Interview with Elizabeth O. Dulemba about her new novel A BIRD ON WATER STREET

I am just thrilled to welcome Elizabeth O. Dulemba here today!  Her wonderful new book, A Bird on Water Street, came out on May 7:  

When the birds return to Water Street, will anyone be left to hear them sing? A miner's strike allows green and growing things to return to the Red Hills, but that same strike may force residents to seek new homes and livelihoods elsewhere. Follow the story of Jack Hicks as he struggles to hold onto everything he loves most.

It is a Southern Independent Booksellers Association (SIBA) OKRA Pick, the 2014 National Book Festival Featured Title for Georgia, and a GOLD Mom's Choice Award Winner!

Tam: Hi Elizabeth!  To jump right in, it is so clear that you did tremendous research, Elizabeth, about landscape for A Bird on Water Street.  From the dry, dusty opening to the small signs of green – the weeds and tadpoles and garden…your sensory details are amazing.  For instance, it was easy to smell the dirt and feel it in my own lungs as I read. How did you gather and then articulate the details of this landscape?

Elizabeth: Oh Tamara, I’m so glad you think so! What a wonderful compliment. I did do a ton of research for A Bird on Water Street, and we visited some of the areas that hadn’t yet been revegetated. But I think it also might have been a combination of this area being part of my awareness for most of my adult life combined with being an outdoorsy person and an artist - I’m a naturally observant person when my head isn’t in the clouds.

Tam: What is your personal relationship to the Red Hills?  (You live there right?!!)

Elizabeth: I used to drive by the miners on strike on my way to go camping, back in the early 90s. At the time, I didn’t understand what the strike was all about, but I could see the bare vista. We called it the “rape of the land.” Then in 2001 my husband and I got married and combined our lives by jumping a bit off grid to a log cabin nearby. By then, the area had mostly been revegetated. It took trekking down windy dirt roads to see the remains of what it had looked like back in the copper mining days.

But what really got me tied into the area was when we first moved there and were trying to make friends. We were invited to a town meeting between the (closed) company and the copper miners. The company wanted to open a scenic railway going north from town around an interesting and rare railway switch. They wanted to pay for it by reopening the mine and sending out one shipment of sulfuric acid (a byproduct of copper mining) a week. Miners stood up one by one, bent and thick and strong, wearing denim and plaid flannel. They listed all the loved ones they’d lost to cancers, all thought to be caused by the mines. They made thinly veiled threats that if the company moved forward with their plans, they would sabotage the tracks. That was the moment the muse took hold of me and demanded I write the story.

Tam: Oh wow.  I can see why—

Elizabeth: We’ve since moved away, down to Atlanta, but we still visit the area and the friends we made there are friends for life. So we still feel very connected.

Tam: For me, landscape is almost always a character.  What do you think of that idea?

Elizabeth: Oh yes! The landscape is most definitely a character in A Bird on Water Street! Just as Jack touches a tree and relates it to a holy experience (imagine having no trees in your life), I think the land has a voice as well.

Tam: Do you think most people feel that?

Elizabeth: Children seem especially plugged into it. I used to be. It fades as we grow, I think (or it did for me, at any rate), but I keep trying to get it back. I think that’s why people do so much damage to the environment—they’re not listening or they simply can’t hear. If they could, I think they’d behave in a much more responsible way.

Tam: That is so eloquent and deeply true. 

So to continue along that train of thought, what do you think about the idea that landscape holds stories? The way a piece of land is, for instance, itself shaped over time and what that means for the people (characters) walking and breathing within it. Life happens over and over again on the same piece of land. Do those life stories get told?  Or are they felt? 

Elizabeth: I think you’re absolutely right. Some people would call the stories ghosts, or maybe left over energy, I don’t know. I’m truly not a new-ager, but I do think there’s something to all this. I’ve been to places on this planet that feel so familiar to me, like I’d been there before (Normandy, France and the Maasai Mara in Africa come to mind). And I’ve been to places that feel completely alien to me (the US Rocky Mountains). Whether that’s because of something already there, or something in me, I don’t know. But it feels too palpable to be disregarded.

Tam: In A Bird on Water Street, in particular, what does this idea mean when the land has, for the most part, been stripped and dug dry?

