rules can often give you the seeds for conflict.

Marsha Qualey also talked about the role that rules, and disruption of those rules, can play in creating conflict. Conflict arises when your character doesn’t know the rules of the particular world she’s in or chooses to push against them. Identity equals Power + Belonging, Marsha says. Creating disruptions in power and belonging will always be the best way to ensure that conflict in a story really matters.

Marsha Chall and Claire Rudolf Murphy took us through the physical process of making a picture book and explored the role and uses of setting in the picture book, whether the setting is communicated through the text or through the illustrations. Most picture books, Marsha says, feature familiar settings for children. Or, they take a fantastical or non-human setting and make it feel like the child’s own home.

In her three-day intensive, Emily Jenkins also immersed us in the process of writing a picture book, covering the form, the text itself, pacing, page turns, and the different ways in which illustrations work. The artist, with cues from the author, might choose to give the reader something new to look at on each page, or spread; might use a particular visual device; might employ repetition, creating a premise and its payoff; might simply play with language and use white space to create drama.

This idea of white, or blank space, all that is roiling between the lines or beneath the surface of a text, got a lot of attention during this residency. Charles Baxter calls this white space subtext, the “implied, half-visible, unspoken material behind the surface.” One of the ways to achieve subject, Baxter says, is through staging, putting your characters in specific strategic locations or positions in a scene so that some unvoiced nuance is revealed.

Swati Avasthi stressed the importance of this white space, all the stuff the writer leaves out. The writer’s job is to make connections for the reader, to help her, just as the spotter helps the gymnast, across the empty space to a soft landing. Choosing the right telling details can help us do this. It can make the invisible visible. As writers, we want to be in charge of the blanks we’re leaving for the reader. An effective use of negative space can invite the reader to complete the story for himself.

A folk tale can be the negative space we offer a reader. Jackie Briggs Martin shared the many opportunities offered us as writers through retelling a familiar folk tale, adding a folktale to our stories, or placing a folk tale in a new setting. The folktale imbues the story with meaning, conscious or unconscious. It can add depth and texture, shed light on our own time, become a bridge into another time or culture.

Kelly Easton showed us how to use the language and forms of poetry to capture a particular kind of intensity or emotion in our writing. A poem is a mystery, Kelly says, like channeling the voices of the dead. The practice of reading and writing poetry can enliven your language, add rhythm and a sense of surprise to your sentences, show you the power of compression and the opportunities that form opens up to you as a writer.

For Phyllis Root and Jackie Briggs Martin, music—jazz in particular—is a great model and source of inspiration to the writer of the picture book. Both are orally based. Both rely on rhythm, and the play between tension and release. Both use form and improvisation; both speak from the heart.

We heard from Debbie Kovacs on how to use our skills as writers to assemble a working life that leaves us room to write. Mary Logue walked us through the process of publishing a book. Tina Wexler shared tips on finding an agent for our books and explained the role she plays when representing a writer’s book.

Visiting writer Matt de la Pena said that one of the most useful lessons he’s learned as a writer is to slow down and cultivate the art of patience. This slowing down is important in a number of ways. One: it enables you to appreciate the process itself. Matt asked: “Why is success considered so much more important than the beautiful possibility which exists just before?” Another is the narrative restraint that gains the reader’s trust and enables us to create more big ticket set-ups and pay-offs.

Jane Resh Thomas said that fiction is a prolonged act of empathy—empathy for our characters and for ourselves as the transmitters of story. I don’t know whether empathy can or cannot be taught, but I do believe it can be cultivated and that’s what you must do to be a good writer. It’s at the heart of what Sarah Park Dahlen talked with us about: if you do your research and harness your own experience (each of us knows what it means to be an insider as well as an outsider), if you acknowledge what you don’t know and do your best to fill in the gaps, if you come to the writing with a sense of humility—to quote Justina Ireland, if you activate your empathic imaginations, you can create authentic characters unlike yourselves and build worlds no matter how foreign.

When Charles Flaubert uttered his famous line, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi,” we saw perhaps for the first time in literary history a male author fully and intentionally extending his empathic imagination to the particular woman he’d created. Essential to Madame Bovary’s character is the mid 19^th-century small town near Rouen in northern France, a setting that Flaubert meticulously describes. As the world cries out, “Je suis Charlie,” it is in solidarity with the people of France, in honor of the 12 journalists and cartoonists who were murdered on January 7 in Paris. We are saying: we share your outrage and your suffering. We, too, believe in freedom of expression.  On another day, in another place, it could be us.

