I met Susan Campbell Bartoletti when we were both on the faculty of the SCBWI Summer Conference last year. She is a talented speaker and held a wonderful workshop on revising fiction and non-fiction. Her amazing non-fiction book, They Called Themselves the K.K.K., is a remarkable study of America's terrorist group. I am so pleased that Susan agreed to an interview.
When and why did you start writing for children?
Although I have always loved to read, I had no idea I was going to be a writer when I grew up. In school, I liked art class best.
In college, I filled my schedule with literature classes. I took a creative writing class where I wrote short stories and poetry for the first time. I interned as a journalist at a local newspaper. These experiences fueled a dream/desire to write my own stories. I never planned to teach, but within days of graduation, I was offered a job teaching eighth-grade English, and I accepted. I never thought I¹d stay, but I soon found that I was hooked on eighth graders. For the next eighteen years, I taught eighth grade. My students wrote poems, stories, and essays. They researched, wrote, and illustrated their own nonfiction picture books. They held poetry readings. It felt good to see them grow as writers. And it felt good to see them excited about their growth.
My students inspired me to practice what I preached. I joined a writer¹s group and got serious about my own writing, because what good is a dream or a desire without acting upon it? I credit my students with helping me find my voice and my audience, and that discovery is HUGE for an aspiring writer. I'll never forget what one eighth-grade student told me. Danielle was one of my first Goth students, and one day she said, "In order for art to be good, it's got to have attitude."
Amazing, huh? From an 8th grader. I wrote that on an index card and keep it pinned to a bulletin board in my office.
Finding a subject to write about is also HUGE. Writers write about things they know. I often tell aspiring writers to reach down inside themselves and pull out a family story to tell. That's what I did, and by 1997, I had published short stories, two picture books, and a nonfiction book inspired by my husband's family history, Growing Up in Coal Country (Houghton Mifflin). I had a novel and another nonfiction book under contract. (Now with fifteen books, I am still reaching down and pulling up themes and subjects that are important to me.)
In 1997, I realized that the time had come for a difficult decision: either teach full-time or write full-time.
I already had one career that I loved -- teaching. Was it time for another? Could I make it as a full-time writer?
"Leap and the net will appear," a friend told me.
And I did.
And it did.
(P.S. That friend was Laurie Halse Anderson.)
You do extreme research. When do you feel that you have enough
information to write the story?
Research is time-consuming and some days I wonder if I¹ll ever know
enough to begin writing. But if I begin to write too soon, before I
feel ownership over the material, my writing will fall flat. It will
be rendered voiceless, because I haven¹t breathed my own life into the
story. (That¹s what voice is, you know breathing a story to life,
giving the narrative the cadence and the rhythm that quickens the
words and sentences to life.) But worst of all, if I write too soon,
I¹ll encounter writer¹s block, because, simply, I don¹t know enough.
On the other hand, research can become a sophisticated form of
procrastination. And so, when the facts repeat themselves, when I am
no longer learning anything new, it¹s time to begin writing. As I
write, I constantly double-check and triple-check facts. I look for
gaps, find where I need more information to flesh out the story. And
so the research and writing process continue, side-by-side.
What are some of your favorite children's books that you'd like to
recommend?
I read for a different purpose: to study the work of writers who are masters of their craft. I want to crawl inside their work and see how they do it. That's why I often study the work of nonfiction writers such as Jim Murphy, Marc Aronson, Russell Freedman, Elizabeth Partridge, Tanya Lee Stone, Deb Heiligman, Candace Fleming to see how they do it. I also read the work of fiction writers such as Laurie Halse Anderson, Rita Williams-Gracia, Pam Munoz Ryan, and Deborah Wiles.
What are you working on now?
I'm working on a novel. I often use historical facts to write
nonfiction, but sometimes I take the facts and filter them through my
imagination to tell a story that could have happened, based on the
historical record. That's what I'm doing right now. Often, after
writing a book such as They Called themselves the K.K.K., I still have
questions that can only be answered by writing a work of fiction,
based on the research. So that's what I'm working on -- answering
questions!
What is your favorite dessert and why?
That's easy. My mother's apple pie. It is the perfect blend of sweet and tart with the world's flakiest crust, none too thin and not too thick. (I cannot roll out a pie crust without swearing like a sailor. My family knows to abandon ship when I'm making a pie, and the dogs hide.)
Bio: Susan Campbell Bartoletti has published poetry, short stories, picture books, novels, and nonfiction for young readers. Her work includes the Newbery Honor nonfiction book Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow (Scholastic 2005) and an historical novel, The Boy Who Dared (Scholastic 2008). Her work has received dozens of awards and honors, including the ALA Newbery Honor, the ALA Robert F. Sibert Award for Nonfiction, the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for Nonfiction, the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction, the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, and the Washington Post/Washington Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award for her body of work and named to many prestigious lists. Despite writing about depressing subjects such as the terror of the Ku Klux Klan in They Called Themselves the K.K.K, the horror of the Third Reich in Hitler Youth, famine in Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, child labor in Kids on Strike! and Growing Up in Coal Country, and the pain of arranged marriages in A Coal Miner’s Bride, she insists that she has a good sense of humor, no doubt a defense mechanism developed as a result of teaching eighth grade for eighteen years. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University (New York). She lives with her husband near Scranton, Pennsylvania. They have two grown children.
Terrific interview. Thank you for bringing this wonderful author to my attention.
Regards,
Donna McDine
Children's Author
www.thegoldenpathway.blogspot.com
Posted by: Donna McDine | January 25, 2011 at 04:40 PM
I learned so much listening to Susan at SCBWI National this summer. It was great to read what she had to say here. Thanks, Tina! and of course thanks to Susan.
Posted by: valerie hobbs | January 25, 2011 at 10:54 AM
Susan was one of the highlights of last year's SCBWI summer conference. She is an amazing writer and a terrific person! Thanks for this interview
Posted by: Alexis | January 25, 2011 at 10:47 AM
Well done, Tina. You're providing ya all a real service. Thank you!
Teri Fox
L.A.
Posted by: T. Fox | January 25, 2011 at 09:46 AM
She is remarkable. A great speaker and workshop presenter. I feel lucky to have her on the blog.
Posted by: Tina Coury | January 25, 2011 at 07:01 AM
Re: [Tales from the Rushmore Kid] Tracy Barrett submitted a comment to Susan Campbell Bartoletti
She is remarkable and gives the most amazing workshops. I feel lucky to have gotten an interview!
Posted by: Tina Nichols Coury | January 25, 2011 at 06:58 AM
Susan Campbell Bartoletti is one of my favorites. I bought her book about the Hitler Youth when I was writing my disseratation and still refer to it. Thanks for the great interview.
Posted by: Alex Baugh | January 25, 2011 at 06:53 AM
Excellent interview! I'm going to bookmark this one.
Posted by: Tracy Barrett | January 25, 2011 at 06:50 AM