Everyday Advocacy: Teachers Who Change the Literacy Narrative

Today, the book Everyday Advocacy: Teachers Who Change the Literacy Narrative by Cathy Fleischer and Antero Garcia is available! This is an important book for all educators who want to work to change the narrative about literacy and education. This is a must-read for educators. It would be a great book to read with a group of colleagues--local or beyond--to think about how you can make a difference as part of your everyday work.

We had the chance to ask Cathy and Antero some questions about their book and the ideas behind it. We hope you learn from all they have to say and the resources they share. 

Franki: Why do you think it is important for teachers to have advocacy skills?

Cathy and Antero: The public narrative surrounding teachers is too often dismissive, demeaning, and just plain wrong--based on “what it was like when I went to school” or on years of one-dimensional media depictions of either the hero teacher (who works 80 hours a week to save kids) or the uncaring teacher who doesn’t take the work seriously. Neither of these depictions fit the teachers we know, the teachers who are committed to professional learning and thoughtful curriculum development, who care deeply about students, who continually work to improve their own teaching, and who make meaningful decisions about what to teach and what not to teach.

But sadly, so many decisions about how and what we teach have been taken away from teachers and placed in the hands of people who are not regularly in schools and who quite simply don’t have the knowledge or expertise to decide how and what we should teach.

This is why teachers need advocacy skills--to share their voices, their stories, their expertise in order to shift the public narrative around teaching in order to help others (colleagues, administrators, legislators and community members) see teachers and teaching differently.

Franki: You’ve really worked to redefine advocacy for educators and to broaden the ways in which we, as teachers can see ourselves doing this work. I imagine that has been very intentional. Can you talk about that journey?

Cathy: For me it began twenty years ago when my husband (an environmental advocate) and I would talk over the dinner table about our work, and I learned how he uses advocacy measures to create campaigns on specific environmental issues. His super-smart thinking on things like cutting an issue, identifying decision-makers, and finding allies led me to start studying community organizing and advocacy, interviewing organizers in multiple fields, and thinking hard about how what they do could be adapted for teachers. I began writing about what I was learning and then offering workshops for teachers so I see how they thought advocacy might work for them, how it could be a part of their already overly busy lives rather than an add-on. This led to co-creating the Everyday Advocacy website with former NCTE Communications Director Jenna Fournel, which features hands-on approaches to advocacy and teacher stories from these workshops. Truly, every single day I learn more and more from the amazing teachers who do this work: how they continue to advocate for ways of teaching and learning they know are important in their specific contexts.

Antero: Before learning about Everyday Advocacy from Cathy and her work with Jenna, my work with teachers tended to focus on what we refer to in the book as “big A” Advocacy. My scholarship and my experiences in classrooms often emphasized activist stances toward justice that, admittedly, can get in the way of some teachers seeing themselves as advocates. Part of what’s appealed to me about the work that Cathy leads is that every teacher can see themselves in this work, it builds on what they know, it encourages them to center student learning needs, and it is focused on results for the here and now. I think getting every teacher to see themselves as an advocate and building capacity with this skill set is an imperative for classroom teachers right now; that it still connects to bigger issues around democracy, labor, and freedom is an added bonus.

Franki: Can you talk about the importance of the word “everyday” in your title and idea about advocacy?

Cathy and Antero: Advocacy seems like a big scary word—it’s what those paid community organizers or lobbyists do to get bills passed or to organize marches with thousands of people in the street. But there are a ton of examples in the world of folks who use their voices and tell their stories as part of their day to day lives—and that’s what we mean when we use the term everyday advocacy--part-of rather than add-on.

The word also reminds us that the regularity of advocacy in the lives of teachers makes it feel less scary. Like going to the gym (in the times when it was safe to do so!), advocacy is a muscle that develops or atrophies through everyday use.

Franki: Everyone has ideas about education and it seems that teachers are no longer the people trusted when it comes to decision-making. But you have a strong belief in teachers and you have ideas about how we can change the narrative. What can teachers do locally and beyond to change that?

Cathy and Antero: It’s true--we do believe in teachers! As we say in the introduction to the book, “We believe in their power to inspire, challenge, support, and care for the students with whom they work--day-in and day-out, in often challenging circumstances, and with intelligence and grace. Teachers, we know, are contemporary superheroes, and we believe they should be honored as such, each and every day.”

But teachers are not always trusted to make decisions about curriculum and pedagogy and assessment and a host of other issues. And the narrative that we mentioned above--one that is too often dismissive and demeaning--has become even stronger during this pandemic. We’ve been amazed at the ways some people are dismissing the herculean effort that teachers are putting forth and disheartened that teacher voices were too often absent from discussions of how to do school this year.

We believe that teachers can change that narrative and bring their voices into the discussion--and the book is filled with ideas about how to do that. Specifically, teachers can focus on a particular issue that impacts them in their local setting, learn as much as they can about that issue (by carefully observing students in their own classrooms, working to understand the context of their own communities, and immersing themselves in what others have written and said about the issue); seek like-minded colleagues and community members to become allies; and set out a plan to help others understand the issue differently. It’s not always easy, but as the examples in the book show, teachers are doing this work in all kinds of ways.

Franki: With limited time, what are some quick tips for how teachers might do move advocacy work?

Cathy and Antero: We think working proactively is the first big step. What can you do as a teacher to help other teachers, administrators, parents, and community members understand why you teach in the ways you do? You can host a parent night in which you ask these adults to share memories of reading and writing in their lives and then connect their memories to why you use choice reading and writing workshops. Or you might begin a children’s or young adult book club for students and parents that focuses on diverse books so parents can both up their own knowledge and watch how their students respond. Or you might share student work regularly with your families and administrators so they can see the great work that emerges when you teach in a particular way.

This proactive advocacy leads to you developing more allies as others understand your thinking and your teaching. And once they understand, we’ve found they are more willing to have your back if questions or concerns arise down the road.

Franki: Who are some people (other than the authors in your book) who educators can follow as models for their own advocacy work?

Cathy and Antero: We love the blog Teachers, Profs, Parents: Writers Who Care as an example of how you can write for the public. Check out their Tips for Writing for Parents as one resource.

We also love Jessyca Matthew’s articles for Teaching Tolerance and her interview for NEA’s Social Justice Advocate of the Year.

The ELATE Commission on Social Justice has a ton of useful resources on their easy to remember site: https://justice.education/

As a professional learning community, the Marginal Syllabus project has been a years-running effort to bridge the theories described in NCTE journals into dialogue and practice; the ideas and connections here are useful and rejuvenating.

Lastly, getting to read about the big and small forms of advocacy happening in the lives of teachers and teacher educators is always illuminating. Literacy scholar Betina Hsieh and math teacher Jose Vilson’s blogs are both wonderful.

Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had: An Interview with Tracy Zager

The new book Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You Had is a treasure!  It is a huge book and filled with so much great thinking about what our math classrooms can and should be for all students.  It is one we are sure you will want to own. I've always loved math and I seem to have lucked out on teaching with amazing teammates and having a great math coach who know best practices for math learning.  Regardless of where you are in your work as a math teacher, this book has so much to offer.  It is a book we will both revisit over and over and. over in our teaching.

We were lucky to interview author Tracy Zager as there is always so much to learn from her.  Enjoy!

Mary Lee and Franki:  What person or experience has had the greatest impact on your journey as a mathematician, or math teacher or teacher leader?

Tracy: Elham Kazemi introduced me to the amazing world of children's mathematical ideas, and that changed everything. She got me hooked on listening to kids' thinking, on assuming that students are making sense, and on figuring out how to help students grapple with the next juicy idea. I'm so grateful!

Mary Lee and Franki: What's one thing you'd tell all kids about math?

Tracy: Math is not worksheets. Math is one way (like science or history) to ask and answer your own questions about the world.

Mary Lee and Franki: What's one thing you'd tell all teachers about teaching math?

Tracy: Most of us got a raw deal. The math classes we endured as students had very little to do with mathematics as a discipline. The discipline is so much more likable! Therefore, if we learn to teach math in ways that are authentic to the discipline, it can become a great source of joy in our lives.

Mary Lee and Franki: What's one thing you'd tell all principals when the teaching of math that they observe doesn't look like the way they were taught?

Tracy: If they seemed upset about the changes, I'd ask them how they feel about algebra or calculus? In my experience, the very same people who are adamant that there is one way to teach arithmetic also say, "I was totally lost in high-school math." That disconnect gives me an opening. I can begin explaining how arithmetic is the foundation of algebra, and that undertaking deep explorations of the operations in elementary school gives students a strong conceptual basis upon which much can be built. We don't want to lose kids in algebra anymore, and we want them to understand what they do. That's why we're teaching elementary mathematics differently.

Mary Lee and Franki:  What crossovers do you see between literacy and numeracy?

Tracy: Our stance to teaching and learning can be very similar across all subject areas. If we think students have interesting ideas (and I do!), then they have interesting ideas about stories and shapes, novels and numbers. If we think students should have voice and choice in school (and I do!), then they should get to read texts that appeal to them and pursue mathematical questions that interest them. If we think communicating is part of how we learn (and I do!), then students should read and write and talk in all school subjects.

Mary Lee and Franki: Which section of your book was the most fun to write? The most challenging?

Tracy: The reasoning and proof chapters were the most challenging because of all the work that has come before. People have been writing about proof since the Greeks, so I had to do a lot of consolidating and summarizing and hat-tipping, which left me in a narrow, constrained space to write. I'm proud of what I did in those chapters, but they were when I used Anne Lamott's "one-inch picture frame" idea the most. Each day, I wrote one little piece without worrying where it would go. Once they were drafted, I was able to piece them together in a logical flow and then revise (and revise and revise) it all into a coherent chapter. That's opposite my normal process, but in the case of proof, it was my only way forward. Starting from the big, sprawling ideas left me paralyzed and overwhelmed. In contrast, I felt completely liberated writing Chapter 12, "Mathematicians Work Together and Alone," because what I was writing was original. I was free to set the terms and organize the ideas--to start a new conversation. It was a blast.

Mary Lee and Franki: What advice would you give teachers for the first six weeks of math instruction?

Tracy: The beginning of the year is when you set your tone and establish your culture. It's when you convey what mathematics will feel like this year, and it's when you'll show kids what you value. Therefore, I suggest spending a good chunk of time thinking about what you value in math class. If you value collaboration, perseverance, and thoughtfulness, it doesn't make sense to start the school year with a silent diagnostic placement test, which emphasizes mastery, speed, and isolation. Instead, you'll want to start the year with tasks that drive students to talk with one another as they make sense. You'll look for tasks that hook kids on the satisfying feeling of cracking a good puzzle. You'll seek out problems that invite questions and wonders, not just answers. And you'll want to be explicit about the ways you see students working together and learning from one another mathematically.

Mary Lee and Franki: Do you have any new favorite math resources, tools or sites that we should know about?

Tracy: I think nrich.maths.org is a fantastic site that most US teachers haven't seen. And then I think the world of math teachers on twitter and blogs is the most marvelous professional learning community I know! Take a peek at the hashtags #iteachmath or #MTBoS (Math Twitter Blog-o-Sphere) to get started.

Celebrate Writers! Blog Tour

It's Here!!

Celebrating Writers: From Possibilities Through Publication by Ruth Ayers with Christi Overman 

Ruth's writing (on her blog and in her books) have been a huge inspiration to me over the last few years.  It is a hard time to stay grounded in teaching--to continue to keep our classrooms joyful places for children.  It is easy to lose energy and to fall back on practices that don't match what we know about children or about learning. But Ruth's work always gives me the confidence and energy I need to stick with what I know is right. She understands children and writing and teachers and she celebrates every piece of the learning process, especially the messy ones! I've come to count on Ruth's blog, Ruth Ayres Writes for a daily does of sanity, groundedness, and celebration.

A while back, I was lucky enough to interview Ruth Ayres for a Choice Literacy podcast. The topic was on Celebrating Writers and her insights were so powerful for me. 

Last month, we were lucky enough to hear Ruth Ayres speak all day at our annual Literacy Connection event.  She spoke on the topic of Celebrating Writers and it was just the energy boost I needed!

Since then (and before), I have been anxiously awaiting this new book, Celebrating Writers:  From Possibilities Through Publication. I was thrilled when Stenhouse sent me an advanced copy of the book and invited A Year of Reading to be part of this book celebration blog tour!  The new book is already an important one for me as Ruth and Christi are brilliant at weaving celebration into all that they do with young learners.

You can follow the Celebrating Writers! Blog Tour all week:

Nov. 11: A Year of Reading

 Nov. 12: Kate Messner’s Blog 

Nov. 13: Reflect and Refine 

Nov. 14: Read, Write, Reflect 

Nov. 15: Nerdy Book Club 

Be sure to stop by each blog and leave a comment or ask a question for a chance to win a free book.

To kick off the blog tour, A Year of Reading interviewed Ruth about her newest book!

What is the biggest thing you want people to come away from when reading your new book?

I’d like them to see the beauty in the mess of student writing. I get so much energy from being around young writers because they are passionate and interested in their writing. Too often, in the name of standards and conventions and teaching we squelch their energy. I hope this book helps us celebrate the imperfections of young writers and gives us more energy for teaching writers and students more energy to be writers.

 What one change can teachers make that will move toward more purposeful celebrations?

Look for the thing a student is almost doing as a writer and acknowledge it. For example, you might say to a first grade writer, “I see you know periods go at the end of something. Instead of putting one at the end of every line, let’s put them at the end of sentences.” Then teach into the error from this stance of celebration.

 You take the theme of celebrating into all areas of your life. Did that life stance begin from writing celebrations or did the way you live your life help you think differently about writing celebrations?

Yes. Can I answer with yes? It’s both. At first I thought writing celebrations were fluff. Then as I began being a writer myself, I realized celebration is fuel to keep me going. The more I started thinking about it in terms of teaching writers, the more I realized it could be applied in all areas of my life. At the time of writing this book, we were adjusting to life with our daughters who we adopted as older children in 2008. Then in January 2013 we adopted our son who was 7 at the time. In the midst of writing about celebrating writers, I was experiencing how celebration could fuel me in other hard parts of life besides writing.

 Tell us about a few of your favorite writing celebrations in schools you work in.

My very favorite celebration is the moment in a conference when a student has more energy for writing because he has talked with me than before we talked.

As far as formal celebrations, I’m a sucker for poetry jams. I love to dress like a beatnik, sip smoothies, and weave words with young poets.

You are a strong advocate for teachers finding time to do their own writing. How does your work with celebrations fit into adult writing outside of the classroom?

Thank you. I do hope teachers find time to put some words on the page. I think when teachers are writers themselves they realize the importance of genuine celebration. It doesn’t need to be grandiose and it doesn’t have to include forced feedback, rather celebration is the natural outcome of being in a writing community.  When we are writers working alongside other writers, we understand how celebration is fuel and we are positioned to make it an integral part of our writing workshops.

Tell us about a few of your favorite personal writing celebrations.

I finished a manuscript of a young adult fiction story a few years ago. I doubt it will ever see book form on shelves but just the fact that I finished is big to me.

Whenever someone tells me they started writing or started a blog or started a notebook because of me, that’s the ultimate writing celebration.

Recently I wrote a blog post (http://www.ruthayreswrites.com/2013/10/when-you-want-to-quit.html­) that triggered a lot of response. In addition to comments, people sent me direct messages on Twitter and Facebook, emails, texts messages, and even a letter in the mail, telling me their stories that my post made them remember. I was touched by the way my words impacted others.

These are the celebrations that fuel me.

