Interview with Kerry Madden

Interview with Author Kerry Madden

by debbi michiko florence

Kerry Madden's debut children's novel, Gentle's Holler, (Viking, 2005) was published as Penguin Puffin paperback in 2007, received starred reviews in both Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly, and is the first in a trilogy of Smoky Mountain novels. Gentle's Holler was a New York and Chicago Public Library Pick, received a Mark Twain Nomination from Missouri, a 2006 PEN Award Finalist in Children's literature, and was an ALA Finalist for the Schneider Award. Louisiana's Song (SCIBA Nominee) was published in 2007 and has been selected for the California Readers Collection for Middle Grade Fiction. Jessie's Mountain will be published in 2008. Madden was also a fiction judge in children's literature for the PEN Award in 2007 and for the Golden Kite Award for SCBWI in 2007. She is currently working on a biography of Harper Lee for teens for Viking's UpClose Series. She does writing workshops for children and teachers across the country.

Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with us! You are the author of what is turning out to be a series of books about the wonderful Weems family. The first was Gentle's Holler, which introduced us to Livy Two and her family of mother, father, and nine brothers and sisters living in the mountains of North Carolina.

What was the inspiration for this beautiful story about family and love?

My husband, Kiffen, grew up one of thirteen children in a family filled with art, music, books, and love. I never knew his father, but I adore his mother, Frances, and I wanted to capture some of that joy in a children’s novel.

The story is set in the 1960s. What kind of research did you have to do? When do you know when it’s time to stop researching and start writing?

I didn’t do any research really – not at first. I was missing the Smoky Mountains, and I knew I wanted to open a book with a little girl hiding in a red maple tree, watching her mama put the newest baby to sleep in a drawer while the daddy picked the banjo on the porch. I imagined how old my sister-in-law would have been in 1962 (age ten), and I picked Maggie Valley because we had discovered the town with our kids in 1994 when we took the back roads through the Smoky Mountains. Then I learned that “Ghost Town in the Sky” had opened in 1961, which was a great gift to the story. However, at the time I didn’t know I was writing historical, middle-grade fiction – I was just writing the story I wanted to write…all the rest came later.

The second book is Lousiana's Song. Without giving away too much of the ending to Gentle's Holler, Lousiana's Song focuses on the family after Daddy returns home after the accident. So much about this story was heartbreaking and touching. How do you prepare yourself as a writer to deal with emotional storylines for your characters?

It was terrifying. In fact, the first draft of Gentle's Holler, nothing too bad happened to my characters. I was so scared of putting them in harm’s way. As a result, the story pretty much flat-lined into extended conversations about the garden, hypothetical discussions of adventures, and a heroic dog. The climax oozed treacle and corn. It received piles of rejection, and then I decided to write what scared me to write – it was incredibly and emotionally draining. It was hard to come back to real life because I was so deeply immersed in the Weems story. I don’t know if you can ever prepare yourself. I think of it as diving off the high board (which I think I did once as a kid.) And then you just go…

I love the Weems family, but Livy Two remains my favorite with her spunk and big heart. You mentioned in an interview with Cynthia Leitich Smith that you originally tried to write Lousiana's Song in Louise’s point of view, but you felt it wasn’t taking off. It was a young boy during a writing workshop you were leading that helped you see that Livy Two was the storyteller. What advice to writers do you have to share about figuring out POV for a story?

I think it’s important to give yourself permission (and the time and space) to try chapter or two or three for a few points of view. Figure out what works best and what serves the story. I also think it was helpful to write several chapters in Louise’s voice, because I was able to get closer to her. Livy Two was the storyteller, but Louisiana’s Song is also her story. I think sometimes I get so rushed trying to achieve say, word count, and it is only when I slow down and focus on the characters, the writing and story becomes so much clearer.

What were the challenges that came about when writing Louise’s story from Livy Two’s eyes? What were the advantages?

It was challenging to figure out the plot, because I am terminally plot-challenged. I could also never be alone with Louise, but Livy Two adores her, so I could get pretty close to Louise’s world. As for the advantages, Livy Two is just funnier and bolder, so I could have her make up these great diseases as excuses for why Louise was missing school. I was also surprised to discover that Louise is actually stronger in many ways…I love sibling relationships, and I felt like I was learning along with my characters…For instance when Livy Two gets jealous of Louise’s friendship with Ruth, I remember a cousin of mine adoring my brother, which made me insane with jealousy. I think by spending so many years in this world of Gentle’s Holler, the characters all revealed themselves in different ways, and Livy Two was just the one telling the story, so the challenges actually became advantages if that makes sense.

There’s a huge cast of characters in your stories, yet each character feels very real and fleshed out. How did you keep track of them? Any advice to writers on developing characters?

Clumping and passions – I’ll explain… An editor had told me to drop all the characters except for Livy Two and Gentle, which was not helpful, but in the draft she read, who could blame her? It was a mess. So I got very tough and focused in order to cut the flab…Becksie became bossier than ever, and Jitters was a copy-cat; so the two of them stuck together being their prissy do-gooder selves. Caroline and Cyrus, the twins, and Gentle, the blind child, were so close in age that I kept the three of them together. I imbued the love of fairies on Caroline and Gentle, and the love of mummies on Cyrus, because of my own kids’ obsessions and fascinations with that world. I gave Louise painting, Livy Two music, and Emmett got Ghost Town and Saturn Girl…I think that by giving characters strong passions, a writer can’t help but discover deeper and richer layers within her characters. The Weems’ kids are filled with passions – music, painting, mummies, fairies, Greek Myths (coming up in Jessie’s Mountain), money, adventure, rage, ambition – and so that’s how I kept track of them – through their passions.

