I didn’t always write make-believe stories. When I was a college student, I wrote critical papers about other people’s stories—stuff like “Androgyny in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night” and “Techniques of Eliciting Horror in Film and Fiction.” The idea of writing something creative didn’t really appeal to me.
It wasn’t until I had children—and started reading their books—that I wanted to write one of my own. I started with short stories, then moved on to novels. I took a lot of classes and finally decided to go to graduate school when I was 42 years old. Getting a master’s degree in writing for children and young adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts was challenging, but a privilege. While there, I studied under such luminaries as A.S. King, Kathi Appelt, An Na, Rita Williams Garcia, Bonnie Christensen, Margaret Bechard, Elizabeth Partridge, and Sharon Darrow. I learned so much about the craft of writing and about myself as a writer.
Because I’ve always had a bit of nostalgia for the past, many of my novels are historicals. I’ve set them in the court of Philipe IV in 17th century Spain and in Cincinnati in 1920, right after the famous Black Sox Scandal. I’ve also written contemporary fantasy, novel-in-verse, chapter books, picture books, and picture book biographies. For a few years, I worked as a freelance book doctor, writing and editing books for Room to Read and the Asia Foundation, two NGOs focused on building literacy around the world.
My own stories center around themes that are important to me—and that I hope will become important to my readers. Love and friendship show up a lot. So does integrity and what it means to do the right thing. I also honor multi-generational relationships and cultural nuances.
My latest work in progress, Guys Like Us, takes place in Cincinnati in 1920 and features an eleven-year-old baseball fanatic named Solomon Skaletsky. As the only child of Russian immigrants, Sol wants nothing more than to win the Cincinnati Junior League Series Baseball Championship and bring his team, the Jr. Spears-Peewees, to city-wide fame. When he learns that gangsters fixed the World Series and that his family is facing eviction, he must make things right before his own team cheats its way to the championship and his family is forced to leave Cincinnati forever.
Guys Like Us won the SCBWI Karen Cushman Late Bloomer Award and first prize in the children’s literature category at the San Francisco Writer’s Conference. It is complete at approximately 88 thousand words, and I am currently seeking representation with the goal of traditional publication.