The hip hop recording artist and actor, Common, with John Legend, won the Golden Globe for best original song for their song “Glory” from the movie, Selma. In accepting the award, Common said, “As I got to know the people of the Civil Rights Movement, I realized I am the hopeful black woman who was denied her right to vote. I am the caring white supporter killed on the front lines of freedom. I am the unarmed black kid who maybe needed a hand, but instead was given a bullet. I am the two fallen police officers murdered in the line of duty. 'Selma' has awakened my humanity."

This is what we do when we create fictional worlds on the page. If we do it well, we force the reader to, in Anne’s words, PAY ATTENTION. We make the extraordinary familiar or give new life to the familiar so the reader sees it all again.

If the writer is doing her job, we, too, are Narnia; we, too, are District 12; we, too, are Hogwarts; we, too, are Naomi, Florida; we too are a small potter’s village in 12^th century Korea or a schoolyard in southern Sudan.

The young men who left their trenches and went over the top on July 1, 1916, in the first battle of the Somme had to stifle, or block, all empathy toward the German soldiers on the other side of no man’s land. You can’t kill another human being if you’re trying to walk in his or her shoes. Therein lies the perhaps unresolvable conundrum of war.

Cultivating our own empathic imaginations to write well enables us to create meaningful connections across cultural, national, gender, racial, and other boundaries. We want our books to cultivate this empathy in our young readers.

One last time, Eudora Welty: “The artist uses his reason to discover an answering reason in everything he sees. For him, to be reasonable is to find, in the object, in the situation, in the sequence, the spirit which makes it itself. This is not an easy or simple thing to do. It is to intrude upon the timeless, and that is only done by the violence of a single-minded respect for the truth.” I’m still pondering this language, “the violence of a single-minded respect for the truth.” Pacifists or not, we may all be warriors in search of the truth.

Meet the Grad: Nina Bricko

On January 18, 2015, on the final day of the upcoming residency, the MFAC program will have a Graduate Recognition ceremony, honoring the men and women who have just completed their studies and will receive an MFA from Hamline University. Between now and residency we'll be posting interviews with many of the grads. Nina Bricko is today's grad; she lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can learn more about Nina and her writing on her website.

 What do you do when you’re not working on packets?
While I was working on my MFA I was a kids yoga instructor and a naturalist for a preschool. I also taught a variety of writing courses for Madison College. While working on packets I was also trying to get my work published. I had a short story – that was originally written for a picture book - published in a couple literary journals, one online and one in print. The same short story also won the Prairie Gate Literary Contest and was turned into a play. The play was performed at the end of the Prairie Gate Literary Festival, a conference that I was invited to come to for free. So I have had some success that has been very encouraging. I wasn’t able to graduate this past July because I had a little baby boy named Elwood.  So I spend most of my time playing with him and laughing at his antics. I dream about living in a strawbale house by a river, growing a tall garden, and hugging chickens. Poka-dot Dresses and muddy boots – that about sums up me.

How did you hear about the Hamline MFAC Program?
I was walking downtown Madison when my eye caught a poster about a guest speaker from Hamline University coming to discuss their MFA program on Creative Writing for Children and Young Adults. I thought in my head – as most people do – I should go to this!

I did not.

I had only begun to think about getting my masters at the time. Fast forward about a year later, I was finally ready to pursue my interest in obtaining a masters in creative writing. But what and where? I wasn’t a literary writer – at least I didn’t think so. I had realized that I mostly wrote middle grade and had a strong interest in writing picture books. The poster I had seen so many months prior came to mind and so I looked Hamline up on the inter-webs. Then I went to the information weekend, met and questioned Mary Rockcastle, and discovered where I wanted to go.

What was your writing experience prior to entering the program?
I have always loved writing. When I was in the sixth grade my teacher accused me of cheating on a poem I had written and turned in for an assignment. She didn’t think a sixth grader could have written it. So that was a big boost for my ego. The next year my Dad entered it into a contest and it won. How about that!

I used to do wonderfully nerdy things like write puppet shows and put them on for the kindergarteners during my class’s recess time. One time I created a character named Professor Lightbulb – he was an actual light bulb I had hooked up to a battery so I could switch him on and off. He liked to do SCIENCE!