You have another book coming out about the Weems family. Can you tell us more? How did this story come about?

The third book is called Jessie's Mountain, and it comes out in February. I feel so lucky to have written Jessie’s story, because in this book, we have Mama’s journal from the 1940s before she had all those kids – when she was just a girl herself growing up in Enka, North Carolina. My own daughter, Lucy, drew the birds in Jessie's Mountain, so I’m thrilled to have her part of the book. My son, Flannery, gave me advice on Livy Two’s songs, and I spent two weeks in a cabin with Norah, my youngest, on Johnson Gap in Maggie Valley and much of that August summer has gone into the book – a family of ground hogs, a wolf spider, the papermill at Canton. I love the mountains so much, and I never dreamed how much they would come to feel like home writing these novels.

Your first published novel was a YA titled Offsides. Can you tell us a little about your journey to published author? When did you get The Call? And how did you grow as a writer from Offsides to Gentle's Holler?

Actually, Offsides was not published YA, but as literary fiction. My editor at the time told me it would be “the death knell of my career” if I published YA. One of my dreams is to get Offsides republished as a YA novel. It was a New York Public Library Pick for Books for the Teen Age in 1997. Reviewers described Offsides as “Wendy Wasserstein meets North Dallas Forty” and “akin to Pat Conroy’s The Great Santini only the backdrop is football and it’s from the girl’s point of view.”

To recap the Offsides journey, an agent had liked an early draft of Offsides but hated the major revisions, and although this rejection was so painful, I knew I had written a much better book. So I had to gather courage to send it out, and another agent took it a month later, and found a publisher, William Morrow, a month after that. It was very fast really. It was also 1996, several lifetimes ago in the publishing world with all its trends. I did everything the publisher told me to do, but it was also long before I knew about helping to promote my books. I was sent on a book tour to football towns across the country.

After Offsides came out, the book went through the Hollywood mill. Here is an essay link about having Diane Keaton over for dinner, which talks about that time and the long drought between books. I called it: “Pregnant Pauses: Toys in the Crawlspace.”

Although Offsides had strong reviews and the Hollywood option, it went out of print, and my next novel, Hop The Pond, was accepted by an editor but then rejected by marketing for lack of sales with Offsides. I wrote a lousy novel after that to forever stay in the deep recesses of the filing cabinet. I began ghostwriting, scrambling to write health stories, soaps – anything to make money. When my grandmother was dying, and I was writing lines like, “That bathrobe looks VERY familiar.” I was overcome with shame, and I knew I had to write about something that I loved and cared about or I would not call myself a writer – and a year later, the Weems family came. Here is another link about that time from a Salon Magazine essay.

You also have a book called Writing Smarts: a girl's guide to writing great poetry, stories, school reports, and more! What was the inspiration behind this book?

I love getting kids to write stories. I had a fourth grade teacher who told me I was a good writer, and she gave me such a gift. I try to give that back to kids. I started doing writing workshops in my own children’s classrooms and with teen moms in East Los Angeles. I put so many of those ideas into WRITING SMARTS. I tell boys to ignore the pink on the book cover, because it is girly. I’d love to write a boys version of WRITING SMARTS, but American Girl wasn’t interested in that idea, so I’m thinking of places that might be receptive.

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

I love taking long walks with the dogs with close friends or alone, hikes in the hills above Los Angeles or in the mountains. I love going to the movies…road trips…books. I enjoy being with my children very much. They’re so much fun, and full of adventures and stories. When I was a young mother, I thought I would never write again, but instead my own kids have made my stories all the more richer and full of life. I also enjoy writing workshops with kids in schools and meeting young writers. If I could travel to a foreign country every year I would. Last summer, it was Turkey, and next summer, Norah wants to go to Ireland. I don’t know if we can do it, but I would love to take her.

What was Kerry Madden like as a child Livy Two’s age? Which Weem’s family member are you most like? (and why?)

I was a dreamy, lonesome kid – scared in public, bossy as all get-out at home. My siblings might say I was like Becksie with her bossiness, but I was definitely a tomboy like Livy Two and very tall like Louise. I hated to be recognized as a girl. Boys earned respect in the world of college football where I grew up – not girls. I also made my siblings perform in plays – they were orphans, prairie children, boarding school students – whatever book I happened to reading, the costumes and heavy drama would come out when I was babysitting them. The boys could stand it for only so long, so my sister and I would act out the dramas until the end.

What are you working on now?

I am working on the biography of Harper Lee for teens and a new novel called, The Fifth Grade Life Of Jack Gettlefinger. I am also writing a magazine piece about three Alabama storytellers: Mary Ward Brown, Kathryn Tucker Windham, and Helen Norris Bell. They were born 1916, 1917, 1918 and they are still working and writing, and it's been a great joy to interview to learn how they sustained a writing life.

How can teachers/fans contact you?

Through my website at www.kerrymadden.com or through Winding Oak at www.windingoak.com

Thank you so much, Debbi. It’s been a pleasure talking to you! Have a wonderful holiday. Oh, I just want to say that these books helped me so much as a writing just beginning:

If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland

The Forest For the Trees by Betsy Lerner

The Spying Heart by Katherine Paterson

The Courage to Write by Ralph Keyes

One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty