Author Profile: Nancy Garden

Nancy Garden

BIO

Nancy Garden is the author of ANNIE ON MY MIND, THE YEAR THEY BURNED THE BOOKS, LARK IN THE MORNING, DOVE AND SWORD, GOOD MOON RISING, and many others. Her novels often deal with teenagers in the midst of the discovery of their homosexuality or simply dealing with living openly as lesbians.

INTERVIEW

September 8, 2000

Nancy Garden is a renown YA author who deals with the issue of homosexuality and homophobia in most of her novels --- for that reason she and her books are the brunt of controversy and even banning. Whether you as a reader are hetero or homosexual, her characters tell stories that everyone can relate to --- from learning about love and dealing with loss, to defending yourself against prejudice or dishing it out. Her books make you face the truth. Teenreads writer Audrey Marie Danielson asked Garden about her books, the controversy, and the importance of talking about homosexuality and most importantly, about supporting the ones you love.

TBB: In ANNIE ON MY MIND, GOOD MOON RISING, and LARK IN THE MORNING, you write honestly about what it is like to be a gay teenager in today's world. Although we are supposedly living in enlightened times, the characters in your novels, still encounter prejudice and have to deal with other people's ignorance and misinformation about homosexuality. Do you find it difficult to present this subject in a way that all teens can relate to?

NG:  There's a lot that's difficult about presenting homophobia and misinformation about homosexuality.  For example, for many years I found it hard to avoid using my characters as "mouthpieces" for my views instead of as real, three-dimensional characters.  I tended to stand up on my soapbox and shout (or have my characters shout), "Hey, we're decent people, most of us; like every other group, we're not all good or all bad --- and it's wrong that we're often treated unfairly, or harassed, or beaten up."  But that doesn't work in fiction, nor should it!  When you write a novel, your job is to tell a story, not produce a political tract. It's hard, though, as any of your readers who are writers probably know, to write well about the things that are most important to you.

The key is to try to tell a good story about characters who seem real.  I think that most teens can empathize with characters who are harassed, or brutalized, or made to feel subhuman.  And most teens know what it's like to search for one's own identity as an individual, and to deal with one's emerging sexuality. Many teens know what it's like to feel one doesn't belong, and many of those who do feel they belong can usually relate at least somewhat to people who don't.  In that way, I think most straight teens can empathize or at least sympathize with fictional gay and lesbian characters who have problems related to their homosexuality --- when those characters, of course, are portrayed convincingly as flesh and blood human beings.

(By the way, I'll probably use the word "gay" often in this interview to refer to both gay and lesbian people, and in some instances when I'm talking in general, to bisexual and transgendered people as well --- or I'll use the letter GLBT to refer to the wide group.)

TBB: You cover two important themes in LARK IN THE MORNING --- the abuse of Lark and her brother, and Gillian's problem of how to handle her newly discovered homosexuality and her feelings for her friend, Suzanne. How did you manage to handle both without diminishing one and making it less important?

NG:  Actually, although I see Gillian's homosexuality in LARK as important, I feel it's secondary to her relationship with Lark and Jackie, the two young runaways.  In novels about straight teenagers, the girl main character usually has a boyfriend, or the boy main character usually has a girlfriend, but the book may well be about something else. One's sexuality is a fundamental part of one, of course, and often seems especially so when one is a teen --- but it's not the only part of one's personality or of one's life. That's as true of gay people as it is of straight people -- and I wanted to show that in LARK.  Interestingly enough, though, a lesbian reviewer said she wished the book had been more of a coming-out book, and a straight reviewer wondered why Gillian couldn't have been straight!  That says to me that some people aren't yet ready to think of being gay as similar to being straight in that it isn't the only important thing about who one is.

But I don't think that really answers your question!  I guess my problem is that I thought I did make  Gillian's homosexuality less important in the story than her dealing with Lark and Jackie and their serious problems, even though homosexuality is a basic part of her identity.  But maybe that's like asking people not to think about pink elephants!  Perhaps, still, the very mention that a character is gay (or lesbian, or bisexual, or transgendered) makes his or her sexuality seem unusually important.

TBB: There were attempts to censor ANNIE ON MY MIND. How do you feel about censorship and the banning of books? What would you say to those who want to ban books?

NG:  This is a "Don't get me started" question!  I could go on and on and on about censorship, and about my experiences with it, and I guess I do when when I make speeches about it.  Basically, though, censorship is a violation of the First Amendment --- freedom of speech --- and that's one of the cornerstones of our democracy. Every attempt at banning a book --- officially removing it from library shelves --- is an attack on the First Amendment and on the freedom that we enjoy in this country to think for ourselves and to make up our own minds about what we believe.

I believe it's important for people --- and I include teens and younger kids --- to have access to a wide range of ideas and viewpoints so they can make up their own minds about their beliefs. But some adults --- some very sincere ones -- honestly disagree with that,  and feel that ideas and viewpoints that don't agree with theirs are harmful to kids. I think parents have every right to decide what their own children may or may not read --- but no right to decide what other people's children may or may not read.  And It's important to remember, I think, that censorship is a two-way street: if you can ban a book you don't like, I can ban one you do like!  If everyone could remove books they disagreed with, I'm not sure there'd be a lot of books in the library any more.  As a matter of fact, during the censorship battle over ANNIE, which was in Kansas, one boy, a high school junior,  and his friends took nearly 3,000 books out of their school district's libraries to show that if you remove everything that's controversial, you don't have a whole lot left!  (They took the books back before they were due, too!)

TBB: Many teenagers have to face sexual identity questions and problems about so-called sensitive subjects without benefit of understanding parents and friends who are afraid sometimes to face these issues. Is this why you write about this subject so often?

NG:  Yes.

TBB: How important do you think it is that teenagers understand about homosexuality? Do you find that your books help teenagers?

NG:  I think it's very important.  There are gay adults in every walk of life and it's pretty safe to assume that there are gay teens in every high school.  I think it's important for all of us on this planet to get along, no matter what our race, religion, nationality, ethnic background, or sexual orientation.  It's as important for GLBT teens to see characters like themselves in books as it is for African-American teens, Latino teens, Asian teens, Native American teens, Jewish teens, Muslim teens, Christian teens, and teens who are members of other groups to see themselves.  And it's important for teens who aren't members of those groups to see those characters, too, because that's one step toward understanding that all people are part of the human family.

TBB: In your book, THE YEAR THEY BURNED THE BOOKS, Jamie Crawford --- the Editor of the Wilson High "Telegraph" --- had a lot of influence at her New England school. Do you feel this could happen in real life?

NG:  I think it could, depending, of course, on the school and its faculty and administration.  Jamie's school is a small one, with a very understanding and supportive principal and a very understanding, supportive, and committed newspaper adviser.  Jamie herself is blessed with parents who stand behind her, especially her mom.  But I also think --- no, I know --- there are a lot of schools where it couldn't happen.  However, I've been struck, especially in recent years, by the enormous influence some very brave teens have had in their schools and communities in dealing with a variety of tough issues.  It was teens in Olathe, Kansas, by the way, who with their parents, sued their school board and school superintendent for violating their First and Fourteenth  Amendment rights when the district refused to restore ANNIE ON MY MIND to library shelves after they'd removed it.  The suit went to trial in Federal District Court, and the judge ordered the book returned to the shelves.  Those kids had to overcome much greater obstacles than Jamie does in BURNED BOOKS, and even though they "lost" in relation to their school district,  ultimately, they won.

TBB: How much research went into DOVE AND SWORD before you started the actual writing? Did you travel to France to get background information?

NG:  I did lots of research for DOVE & SWORD, and  loved every minute of it!  I think I spent about four years researching the book, and it was so much fun that I almost didn't want to stop and concentrate on the writing.

When you write a historical novel, you have to know everything --- everything --- about the period, even a lot of stuff you don't end up using.  I had to learn about food, clothes, education, religion, games, farming, cities,  medicine, midwifery, herbs, warfare, weaponry, how people of various social classes lived -- you name it.  I also had to learn about Joan of Arc's life, about the Hundred Years War, and about a number of historical figures.  I used some wonderful libraries, including a special collection at the Boston Public Library devoted to Joan of Arc, and another in Orleans, France (yes,  my partner, who helped with the research, especially the history parts,  and I did go to France);  we used the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and a museum of armor in Worcester, Massachusetts; we went to museums and cathedrals and churches in France, and we traced Joan's route from her native village, Domremy, through all her battlefields, to Rouen, where she was burned at the stake.  I ended up with hundreds of index cards, and many, many pages of notes, maps, photocopies of costumes, pamphlets and postcards --- tons of stuff.

TBB: You also write fantasy novels that take place in New England, specifically FOURS CROSSING and the three companion books. Do you enjoy writing this type of book and how different are they to work on from your other novels?

NG: Sure, I enjoy it! The FOURS CROSSING books are pretty serious fiction, but I've also written a number of mysteries for younger kids involving supernatural characters, and a serial novel called THE SECRET OF SMITH'S HILL that's appeared in more than 100 newspapers.  That kind of thing is fun, and provides a different kind of challenge and a change of pace --- but serious fiction, I hasten to add, is my first love.

How different are other kinds of books to work on than my young adult novels?  Well, they're quite different in content and (usually) in age level, but I approach them in just about the same way.  They're shorter and I can usually write them more quickly (with the exception of the Fours Crossing books), but I work from an outline, as I do with all my books, and change the outline as I go along to reflect unexpected things that happen.  I also usually write an "autobiography" for each main character and for some minor characters as well, in which I pretend to be the character writing about his or her life up until the time of the book.  I do this with my serious fiction, too.  Plot is, of course, of paramount importance in mysteries; and when you're dealing with fantasy or with supernatural characters, you have to have a firm grasp of the "rules" governing the world and/or the creatures you're writing about.  Working that out, and working out the solution to a mystery can be fun!

The serial novel presented very different challenges.  Each chapter had to have a limited number of words, and there was also a limited number of chapters.  Each one had to end with a cliffhanger and open with a statement about what had happened earlier.  I found that characterization and setting had to be done unusually concisely, and that the structure of the whole was quite different from the structure of a regular novel.

I enjoy writing different kinds of things and about different kinds of subjects and characters.

TBB: How did you research your nonfiction books such as BERLIN: CITY SPLIT IN TWO, and VAMPIRES, WEREWOLVES, and WITCHES. Do you approach these differently than your fiction novels? Do you plan on writing more nonfiction books?

NG:  For BERLIN, I read history books and newspaper accounts about Berlin, and visited both East and West Berlin in the days when the wall was still standing.  (Some of your readers may not know that after World War II, the city of Berlin was divided in two, with the Allies, including the US, governing the western part and the communists governing the eastern part. Because people from the east tended to relocate in the west, the government of the east put up a wall dividing the city, and shot anyone who they caught escaping. The wall divided many families, and people went on trying to go over --- or under --- it.)

FOR VAMPIRES, etc., I depended a lot on a wonderful library in Boston which has a great collection of old books dealing with religion and the supernatural --- the two subjects are often closely linked. When I walked into the library for the first time and asked, "Where are the books on vampires?" the man behind the circulation desk replied, "In the crypt!" (I used that, and some details about the library itself, later in a novel for younger kids called PRISONER OF VAMPIRES.)  For WITCHES, my partner and I spent a day in Salem and Danvers, supplementing my research on the 16th century Salem witch trials. We took some photos, too, and I stupidly didn't label them as soon as we had them developed. There was one of a statue that I eventually captioned "Witch statue, Salem, Massachusetts" --- and after the book was published I got a rather strong letter from someone representing Salem's historical society, pointing out that the statue was actually of one of the town's founders. Was my face red!

I also talked with and corresponded with some modern witches for that book.

As I said above, I used index cards for my nonfiction research, most of it anyway.  They're wonderfully easy to arrange and rearrange till you get everything you want to say in the right order. I'm always careful to copy information verbatim from my sources, so I don't inadvertently repeat someone else's words when I actually start writing.  I number my sources, and put the source number on each card so I know where the information on the card comes from.

At the moment, I don't have any more nonfiction books in mind, but that doesn't necessarily mean I won't write more. However, my interest at the moment is in fiction.

TBB: Do you become personally involved in marketing your books, such as visiting bookstores, and talking to teachers and librarians?

NG:  Yes, when I can and when I'm asked!  In the past four or five years, I've been making a fair number of speeches to teachers and librarians about my books and about censorship.  I try to work with my publisher, too, on marketing my work by providing them with lists of contacts.  I often feel I should do more of that kind of thing, and should more actively seek out school, library, and bookstore appearances --- but I don't want to get so involved doing that that I don't have time to write.  It's a delicate balance, hard to maintain.