For my birthday, which was the summer before the seventh grade, I asked for a typewriter. My wonderfully supportive parents got me one. How about that!

In junior high I wrote plays for the talent show. In high school I went through a goth phase, so you can imagine how those poems went.

I didn’t think a person could be a writer as a profession. It seemed like a job someone gets in the movies, and not in real life. So I went with my next great love – Nature. I became a naturalist, and not the nude kind. I traveled the country working at different nature centers, teaching kids about the great out doors. But as I traveled – I wrote. While living in Arizona I started and completed my first novel. I took my first novel writing class and after that I was hooked. I wrote another novel. I wrote more short stories. I wrote ferociously. When my hubby and I moved to Madison because we wanted to live there and not for a job, I was forced to find work that wasn’t in my field. I loved working with small children so I became certified an as early childhood educator. This is when I fell in love with picture books. I had always appreciated picture books, and I had attempted to write for children previously, but when you are constantly reading them you really begin to gain an understanding of the depth and scope that encompass the picture book world. I wanted in. I tried and I tried. My favorite activity with the students was to tell them a story that I made up on the fly and draw pictures while I spoke. Their favorite stories I tried to write down, so I could tell it to them again the next day. I knew that I wanted to know more about the world of picture book writing.

It is exciting to have the knowledge to write for any age group, but it is enchanting and invigorating to have a personal understanding of what kind of writer I am. This happened because of my writing journey, and it will continue to modify throughout my life as a writer.

What do especially remember about your first residency?
I was very nervous. When I don’t know people I become very quiet and shy, which is the opposite when I am comfortable with people. My personality type can be confusing. However, I knew that I wanted to succeed in this program; so even though I was nervous, I jumped right into volunteering for the Storytellers Inkpot. One of my first articles I reflected on my experience as a newbie, and I had decided to draw a comic to describe how it felt to meet one of the faculty members: (click to enlarge)

We are all nerds and it felt great to find my people. I was inspired and excited. My first residency simply confirmed that I was in the right place.

Have you focused on any one form (PB, novel, nonfiction; graphic novel) or age group in your writing? Tried a form you never thought you’d try?
I tried middle grade, early middle grade, and picture books. I really wanted to try graphic novels my third semester but wasn’t encouraged to do so because I had to generate a critical thesis. If I had another semester I would work on comics and nonfiction. I teach create writing all levels for Madison College and I have Hayley Scheuring (Hamline MFAC Alumni) guest speak during our nonfiction discussion because I don’t feel as though I was given enough opportunities to really understand that form. I have learned so much from her lectures that I am more confident in it, so really the moral of the story is to learn from each other and do as much as you can – there just isn’t enough time.

Tell us about your Creative Thesis.
It is a middle grade adventure novel with some magical realism – it’s an Indiana Jones meets 39 clues  meets Amelia Earhart meets a seventh grade bi-racial girl on the cusp of puberty who doesn’t know where to belong and just wants to go to golf camp but can’t because her parents have been mysteriously kidnapped. Yup.

What changes have you seen in your writing during your studies?
Confidence. When you are writing on your own – trying to discover what kind of writer you are you try many different forms and styles. You write stories that are like the ones you like to read; you write stories about topics you like to read; you write stories in the voice of stories that you have read. Now I have the confidence of my own voice, my own style and form, and the confidence in the stories that my heart has to say.

I still have a lot of flaws, but I am aware of them and I strive to be a better writer every day.

With packet deadlines removed as an incentive, do you anticipate it will be harder to keep writing? Any plans for your post-Hamline writing life?
I have a solid writing group outside of Hamline, but the group consists of Hamline alumni. In addition to those wonderful people, I also teach writing. Because I am constantly reading and reminding myself of everything I learned and still need to learn my personal practice improves. One night I was lecturing on taking their scene and intensifying tension. I had been struggling with what was missing in a middle grade novel I had finished. I liked it, people liked it, but I wasn’t excited about it. After my lecture, we were during some writing prompts and I had an incredible AH-HA moment. Teaching has always been my gateway to a higher understanding of what I had just learned.

Any thoughts for entering students or for people considering the program?
One of the bathroom stalls is covered in Doctor Who graffiti – this is the type of people that inhabit this campus. If that brings you joy, then you have found your people. Welcome.

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The public is welcome to attend the graduate recognition ceremony on Sunday, January 18, 3:30pm, (Anne Simley Theatre, Drew Fine Arts Building). Linda Sue Park is the speaker.

Faculty Voices: Emily Jenkins

I just returned from Seattle, where I went to the AWP (Association of Writing Programs) conference, along with Hamline MFAC folks Mary Rockcastle, Judi Marcin and Claire Rudolph Murphy. I thought I'd just write and give a look at how I got to the conference and how I used my time once I got on the plane. In other words, here is a glimpse of what a travel weekend looks like for a writer, and the practical stuff of how this particular one came together. When I was just starting out I really had no idea how any of this part of the job worked, so I figure maybe you don't either. Yet. 

My writer friend Robin Wasserman and I got the idea to explore the AWP Conference because we both teach at low-residency programs and because we usually attend conferences that are just for writers of children's literature. We were curious about a more academic-type conference and what we could learn there. By the way, next year's AWP Conference is in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area!

Robin and I got in touch with two other writers who are also published by Penguin Random House–Sarah Mlynowski and Adele Griffin. Then the four of us decided what two panels we would propose for the conference–and Robin and Adele wrote up the pitches according to the specifications on the AWP website. Once our panels were accepted, we inquired whether Penguin Random would be willing to support our trip. They covered it in part, though for the rest we were out of pocket. 

Before the conference, we planned our panels. This was a luxury, because often you are on a panel and you don't know much of what will be asked, nor much about your fellow panelists unless you do some research–which you should! It's manners. But anyway–in this case we all knew each other and we all knew one another's work, so we just brainstormed what questions the moderator should ask. Sarah was moderating a panel on having a long-term career in children's literature, and I moderated a panel on sexuality in YA literature. 

l-r: Sarah Mlynowski, Emily Jenkins, Robin Wasserman,
Adele Griffin (photo courtesy Josefina Ávila Andino)

Then we set to work figuring out how to maximize our time in Seattle. We contacted the head YA librarian at Seattle Public Library and arranged to do an event there one night. We wanted it to be more than just a standard reading, because it can be hard to draw a crowd for that. Robin had the idea to read sneak peaks from books that are not out yet, plus embarrassing juvenilia. This gave us a fun little hook to tweet about, and helped Seattle PL in its marketing of the event. The library arranged for a local bookseller to sell books at the event, and that was great because we all got to meet the bookseller, too. 

Friday, Sarah and I did elementary school visits, partnering with a second independent bookseller. This is the kind of thing that is tough to organize on your own–and also the kind of thing most writers usually get paid for. A typical set-up is that a school will book me by inquiring through my website–but in this case, we were looking for visits and willing to do single presentations with book sales for free, because Sarah had a new book out for 3rd - 5th grade readers. We used Sarah's outside-the-publishing house publicist to book and organize the events, and spent a great morning sharing books with kids. Later we drove over to to a third indie store to say hello to the buyer and sign what stock they had - the kind of event called a "meet and greet" or a "stock signing." Robin joined us there, and then Sarah and I went to a fourth indie store for an after-school event. 

It was a gorgeous day. Seattle never has gorgeous days! It always rains. So:

almost no one came. 

This happens all the time! And the fact that you might be reading to only three kids is one reason I like to do events with other people. Because Sarah was with me, we were lively and fun even though the crowd was so small. And we were able to chat happily and make connections with some great booksellers. We signed loads of stock which they are excited to hand-sell. 

Notice we managed to connect with four independent booksellers in 24 hours? That was the meat of this plan. The events were lovely and fun to do, but to my way of thinking, connecting with the people who will hand-sell your books for the next several years is more valuable than anything else.

That night we had a party–nothing fancy, just meeting for drinks. It took some work, but we thought that what we'd really like to do at AWP is meet writers we might never meet otherwise. We invited all the Seattle children's book people we could find, and all the writers who had panels on related topics–finding them on Facebook or through their websites. Everyone met at a bar and I met loads of new and interesting writers. This is another kind of event that might seem trivial but in the long run can be very useful. How do I know three other writers (Adele, Robin and Sarah) who fit well with me on a panel and who are published by my same publisher? From going to events like these. 

The last day we all attended the conference (Adele and Robin had been there on Friday, too)–and did our two panels, looked at the exhibits, went to hear other people speak and so on. 

Then I was really tired and came home. Now I feel like a zombie–but I think it was worth it. 

Hope you find this useful and that you think about investigating AWP when it's in Minnesota next year.