Elizabeth: Even when the land is damaged so severely, I think there’s an energy, a feeling to that as well. It’s probably simple biology - we probably feel life, even microscopic life, around us. Maybe we hear it on a sub-sonic level. And some part of us probably senses its lack as well. It feels eerie, creepy, wrong somehow.

Tam: Yes!

Elizabeth: Although there were folks who loved those Red Hills. Imagine no snakes, no poison ivy, no allergies, no mosquitos. I found it so interesting that some people actually resented the return of nature.

Tam: That is interesting!

But Jack is not one of those people, right?  He is just so desperate and excited about the possibility of nature returning.  What does landscape mean to him?

Elizabeth: Jack is a lot like me in his regard for nature. He feels it thrumming through him, he feels connected to it. For him, trees truly are holy, as is the diversity of life within nature.

Tam: Can you talk more about that? What landscape means to you?

Elizabeth: It’s why I garden (although my current yard is not so great for it and I have less and less time the more I write). I love to run my hands through rich earth and plant things—create life. I’ve often referred to myself as a kamikaze gardener or “She-ra of the Forest.” At the cabin I used to dig up Hemlock trees out of the woods and drag them to wherever I wanted them to be. (I’m not so good at respecting man-made property lines - it’s all Mother Earth to me.) The scene where Jack’s mom teaches him to jump on a spade was how I’ve always done it. There’s a lot of grunting and sweat. And sometimes a tree would really take and turn into a stunning showpiece. I loved it.

Tam: Finally, I am curious about your take on the relationship between landscape and home.  Jack's deep quest for a sense of home was so palpable, and the process of him coming to terms with his own definition of that, and his MAKING of that (his research and his garden, are two examples of that), were so moving.  Do you think landscape helps create home?  Do you believe our inner landscape and our outer (environmental) one must be in synch?

Elizabeth: Again, I am so flattered A Bird on Water Street touched you in this way! I do think our landscape can help create or define home. Pardon the pun, but it grounds us. I have iris bulbs that have followed me to three houses now.

Tam: I know just what you mean! I have irises and a few other plants from my mother's gardens; from my childhood home, and they are essential to my sense of place too.

Elizabeth: Yes! Every time I put mine in the ground, it connects me to where I’ve been and to where I am now. I treasure them. Establishing them establishes me and brings all those good memories forward to my present. I can’t imagine not having a garden in which to continue those threads in my life.

Such wonderful questions Tamara! Thank you for making me think about all this!

Tam: Oh Elizabeth! Thank you so much for coming over here to share your thoughts and your wonderful A Bird on Water Street.

Win a Free Book!

Elizabeth has generously offered to give away a copy of A Bird on Water Street to one lucky person who leaves a comment below.  Leave a comment!  Get yourself a chance to win this book!  I read it, and you don't want to miss it!  The deadline is May 13 at midnight EST. The winner will be drawn at random and announced here at Kissing The Earth on May 14^th.

Elizabeth will be visiting Kirby Larson's blog next, on May 9.  Don't miss her! 

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Also!  The winner of last week's giveaway is Jen Kam!  Congratulations! You win Linden McNeilly's amazing Map Art Lab!

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 Elizabeth O. Dulemba is an award-winning children's book author/illustrator with two dozen titles to her credit. She gives back to the community that supports her as Illustrator Coordinator for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Southern Breeze region (Alabama, Georgia, Florida panhandle) and as a board member for the Georgia Center for the Book. She is a Visiting Associate Professor at Hollins University in the MFA in Children's Book Writing and Illustrating program. She also teaches writing and illustration at other venues and speaks regularly at schools, festivals, and events. Her latest picture book is LULA'S BREW (Xist Publishing) and her debut historical fiction mid-grade, A BIRD ON WATER STREET, will come out Spring 2014 (Little Pickle Press). Her "Coloring Page Tuesday" images (free to parents, teachers and librarians) garner around a million hits to her website annually with over 3,000 subscribers to her newsletter. Learn more about her at her website.

MAP ART LAB~Interview with author Linden McNeilly

We’re thrilled to have Linden McNeilly with us today talking about her newly released book Map Art Lab. I met Linden in the MFA in Writing For Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts years ago and have had the exceptional good fortune of being in a writer’s critique group with her in San Francisco for the past few years.