TBB: What do you enjoy most about your school visits? What is the focus of your talks to the students? Do you find them receptive or defensive?

NG:  The only times I've found students inattentive --- I don't think I've really found them defensive --- has been when they haven't been prepared or when the teachers themselves treat an author visit as nothing more than a free period for themselves.  That's very rare, though.  I have gotten a couple of  hostile questions when I've talked about my gay books, but again, that's pretty rare.  Most of the time I find students receptive, intelligent, and enthusiastic, and I love talking with them.

My focus varies depending on the age of the students.  I don't usually talk to kids younger than fourth grade, although I've done that a few times in the past. With young kids, I sometimes do story writing with them or creative dramatics. I did a "residency" one year in several adjacent towns, with an illustrator; together, we worked with kids on making books. That was fun!  I usually start off, with any age, by talking about where I get ideas, and in doing that, I introduce those of my books that are suitable for that age level. I love answering questions, so I encourage kids to ask them and to make comments, and I make sure to bring along things like manuscript pages, various stages of proof, contracts, etc. I try to have a real dialogue with students instead of just talking "at" them.

What I enjoy most is the contact with my readers!  I love getting feedback about my books, and I love hearing what they're interested in and what their ideas are and hearing the suggestions they sometimes make for how my books could be improved.  I love hearing about their own experiences with reading and writing.

TBB: You spent time working in the theater, teaching, and editing.  When did you know that you wanted to be a full-time writer and what event made that final decision for you?

NG:  I don't think there was any one event that made me want to be a writer.  I discovered writing was fun when I wrote my first story outside of school when I was 8 and, from then on, I always wrote no matter what else I was interested in doing or actually did.  When I was in high school, I worried that I'd have to choose between writing and theater, although I think I gradually realized that I might be able to do both.  My favorite English teacher urged me to become a writer, but I told her I wanted to act instead; I invited her to come and see me in a community theater play I was in. She did, and afterwards she said, rather begrudgingly, that I could be an actress if I wanted. But she turned out to be right after all!

Theater was very important to me and taught me a great deal. I didn't just act; I also worked as a lighting designer, and I did some stage managing and directing; directing was what I wanted ultimately to do. I think my directing experience has helped me as a writer in handling scenes with many people in them. And my acting experience has helped me develop fictional characters. It was when I was acting that I started writing "autobiographies" of my characters.

I kind of drifted out of theater after a while and into publishing; I became disillusioned with New York theater, and I had a hard time, like most theater people, finding work.  I taught speech and acting and creative dramatics part time, and finally got a full time job for a man who called himself a literary agent --- he really ran an editorial service whose main function was to criticize, edit, or ghost write books, stories, plays, you name it. But he rarely tried to sell his clients' work; most of it wasn't good enough anyway. I learned a lot about writing while working for him, and then I went on to more legitimate jobs in publishing. But as I said, I always wrote no matter what else I did, even back in my theater days; and I've always been struck by the number of theater people who write, even if just for themselves.

TBB: When did you decide to write for young adults and children rather than for the adult market?

NG:  I grew up loving books and reading, especially children's books, and I think I've just about always wanted to write for young people. I've written for adults, too, although not as successfully as I've written for kids. When I was in college and for a few years afterwards, I worked on a novel for adults that I (mercifully!) never tried to sell; it taught me a lot about writing, but it wasn't very good. But I wrote children's stories in those days, too, as I remember. I do write book reviews and articles for adults now and then, and I recently finished an adult novel. I like writing for all levels, or trying to, but I think teens will always be my favorite audience. Some of the best and most exciting and innovative writing being done today is for the teen market, I think, and teens are a wonderful audience.

TBB: How do you keep in touch with teenagers and their interests?

NG:  I wish I had more direct contact with teens now than I have.  A number of years ago, my partner and I helped bring up a pair of twins --- a boy and a girl --- in their teen years, and I felt more directly in touch with teens back then than I do now.  But I do teach writing to teens in the correspondence course I teach, and I correspond with a few teens outside that course, and I do meet teens on school visits, and of course I read about teens and I try to check in with teen magazines, etc.

