Literary Birthday – 29 August – Karen Hesse

Happy Birthday, Karen Hesse, born on 29 August 1952.

Karen Hesse Quotes

1. Write what’s in your heart, write what’s on your mind, and if it becomes a bestseller, you have that, too, to celebrate at the end of the process.
2. It’s always tricky to make your work feel authentic and organic when you’re imposing a rigid ‘literary device‘ on it.
3. Writing and mothering are two overwhelmingly demanding jobs. They both require regular creative problem solving and they jealously compete with each other for attention. I ended up writing at night while my children slept until they were both in school full time. I imagine just the act of writing at night (for someone who is not a night owl) had an impact on the writing as well as my health. Yet I needed to write as much as I needed to eat or breathe. And so I managed.
4. A story develops on multiple planes. Research helps shape it, current events help shape it, what is going on in my own life helps shape it. Every day, all day long, choices are being made during the writing and editing process. Dead ends are pursued and rejected. Seemingly dead ends open up and reveal a passage to the next part of the story.
5. After a year of trying to bring my thoughts, ideas, characters, plot, setting, etc. into focus, the book arrives on my editor’s desk and shortly thereafter returns to me with questions, concerns, suggestions. And the process begins again.
6. When I write in free verse I usually avoid formal constraints. Though I do love occasional internal rhyme, I try not to overdo it as too much makes the work seem self-conscious and contrived. Instead, I arrange the verse to suggest the rhythm and cadence of the character’s native language or accent. I think of my novels in verse more as theater than as one long poem.
7. 1. First you need a good idea and some ability with language. 2. Then you need to dedicate time each day to writing and revising your idea until slowly it evolves into a marketable manuscript. 3. Finally you need a publisher who believes in your book as much as you do.

Source for quotes: Karen Hesse’s Blog

Karen Hesse is an American author of children’s literature and literature for young adults, often with historical settings. She won the Newbery Medal for Out of the Dust. Other books include Letters from Rifka, Brooklyn Bridge, Phoenix Rising, Sable, and Lavender. Hesse’s writing offers a view of historical topics varying from the depression-era dustbowl to World War II, the Holocaust, and early 20th century issues of racism and bigotry. In addition to the Newbery, she has received honours including the Scott O’Dell Historical Fiction Award, the MacArthur Fellowship ‘Genius’ Award and the Christopher Award, and was nominated for a National Jewish Book Award.

Source for photograph: Macmillan Publishers

by Amanda Patterson
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