Sharry: Welcome, Linden! I’ve always been intrigued by maps—I love the way they look, the information they contain and the way they provide insight and guidance to a landscape, so I’m really, really excited about your new book! Could you give our readers an overview of what Map Art Lab is about?

Linden: Well, the whole book is about maps, or map parts, and the history of certain aspects of maps. We have 52 mappish projects. Some have to do with pirates, or sea monsters, or making your own cartouche. We show maps in the endpapers of books, stitched maps, and art objects made of maps. We have maps in the style of various artists.

Sharry: Mappish projects—I love that. What a great resource for parents and teachers and kids of all ages! Can you tell us about any of the projects?

Linden:  One project is making a map of a story you are reading or writing. It’s super fun to do. The example includes a map of the village Okno in which The Cabinet of Wonders—a most fantastic book by Marie Rutkoski —takes place.

Sharry: I bet you had fun creating the example!

Linden: I did. I drew the map with watercolor pencil and fine tipped pen. It has lots of green and black, and is surrounded by yellow, since there are brassica flower fields all around. There’s a little central part of the town that I imagined, with the Leather Shop, Tack Shop, Metalworks and Sign of the Compass, all important places in the story. I had to read through the story to find references to the river and where the mayor’s house was with respect to the forest, and in which direction the characters went to the next town, Morado.

Making a map of a story, whether you are writing it yourself or reading it, helps you understand it so much better. I kept this one simple, since the story takes place at the end of the 16^th century, but even still, it had complexity.

Sharry: I’ve always loved stories that include maps showing the landscape where the story takes place and I think that creating a map of a story’s landscape is such a great idea. How important do you think a landscape is to a story?

Linden: It’s just plain essential. Landscape, and thus the map of that landscape, is the soil on which every story stands.

I think that topography and geography are the underpinnings of all human stories. The land gives us the lives we lead, whether they are oriented toward boats or camels or skyscrapers.

Likewise, maps show us how land and people interact. They situate us. Maps demonstrate the limitations geography places on us. For example, towns stop at the shoreline, and topography affects how much building you can do, or where vantage points can be found, where villains can escape, and where the dragon’s lair is hidden.

Sharry: Wow. Beautifully articulated. I completely agree.

Linden: Thank you.

Sharry: Could you talk a little about what inspired you to do a map book—what sparked the idea and maybe a little about the process of putting it together?

Linden: The inspiration for this book started after my co-author and sister, Jill Berry, published her first book, Personal Geographies. It is an excellent book about making artful maps to explore your inner self: your goals, dreams and history. We decided we wanted to try a different kind of book together that had teacherly aspects combined with fun and beautiful art, all tied together in quick projects. We were delighted to be included in the “Lab” series produced by Quarry Books.

Putting it together was somewhat tricky as we live 1000 miles apart—she’s in Colorado and I’m on the California coast—but we worked it out by emailing and drop boxing things to each other, having regular phone conferences, and then also working for several weeks in each other’s studios. She’s more of the artist and I am more of the writer, but we each did both things while pulling together the projects for this book. We also had contributions from wonderful guest artists from all over the world, which was very fun and stimulating.

Sharry: What a wonderful collaboration. After such a great interview, I’m sure our readers would love to know more about you.

Linden: I’ve been a public school teacher for 27 years. I always seem to put art into my classes even when it’s not officially part of the curriculum. We knit, draw, paint, doodle, dye things, make our own books, etc.

I also write children’s literature. I love maps, and often draw maps to go with my stories or scenes in the novels I am working on. Sometimes the maps help me understand how my characters need to behave (or misbehave, as the case may be!). Often making maps with my stories helps me see the fictional world in greater dimension, and helps me locate my character and ground him or her, if you will.

I live on the central coast of California with my family. Besides writing and teaching, I love to knit, hike and ride my bike in the forest.

Sharry: I understand readers have an opportunity to win a copy of Map Art Lab—what do they need to do?

Linden: Yes! We are having a book giveaway for those who leave a comment here and then share on social media. The deadline is May 4 at midnight PST. For every share or comment your name will be entered into the pot. The winner will be drawn at random and announced here at Kissing The Earth on May 8^th. Be sure to leave an email address where we can contact you.