 RuthAyresWrites has just started a Saturday tradition inviting people to share weekly celebrations.  You’ve had a huge response almost immediately.  Why do you think so many people jumped in right away?

I’ve been asking myself the same thing! I think we are overwhelmed by our daily grind. When we take the time to look for celebrations, we are able to see growth and purpose in our work. I’m inspired each Saturday by all of the powerful teaching and learning happening across the globe. Unless we document it, it is too easy to overlook.

What’s next for you as a writer?

I just started a new writing project on different topics than I’ve written before – faith and adoption. Interestingly enough, I think Celebrating Writers was much of the collection phase in my writing process for this new project. The message of this next book is: Life is for celebration not survival. I’m planning to weave stories of our adoptions with truths of life about living celebration.

Platypus Police Squad Blog Tour

We are thrilled to give you a sneak preview of Jarrett Krosoczka's art in his new book, Platypus Police Squad: The Frog Who Croaked

Look like fun? Here's the book trailer:



Want to know more? Here's an interview with Jarrett:

TTI is a production of Franki's Fourth Graders

How did you think of writing Platypus Police Squad?

I was actually trying to write a book called "Penguin Police Squad," but then penguins were just everywhere, so I began to search for another animal that started with the letter "P" and I came to the mighty platypus! But it all started in 2004 when I drew a character from Punk Farm a year before that book was published. A kid guessed incorrectly that my next book was about a bunch of farm animals that were cops. So that stuck with me--a book about animal cops who wore aviator sunglasses!

Why did you make the characters platypuses instead of humans?

When you work with animals, you can get away with more things than if the characters are humans. Also, platypuses are way funnier than humans! 

Why do the place and the time from each chapters change?

Each chapter represents a different scene in the investigation. It's almost as if the chapters were pulled from a case file that the detectives needed to file after the case was solved!

How many books will be in this series? Can you tell us anything about upcoming books?

Right now we are planning on four. The second book is called “The Ostrich Conspiracy” and it takes place in the newly built Kalamazoo City Dome. (There's a teaser for this at the end of book 1.)

How did you get the Idea to write the Lunch Lady series?

After a chance encounter with my old lunch lady, I began wondering about her life. One led thing to another and I started writing a graphic novel series about a lunch lady who fought crime!

Why are the tools used as weapons in Lunch Lady?

Well, if you saw your lunch lady walking the halls with nunchucks, you'd begin to ask questions, now wouldn't you? And Lunch Lady simply can't have her cover blown, which is why her nunchucks are disguised as fish sticks. Besides that, she does spend her entire time in the cafeteria, so she is surrounded by resources to create crime-fighting gadgets!


Still want more? Check out the Platypus Police Squad Virtual Launch Party on May 23 -- chat with Jarrett and win prizes!!

Finally, on Saturday, we will draw one name randomly from all of the commenters on this post to win one copy of Platypus Police Squad!

Jon Klassen Blog Tour #TeamFish

So, most people who read this blog know that Jon Klassen's I Want My Hat Back (E. B. White Read-Aloud Award. Picture Books) is one of my favorite books of the year. Actually, it is one of my favorite books of all time.  I love the book. It made my list of Books I Could Read a Million Times. It makes me smile every single time I read it and I love to find a person who has not heard of it so I can hand it to them and watch them read it.  Really, one that I would take to a desert island if I could only take a few favorite books. And really, who could tire of the book trailer? 

I had no idea how much I would love this book when I first mentioned it at the end of this post about upcoming books.  

And since that first mention, I have reviewed it, I Want My Hat Back, revisited it in a post called I Want My Hat Back, Revisited and decided to write my own persuasive essay on this year's 10 for 10 Picture Book Event:  10 Books in Which Characters Are Eaten. And thanks to some VERY GOOD FRIENDS, I have my own red hat and a set of Christmas ornaments of bear and rabbit. #teambear

So, you can imagine how happy I was when I heard that Jon Klassen had written ANOTHER book about hats, This Is Not My Hat .  I had no idea what to expect but I knew I would love it (and I do!). And, imagine how thrilled I was to be invited to be part of the blog tour and to interview Jon Klassen about his work.  Not only did I get to ask Jon some questions, I got an advanced copy of the new book and I loved it, loved it, loved it!

