On Violence and Racism, Then and Now

I've just been reminded of this video interview that I did for Zetta Elliott more than a year ago, after a panel at the New York Public Library. This is one of my favorite videos to date of me talking about the motivations behind writing The Rock and the River.



Plus, after my part, Zetta filmed Rita Williams-Garcia and Tonya Cherie Hegamin. Never hurts to share billing with fabulous ladies like them. This was a great panel! I have a feeling that one day soon it's going to be time for us to take our show on the road....

The Author's Life Cycle

There’s a talk that I give about my experience as a debut author (I call it “My Journey with The Rock and the River”), which is all about the phenomenon I’ve dubbed The Author’s Life Cycle.

The evolution of this presentation was pretty unusual, because the topic they had asked me to present on was “My Journey to the NAACP Image Awards,” which initially gave me the eemy-squeamy feeling of tooting my own horn a little too hard. But as I thought more about it, I realized there actually was an important journey I could speak about. A journey that wasn’t about the award itself (such things are windfall, entirely beyond our personal control), but about my transformation from being a person who wrote a novel once to being a person whose book was out in the world, rapidly gaining attention and reaching new readers every day.

The Author’s Life Cycle is an ongoing process, one that renews itself with each and every book. It’s not singular, or static, or a thing that you move through in a linear fashion, graduating from one stage to the next, never to return. It is practically a living entity that exists alongside you, grows with you and changes with you, always keeping you on your toes. If you’re lucky. If you’re not, it can just as easily spin you into despair or dissolution.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

I. Alone in my room: The exciting, independent creative process of developing your manuscript.
II. Publish me, pretty please: The long road to publication; the queries, rejections, hope and despair.
III. My baby, all grown up: The publication experience; the transition from manuscript to actual book.
IV. Feedback: Receiving reviews, meeting your readers, releasing ownership of your material to your audience.
V. Interfacing and Inspiration: Drawing on new activities and interactions for renewed inspiration.

I have a LOT to say about this journey and its stages (hence the decision to blog), but for now I leave you with this:

Once I began to understand this cycle, it explained so much about the roller coaster of emotions I experienced along with The Rock and the River. The overwhelming, preoccupying joy at one end of the spectrum, down to the deep, unsettling anxiety of feeling overexposed and vulnerable.

It was so hard to talk about all those emotions, especially because I couldn’t figure out who to talk about them to. Friends and family care about my well-being, but they just don’t fully get it. (“You’re published. You’ve arrived. What’s the problem?”) Writer friends got some of it, but because I was one of the first among my inner circle to publish, it was hard sometimes to talk about the ups and downs without feeling like I was bragging about what I’d achieved. (“You’re nervous about talking to your new editor? You mean the editor for your soon-to-be-published novel? Boo, hoo.”) So, I ended up shouldering this mostly alone.

I suspect that says more about me and my own little hang-ups than it does about the people in my life, who have been unfailingly supportive and sympathetic. It’s simply my way of speaking about some of the isolating aspects of authorhood. We start out in our private little worlds, writing up a storm, but there comes a point (somewhere around your first book birthday) where it’s time to step out of our heads and into the world. And it’s so much scarier than putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Turns out, that was the easy part.

Book Trailer Discoveries

Excuse me while I take a moment to extoll the wonder that is YouTube:

"YouTube is awesome!" (Okay, I'm done.)

I never used to go on there, and in retrospect I don't understand how it eluded me for so long, but recently I've become much more proficient at surfing for videos. As a result, I have found the following:



I LOVE book trailers. I've always wanted to create one for The Rock and the River, but I never quite got the hang of gathering photos and setting it to music and such. I am now inspired to try one for Camo Girl or Fire in the Streets, the ROCK sequel that is coming out in 2012.

Thanks very much to the person who made this. I couldn't tell his/her name (apparently I'm not that YouTube-proficient yet) but I really enjoyed the end product here and I appreciate the time and effort someone took to create this for the book.

And then I found another one, by Robyn Young:



Thanks, Robyn! It looks great.

The BIG 3-0!

I just posted this on Chicks Rock!, but want folks to see it here, too:

Well, as of this weekend I've officially crossed the threshold from 20s into 30s! I always planned to throw a big party for myself on my 30th birthday, but as it happened this year, the American Library Association decided to throw one for me!

Okay, not for me, exactly, but I came to their annual conference determined to get my little piece of the celebration and festivities. On Saturday I signed copies of The Rock and the River in Simon & Schuster's booth at the ALA conference expo. Then I hung out with friends from Vermont College of Fine Arts who surprised me with an Alumni Achievement Award (I cried) followed by a yummy restaurant dinner complete with key lime pie and a pink candle!

Yesterday I attended an awards banquet, where I found myself surrounded by well-known and up-and-coming YA and children's authors. Strangest of all, I began to truly feel that I could count myself among them! Which brings me to the real reason I'm here at the ALA conference: because my book was selected to receive the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent!

Tomorrow morning, at the frightening hour of 7am (!!!! I am such a night person, people. It goes against nature to expect me to function normally before the double digit hours of the morning....but for the CSK Breakfast, I will muster!), I will receive my award, and have my moment to thank the Academy...errr, the CSK selection committee. It's so exciting!

All in all, my 30th weekend did not go as I orginally expected, but I certainly feel the occasion has been extraordinarily well-marked.

The Brown Bookshelf: 28 Days Later

I am featured on The Brown Bookshelf today as part of their 28 Days Later campaign, an annual tribute to African American authors and illustrators.

Author Kelly Starling Lyons interviewed me on such compelling topics as The Rock and the River, civil rights, what people are saying about my book, why middle schoolers never fail to make me feel old, my inspirations, and my favorite flavors of ice cream (of which there are several).