But I think actually what's more important, and what I think many writers for young people will tell you, is keeping in touch with the teen a writer once was. I had a tough adolescence and I remember it very clearly, my feelings especially.  And I believe that although the music changes, and the clothes change, and other external things change; teens don't feel very different today from the way they did when I was growing up. Let me qualify that a little: Many teens face tougher problems now at younger ages than they did when I was growing up and that does make a difference.  But if your parents throw you out, or you flunk social studies, or lose the class election, or don't get asked to the prom, or if your boyfriend wants you to have sex with him and you don't want to, or if your parents split up, or your grandmother dies, or your parents tell you that you can't see your boyfriend or girlfriend, or you get caught smoking/doing drugs/drinking, or you can't resist the urge to cut yourself or purge, or you find God and see that your friends haven't, or you care so much about being a dancer or a football player that you see no point in school, or you get called fag or dyke every day in school, or your best friend dies in a car crash or commits suicide; the things that go on inside your gut aren't so very different from the things that have gone inside the guts of kids in other generations who faced similar situations.

And that's what counts in fiction, I  think, more than the outer trappings, important as those may be.

TBB: What is the most difficult aspect of writing for you?

NG: Oddly enough, that's a hard question, because the answer varies depending on the book. When I'm about to start a new book, I usually think "I don't know how to do this; I don't see how I've been able to do it before; I don't think I'm going to be able to do it." But then I start working and just plow ahead. I don't usually have writers block, but I know there are days when I feel everything I've written is lousy.  It usually doesn't turn out to be as bad as I've thought, but it also usually turns out not to be as good as it should be.

I think the most frustrating part of writing for me, though, is the feeling that the finished product never quite lives up to the vision I had of it when I began.  I feel that to a greater or lesser degree depending on the book, but I usually do feel it.

Of course there are other frustrating, difficult things that have nothing to do with the writing process:  not being able to sell a manuscript (yes, that happens to professionals, too!), getting reviews written by reviewers who wish one had written a different book from the book one intended to write -- that kind of thing.

TBB: What authors inspired you as you were growing up? Who are your favorite young adult writers?

NG:  That's a hard question, too, because the list in both cases would be very long.  And I'm going to respectfully pass on the second part of it, even though I realize that's a bit of a cop out --- but I know a good many authors of young adult books, and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Suffice it to say that I admire just about all the YA authors I know and many that I've read and don't know personally. It would perhaps be safe to say, though, that one of my biggest heroes is Walter Dean Meyers.

When I was growing up, I loved A.A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, Rudyard Kipling, Hugh Lofting, Lewis Carroll,  Arthur Ransome, Louisa May Alcott --- yes, I grew up on lots of children's classics. I loved Albert Payson Terhune, Walter Farley, Anna Sewell, Marguerite Henry --- right, I loved books about dogs and horses. Give me 30 seconds and I'll think of many, many more favorites, though, and the list will be too long to run!

TBB: What advice would give to aspiring writers?

NG:  Read all you can; read everything you can -- read a wide variety of authors and a wide variety of types of books and stories.  And write all you can. Keep a journal, a journal of thoughts and feelings and ideas and descriptions and maybe even quotes that are important to you.  Write stories, too, and poems, and plays --- stage plays, screenplays, teleplays --- and essays, and articles --- whatever you want to write.  Write fantasy, realism, sci-fi, horror --- whatever genre interests you; experiment!  Read about writing, too; there are some great writers magazines, and there are many good books about writing.

But I think the one most important thing, especially when one is starting out, is to read, read, read!

TBB: Are you working on anything new right now?

NG:  Yes.  I'm working on a young adult novel about a school shooting, which as you can imagine is a very difficult subject. And yes, I've been doing research in connection with it, and a lot of thinking and agonizing. I still don't know if the book is going to work out or not; I'm very nervous about it. But especially after Columbine, like most people, I wanted tremendously to be able to do something helpful, and the thing I guess I do best is write. But who knows if anything I write will be helpful?  I certainly wouldn't want it to be the opposite, and one never knows, when one sends a book out into the world, what effect it's going to have.

This fall I have a book, HOLLY'S SECRET, coming out for kids from 8-12, and I just signed the contract for another 8-12 called THE MELANIE SUMMER. In between the two I think, unless the schedule changes, I have a picture book, my first, coming out called MOLLY'S FAMILY. I have a couple of other books going the rounds, and I have tentative plans for another serial novel, a young adult story collection, and a novel for young adults set in the future. But those ideas are still in the very early stages.