Meet the Grad: Jeanne Anderson

On January 19, 2014, on the final day of the upcoming residency, the MFAC program will have a Graduate Recognition ceremony, honoring the 11 men and women who have just completed their studies and will receive an MFA from Hamline University. For the last few weeks we've been posting interviews with many of the grads. Our interview today is the final one for this class. Today's grad is Jeanne Anderson; she lives in Boynton Beach, Florida.

What do you do when you’re not working on packets?   

I am a retired teacher/librarian, so when I am not working on packets, I spend my time traveling, hanging out at libraries, taking care of grandchildren, reading and buying books.

How did you hear about the Hamline MFAC Program?

I was searching for a Master’s Degree program in Children’s Literature, and discovered the Hamline low-residency program. This was a huge improvement over the online degree programs I was considering, where there is little feedback, little peer interaction and no face time at all. Also, I was very impressed with Mary Rockcastle when I met with her to ask if I was too old for this program. She didn’t seem to think so, and I presented my Critical Thesis on my 65^th Birthday! I considered that event to be the best birthday present ever. Thank you, Mary.  

What was your writing experience prior to entering the program?

 I have been writing poetry for myself and family members for years. I have also written a number of stories for my children and grandchildren. But, according to my five adult children, I have always talked about writing the books I have in my head. They strongly encouraged me because it would keep me occupied in my retirement. I also think they wanted me to stop talking about doing it – and do it!

What do especially remember about your first residency?

I remember being scared that I would not be able to keep up the pace of back-to- back lectures, but that was never a problem. I could hardly wait to get into Workshop every morning, and the lectures were always energizing. I never fell asleep! Not even once. Also, I was afraid I would slip on the ice and snow and break a hip! But it was never that bad, and there were lots of folks to help me walk along the campus sidewalks.

Have you focused on any one form (PB, novel, nonfiction; graphic novel) age group in your writing?  Tried a form you never thought you’d try? 

I wanted to be exposed to a different form of writing every semester.The 1st semester I ventured into picture book writing with Marsha Chall. The 2nd semester I tried verse novels with Marilyn Nelson. The 3rd semester I attempted to write a middle school novel with Eleanor Tate. I know I will never have an opportunity for feedback from so many excellent published authors, and I was determined to make the most of my time at Hamline!  

Tell us about your Creative Thesis.

I have many story ideas, but the one that I started out with in my Creative Thesis was about a biracial boy and how he learns to cope in a multicultural world. As the chapters progressed, the story completely morphed into a different kind of journey! What emerged was a lonely child’s search for family and belonging. When it was all done, I felt quite satisfied with the direction it took.  It touched on a universal theme that I felt was far more important to present to a young audience.

What changes have you seen in your writing during your studies? 

My advisors have consistently challenged me to stretch and move out of my comfort zones.  My vision has expanded to include several genres and different types of writing for children. Without Hamline, I would have been content to write short rhyming poems and little stories.  Now I think big, and in terms of all kinds of possibilities! 

With packet deadlines removed as an incentive, do you anticipate it will be harder to keep writing?  Not if I begin writing for contest deadlines!

Any plans for your post-Hamline writing life?

Yes, I have plans.  The first thing I will do is create a spreadsheet for submissions.  On that spreadsheet will be the names of publishers AND contest deadlines.  The contest deadlines will help me keep up the momentum of producing something every month.  Then I will start attending a writers group consistently where I will be held accountable for producing something on a regular basis. 

Any thoughts for entering students or for people considering the program?

Yes.  The Hamline program seems to be dedicated to developing, encouraging and producing each student’s best writing.  Writing is the one of the few careers that can be pursued anywhere, anytime and under almost any conditions.  It can be done while we work at other jobs.  It is also a creative outlet that can only get better, since it is an expression of each person’s cumulative growth and development.   It has no age limit, and in fact the older we are the more stuff we have to write about!   And best of all, it brings us in contact with wonderful people. 

The Hamline experience is a rare opportunity for anyone fortunate enough to be accepted into its low-residency program.  Anyone who loves to write cannot help but benefit from the residencies, the packets and the contact with advisors.  In spite of the snow and ice in January, it is clearly a win-win investment that I would recommend to anyone with an urge to write, share and learn.

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The public is welcome to attend the graduate recognition ceremony on Sunday, January 19, 3:30pm, (Anne Simley Theatre, Drew Fine Arts Building). Jane Yolen is the speaker.