Now that you know you have to have both of these books -- for yourself and as gifts for everyone you know, here is what Jon Klassen has to say about his new book, hats, and his upcoming work:

Franki:  Did the idea for THIS IS NOT MY HAT come before or after the publication and response to I WANT MY HAT BACK?

Jon:  The idea came after the publication, and after it had already gotten a little bit of traction. I had wanted to get an idea sooner, just because you do worry that whatever the response is, it will affect how you work on the next one, but I had to get through some stories that didn't work before this one showed up.

Franki:  As a huge fan of I WANT MY HAT BACK, I was worried I’d be disappointed with the new book, but I loved it just as much!   What was your hope for this new book? What were you trying to give to readers?

Jon:  Thank you! It was tricky, because we didn't mind the idea of doing something that fit in with the previous book, but we wanted it to stand on it's own for people who hadn't seen I Want My Hat Back. I think more than anything that was the main goal. Also just personally I wanted something I was going to be interested in working on for its own reasons. I do like that, taken together, the two books sort of make the hat an abstract thing that just gets the story going. It's neat to just drop a hat on a character and suddenly there's implications to that.

Franki:  We get to know your characters so well in your books, even though they don’t always say much.  What’s the trick for that? Do you feel that it is the illustrations that let us know your characters or is it something else?

Jon:  I think there's something to making a character very simple-looking and calm and then giving that a lot of context. Someone looking sort of blank and calm can be a boring picture, but then if you say "this person just found out he's very sick," you start pouring all you know about what that would feel like onto him, and it becomes really personal and you're using your own experiences to make up for what he's not giving you visually. There are some decisions to be made on the illustration side about eye direction and things like that, but they are mostly symbolic. If a character looks behind him because he is guilty of something, you can't draw a guilty eye, at least I can't, but you can say that he's guilty, and then you look at the eye again and think "yeah, that is one guilty-looking eye."

Franki:  So, you write a lot about hats. Do you wear hats? Have you ever had problems with other people wanting to wear your hat?

Jon:  I do wear a baseball hat a lot. I wear it so much that it doesn't really appeal to people to want to wear my hat themselves. But as a kid, there aren't many things that get to you faster than someone taking your hat off of you. Maybe it's embarrassing because it sort of necessitates them being taller to actually get at the hat? I don't know.

Franki:  So, are you #teamrabbit or #teambear?

Jon:  I have to say, I was surprised to see those teams spring up. Not only because it's flattering, but because I'm not sure how you pick them. When I've talked to people who didn't think the book was great for kids because of how it ends, I've tried to make the case that, if the story has a point at all, it exists outside the characters themselves and what they might be aware of, and that it's up to the audience to take what happened as a whole and put it together. But I guess if I was made to choose, I'd choose the bear because, as far as I can see, the rabbit does nothing redeeming.

Franki:  Will we see the bear from I WANT MY HAT BACK in any future books?  His fans miss him and would love to see him star in another story.

Jon:  I don't have anything against him coming back if there's a good book for him to be in!

Franki:  What’s next for you? For those of us who are anxiously awaiting your next book already, can you tell us anything about it?

Jon:  So far all I've got are animals staring at each other. 

If  you haven't had time to stop by the blogs on the rest of Jon Klassen's blog tour, take time to do so. You will learn some very important things!

Mon, Oct 8: Playing by the Book 

Tues, Oct 9: 100 Scope Notes 

Wed, Oct 10: My Best Friends Are Books 

Thurs, Oct 11: Elizabeth O. Dulemba 

Fri, Oct 12: Wahm-Bam 

Mon, Oct 15: Lost in the Library 

Tues, Oct 16: My Little Bookcase 

Wed, Oct. 17: A Year of Reading

THE MAGIC THIEF--AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Just as we promised, here is our interview with Sarah Prineas, author of THE MAGIC THIEF--coming out this week, June 3! Great timing-a great first summer read if you haven't read it yet.