You can also follow the official blog hop that starts on May 8. There will be more chances to win the book. If you visit all the blogs, you’ll have the highest odds in winning a free copy of Map Art Lab by Jill K. Berry and Linden McNeilly. Our first blogger on the hop is the artist Kim Rae Nugent at http://kimraenugent.blogspot.com/. To see the rest of the blog schedule, check our websites next week at www.lindenmcneilly.com or 

http://jillberrydesign.com/blog/

Sharry: Linden, thank you so much for visiting with us today!

Linden: It was great fun! Thank you.

Reprise: The Landscape of Longing

Kind of amazing to read this, a year later, a year that has been filled with much change.  Among many things I took note of over the last twelve months, one thing stood out for me, which is just what I was contemplating below: how to sit with longing.  I truly spent the year trying to do this, and being curious about it, thinking about it, feeling what it felt like to do it… It's not easy.  It feels like too-tight shoes much of the time, and the urge to kick it away is strong.  But I got used to it, and the result was that I developed a quirky sort of relationship with it, like it was a strange, but endearing, sister. I came to appreciate its presence in my life.  And as I practiced sitting with it, and recognizing its nuances, I found that I was better able to sit with other people's feelings too - people real and imagined.  So I was a better mother and a better friend, perhaps.  And I was definitely a better writer.  By the end of this year of practice I was so much better able to understand, empathize and write about my characters' longings, as well as their other emotions.

So here it is, a year later...

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I feel on-my-knees grateful for the people in my life. I don't know how to articulate the depth of that gratitude... I mean, I can barely scratch the surface of the meaning my family, friends and community make of my life. I feel the same way about my home, the landscape around my home, the dogs, cats and chickens in and out of my home. And I most definitely feel the same way about being a writer.

by Thiemo Muller

 But--or maybe And is a more appropriate conjunction--And, at the same time, this sense of longing has taken up residence inside me...somewhere near my heart, lodged against the curve in my ribs. I feel it in my heartbeat, I feel it when I breathe. I know the reasons for it. There are a few. For now, and for here, I will say that some of it is about wanting to sell a book, wanting to work with an editor, wanting to feel that collaboration and build a story in that way, and wanting to finally see my book in print and share it share it share it with the world.

My longing for this experience is intense. So intense that sometimes, for short bursts of time, it blocks my view, and blocks my other sensory capacities, of other details in my life. Do you know what I mean?






I've been contemplating this longing for the last few weeks.  I have noticed that there is a tendency to do one of two things with longing.  One is to try to push it away. And I think the most common way to accomplish that is to transform it...so maybe, let's say, you turn it into jealousy (she got that and I was supposed to get that and I'm probably entitled to that more than she is, damn it...) or into denial (I never wanted that, and even if I did, which I didn't by the way, but even if I did, I certainly don't want it now...) The other is to allow it to consume you (I feel this longing so badly and so deeply that I think I, in fact, AM this longing...where are my hands and feet and heart and mind?...they have been taken over by the body-snatching longing monster...)

But what about just letting it...be?

When my sister, Callie*, was diagnosed with cancer she had, not surprisingly, a deep and loud fear. I remember sitting by her bedside during a few of her chemotherapy sessions and listening to her talk about it. She told me she knew she couldn't push her fear away. She told me she knew, also, that she couldn't let it become her either. And so, she said, she was learning to sit with it...pull up a chair, invite that ole' deep and loud fear to sit, not on her but next to her.

A chair for her fear.

I mentioned this idea to two of my friends** while I was contemplating my longing one morning (and by contemplating it I mean, on this particular day, having a total crying breakdown about it...sigh...what can you do?!) and one of them said, You need a bed for your longing...a place to tuck it in, let it be, while you get on with being you... The other one came over later that day and gave me this:

An actual bed for my longing! Isn't it awesome?  A beautiful purple bed with cozy white feathers to rest upon...

So here's the other part of my contemplations: longing is not a bad thing. It might not be the most comfortable feeling in the world (think a slightly-too-sharp object stuck under your rib), but if it is given a place to call home, longing kind of smooths itself out, and is even kind of sweet-looking as it rests there... Longing is not a bad thing at all.  It lets us know what matters in our lives. It indicates our dreams. It reminds us that we have hearts and minds and that they are beating and buzzing all the time.

The trick, for me, is to let longing hang out while I sit at my computer revising my picture book for the 12th time, or writing a new chapter for my middle-grade novel, or or or...

