Carolyn Marsden is the author of many fabulous children's books , where the main characters are children from Asia. I am very pleased to welcome Carolyn for an author interview.
What inspired you to write When Heaven Fell?
In 2004, I was a member of a Buddhist delegation to Vietnam, traveling with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. During the trip, a friend told me the story of a documentary called Daughter from Danang about a Vietnamese child who’d been sent out of the country in Operation Babylift and -adopted by American parents. When she was thirty-five years old, this woman went back to Vietnam to find her birth mother. The result was a cultural shock. This story interested me and I decided to tell it from the point of view of a Vietnamese child.
What inspired you to write The Buddha’s Diamonds?
Thich Nhat Hahn has a monastery called Deer Park fairly close to my house. One Sunday I listened to a monk tell a story to the children about how his village had been destroyed by a cyclone back in the early 1980s. All was ruined except for the statue of the Buddha which sat in the temple smiling, washed clean by the rain. When I heard this story, I knew I had to collaborate with the monk to write a fictionalized account
What was your path to being a published author?I‘d written almost my entire life but began to write for children in the mid 1990s. I submitted my work unsuccessfully for about five years. In 1998 I entered the Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children program at Vermont College. There I met an editor who liked the rough draft of what would become The Gold-Threaded Dress. Simultaneously, my submitting paid off when an editor at Viking found Mama Had to Work on Christmas in the slush pile.
What made you decide to write books for children?
Writing had been a passion for me for a very long time by the time I started writing for children. When my own two daughters were born I told them bedtime stories. I thought then that writing picture books would be a way of utilizing my poetry skills. Soon thereafter I went to Vermont College.
What do you like most about writing about other/different cultures?
I love the big learning curve! I get to read a lot, see films, sometimes travel, and best of all, get to know people from that culture. I try to absorb that culture and forget all about my own bias.
What do you like most about writing for young readers?
I like the immediacy of the stories written for children. As an author, I have to move to the main point quickly and hold the readers’ attention.
What authors and books inspired you the most as a young reader?Unfortunately, I didn’t do a lot of reading as a child! In the 1950s there wasn’t as much literature written for children as there is now. We spent our time with basal readers. I didn’t even read Nancy Drew. When I got the reading list from Vermont College, my world opened wide.
What do you do when you’re not writing?I love to swim, dance, do yoga. My main passion is visual art, especially wacky collages. Of course I spend time with my family, which includes two daughters, my husband, my mother, two dogs, and one cat.
What can your fans look forward to next?
I have a book coming out in 2011 called Starfields, set in Chiapas, Mexico. This story touches on 2012, the Mayan prophesy of the end of the world. Also in 2011, my contemporary novel set in Baghdad, The White Zone, will be released. I just got a new contract for a Young Adult novel set in 1966 in Czechoslovakia. I’m at work on a Young Adult set in 16th century Thailand. And finally, I.m developing an illustrated childhood memoir which I may publish as an e-book.
Want to know more about Caroyln's books? Visit her site here
Look here for my review of When Heaven Fell