Franki: Where did the idea come from for THE MAGIC THIEF?

Sarah: The way I come up with story ideas is to have one idea and jot it down in a word file on my computer and set it aside until I find another idea or two to put with it. In the case of The Magic Thief, I had the first lines in one of those files:

“A thief is a lot like a wizard. I have quick hands. And I can make things disappear.”
Then I read a letter to the editor of Cricket magazine asking for more two-part stories and more stories about wizards. I figured I could do that, and Conn became the thief that spoke those words. His character makes the story go, so all I had to do was invent situations and challenges and see what he would do.

Franki: You are a fantasy reader yourself. Were you a fantasy reader as a child? Which books hooked you on fantasy reading?

Sarah: I didn't read a whole lot of fantasy as a kid, though I realized recently that T.H. White's King Arthur story The Once and Future King must have influenced me, first because I reread it about fifty times, but also because Merlin changes young Wart into lots of different animals, and that's like the embero spell in The Magic Thief. I read Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time and loved it, because what dorky 12-year-old doesn’t identify with Meg Murry and love reading about her adventures?


Franki: Which fantasy authors are favorites for you now?

Sarah: My favorite fantasy writer is J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He is the writer who taught me how to believe in the power of story and the sense of wonder that fantasy can bring to readers. One of my very favorite authors is Megan Whelan Turner, starting with her YA fantasy novel The Thief. Turner does just about everything right—her characters are deep and interesting, her plots are tricky and surprising, and her fantasy world is one in which you can spend lots of time. As a writer, I’ve read all of her books several times each just to figure out how she does what she does. The only problem is that she writes so slowly. It’s hard to wait such a long time for a new Megan Whelan Turner book, but it’s always worth the wait.


Franki: Tell us how the device in your husband’s lab ended up in your book!

Sarah: That’s a funny question! His lab equipment has a fancy name, the “molecular beam epitaxy facility.” It’s very cool looking, all shiny and gold, with dials and valves and porthole-like windows, and gauges for measuring pressure, and so on. I don’t like it very much because it’s an expensive machine that requires constant attention and is always breaking down, which means my husband has to go into the lab to take care of it. I just had to get my revenge by putting it into my book and turning it into an evil Device.


Franki: The setting was so clear to me as a reader when I read THE MAGIC THIEF. Did you have a particular place in mind when you wrote?

Sarah: I did! Not a place I’ve ever visited, though. I have a PhD in English literature and read a lot of 19th century English novels, and I always loved Dickens’s novels the most. Wellmet is modeled on the London of the early Dickens novels. I also used a map as inspiration [http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~genmaps/genfiles/COU_files/ENG/LON/Rocque/rocque_index.htm]. I got lots of ideas for street names and the twisty alleyways of the Twilight from looking at the seedy Southwark part in that London map.


Franki: Can you describe your writing process at all? How does fantasy writing go for you? What is the typical process? A typical day? Etc.

Sarah: A typical day is that I spend lots of time writing emails to my friends and reading blogs, and I’ll also spend some time tweaking a scene. If I’m really in the zone, I’ll write for eight hours at a time and be completely immersed in the story, in the characters, in fitting the pieces together. When that happens my family lets me shut myself up in my room with my writing chair and laptop computer and waits for me to come out. Which I do, eventually…

I don’t outline at all, so I write into the void—figuring out what happens as I write it, which is a very fun way to write. It’s writing as discovery!


Franki: This is the first in a trilogy. Can you give us any clues about what to expect next?

Yes, I can! You’re the only one who has asked this question, by the way. Here are three clues. One is that Conn must search for something that is lost. Two is that he gets into trouble involving pyrotechnic explosions. Three is that he must leave the city of Wellmet. Biscuits and bacon also make an appearance. The second book is called The Magic Thief: Lost and it comes out in June 2009, a whole year after the first book.


You can read the first chapter on the author's website!