And now that it has its own happy home, I can do just that.

One more contemplation: It feels good to talk about longing. I have a hunch that if we writers, especially, talked about it more we would feel better.  Pure longing, no more, no less. What a cool topic for an SCBWI conference, perhaps?  Or for a conversation between blogs?

What do you all think?

With gratitude,
Tam



*Callie, by the way, kicked cancer's butt, as she likes to say. I think it's been five years now that she has been cancer free...talk about on-my-knees gratitude...

**Thank you Alice and Stef...

Remembering Cody

It has been a year since Cody died.  And I thought it appropriate to remember him here, with a rerun of my post about him.  He plays a big part in my middle grade novel, Marble Boys, which, amazingly, I just found out (almost exactly a year since Cody died, mind you) will be published by Schwartz and Wade in August 2015.

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My running buddy, Cody, is gone. He was Kara's dog and we all ran together, with my dog Winn-Dixie, three times a week. On the river trail. At Mud Pond. In the cornfield at the end of our road. We've done it---consistently, religiously, rhythmically---for the last few years or so.

Kara is always the leader. She sets the pace.
Cody is always second in command. His steady gait focuses me, and on dark, winter mornings the white tip of his tail is like a light.
I take up the rear.
(And Winn-Dixie? He runs here and there, and way over there, and then comes on back and does it all again.)

It is this way.
It was this way.
But Cody died.
And so the landscape of my runs has changed.

Cody was this enormous black and white dog. Part border collie and (if you asked Adam, Kara's husband, he would say:) part holstein cow. Smart and sharp, he would stare into my eyes and I felt like he was telling me things--secret dog things, like how it felt to chase Winn-Dixie at top speed in the field by the river on a windy autumn day (the best feeling in the world!), and I felt like he heard me too. There were plenty of nights I lay on the floor by his side and sought his advice on how to handle life (stay present, love a lot, let the rest go.) He also taught my son to laugh. Luc was not even half a year old when he belly laughed for the first time...that deep in the gut, pure joy kind of laugh...and it was Cody, simply Cody's presence, that caused that reaction. Created that joy. Cody had sleep-overs at our house, and he came to my parents' farm in the summers where he waded in the pond to fish for salamanders. He was kind and tolerant. He was wise and thoughtful. He was full up with love.

My littlest daughter, Tavia, said to me this weekend, "Cody is in the ground but his energy is out in the world."

I said yes.

Then she asked, "Will the energy float down to our house? Onto the field? Into the river? Into a new puppy?"

I said yes again. Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

And I realized that not only had the landscape of my runs changed, but the landscape of my house, the field, the river...the landscape of all of us...had changed.

(And maybe, just maybe, there is a new and tiny black and white puppy out there somewhere too.)

Gratefully yours,
Tam

Haiku And The Art Of Flaneur

I’ve been taking an online class in Flash Fiction and really enjoying it. It’s good to think about writing differently and to try some new approaches to story.

One of the first things we did was write a series of haikus—still observations, descriptions with a sense of presence. In each haiku, we were asked to depict a moment in time when we were suddenly aware of reality though something simple and ordinary but striking.

Recording the art of flaneur.

Here are a few from my daily wanderings~

A man in the park
Sits on a stool and plays the saxophone
Cars honk and dogs bark

Six tai chi dancers

Slowly swing their swords in circles

Overhead a hawk

Dog chases a pigeon

Wet grass shimmers in the sun

My socks are cold and wet

Boots pound down the hill 

Hot sun on the back of my neck

No fog on the bay

A flock of green and red

Squealing like bicycle breaks

Backpack baby cries

Hydrangea stars burst


Wood steps lined in green and white

Bridge lights sweep in waves

After writing the haikus, we used them to build a story—or rather tried to incorporate them into a very short story—a piece of flash fiction. This turned out to be a brilliant tool for bringing specific details, sensual details, into a scene. I’ve started using it in my longer fiction—mentally “walking” through a scene with an eye, an ear, a sniff here and there, and then jotting down a series of quick haiku-like poems that can be folded back into the scene.

It’s also a fun way to make journal entries, to find the extraordinary in the ordinary details of your day. 

I encourage you to try a little haiku in your life—you just might really like it!

Take good care,

Sharry