Whew! There's a lot in that interview, folks. I'm, frankly, exhausted....

Drumroll Please....

I woke up this morning to a call from my favorite editor (@EditorK) informing me that The Rock and the River and I have won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent. This is a huge honor in the world of children's literature and I'm so pleased!

More on this to follow later today as I get it all figured out....and stop randomly shrieking. (The yappy dog that lives next door is not very happy with me for stealing his thunder. He's responded to each of my "woohoos" with a resounding triple yap.)

In the meantime you can check out the list of award recipients here:

2010 ALA YOUTH MEDIA AWARDS

Thanks to the American Library Association and the Coretta Scott King Book Award Committee. Yay!!!

NAACP Image Awards

I always get good news when I'm in the library.

When I saw my book cover for the first time, I was in the library. When I heard I was getting a NYTimes Book Review, I had just come from the library. And today, I was sitting oh-so-decorously in the library when I got the news that The Rock and the River was nominated for an NAACP Image Award!!!*

Yeah, baby. I was so excited, and it was not the kind of excitement that's conducive to the library environment, so I quickly checked out all the books I was holding (only two of which I actually needed to check out, I realized later...) and ran out of doors so I could celebrate properly. By running through the streets of New York shrieking with joy. (Few people noticed. Random strange outbursts are the status quo here.)

This is the link to the NOMINEES LIST. I am under Literature. You will have to scroll down, but as you do so, peek at all the other authors. I'm so pleased to be among this group of names. Thanks, NAACP!!!!

What a great first birthday present for my book. Thanks, NAACP!!!!

*You would think this sort of track record would cause me to spend much more time in the library. Hmm.....

ALA Adventures and Free Book Giveaway!!!

Hello, friends. I'm having a magically fun adventure at the American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago this week. I've strolled the conference floor for hours, picking up books an information and talking to people. I've met tons of cool librarians, fellow authors and book lovers galore.

I will post pics and tell my tales when I get back home (and I've got some good ones). At that point, I will need to exercise my fingers and rest my weary feet....

Also...the folks over at ColorOnline are doing a summer book giveaway, so pop over there to enter to win a copy of The Rock and the River, or one of several other awesome titles!!!!

Review at Color Online

Susan at ColorOnline has posted a discussion of some of her favorite books of the year so far, including The Rock and the River! She gives it a nice review, too. Yay!

Susan also lists and reviews some other great titles, and she talks about why historical fiction is growing on her. See, there are plenty of excellent reasons why you should check it out HERE.

Spicy Reads Review

An awesome new review of The Rock and the River is up at My Road Trip (SpicyReads.org). The reviewer, Ed Spicer, put in some great reflections about how the book affected him and sparked memories of his own experiences in 1968. Excellent commentary! And it's not just about the book, so even if you already read The Rock and the River, it's totally worth checking out.

Sneak Peek:

"In the late sixties and early seventies the United States saw the rise of the Black Panther Party in Chicago. In my neighborhood, the Black Panther Party was imbued with a certain amount of awe mixed with terror. We saw Blacks on the street and we locked our car doors. We took an exceptionally long time to really look at a Black like Huey Newton and really try to understand what he is saying and why he is saying it."

Sneak Peek 2:

"Magoon’s book is an excellent fictional depiction that captures the fierce debate within the black community about how to end the systematic degradation and humiliation of black people in America. What I like about this book is that it gives readers, even old white readers like me, an insight into the human cost of protesting."

Wanna read the rest? (Yeah, you know you do.) CHECK IT OUT HERE.

CCBC Book Discussion - June 24

For anyone in the Madison, Wisconsin area:

The Rock and the River will be discussed as part of the Cooperative Children's Book Center's June Book Discussion at UW-Madison.

Follow this link for more details. If you're in the area, it sounds like it could be interesting!

http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/books/disclist.asp

Interview on The Chocolate Pages Show

Thursday evening I was interviewed on Blog Talk Radio, for Pam Perry's The Chocolate Pages Show.

You can listen to the podcast here. The show's a hour long, and I'm not the only guest, so my part doesn't start until around 28:00, if you care to fast forward. I'm on for about half an hour. The other guest is Larry Jemison, and the topic is how to inspire youth, so if you have the full hour at your disposal, listen to it all!

Someday, if and when my latent technological savvy kicks in, I'll try to post a briefer version that is just the highlights.......

Summer Blog Blast Tour, Featuring ME!

Exciting, exciting things today!

First of all, pop over to Elizabeth Bird's blog, A Fuse #8 Production, where you will find an interview with me that is part of the Summer Blog Blast Tour 2009. I talk about The Rock and the River, my inspirations for writing it, people's reactions to it, and lots of other stuff. Fun!

What is the Summer Blog Blast Tour, you ask? Excellent question! It appears that a group of KidLit bloggers have gotten together to do a series of interviews with interesting authors (if I do say so myself!). It'll be going on all week. Colleen Mondor has posted a schedule for the week, plus links and sneak peeks, on Chasing Ray. I'm headed there now to check out the other interviews. For me, it's already been lots of fun to be part of this special week - and it's only just begun!

Okay....when you're done with all that, take a peek at the Best Books for Young Adults nomination list, recently posted by the American Library Association. Guess who's on it?? It's so very exciting that The Rock and the River was chosen to be part of this group.

I'm all smiles today, friends!!!

Studio 4 (aka Video of ME!)

So...a few weeks ago, I went into my publisher's headquarters (Simon & Schuster) and did a short video interview for the S&S website. I sat in a little room with a videocamera in my face and a microphone clipped on me while they asked me questions about The Rock and the River and me as a person. I have to say, at the moment it felt very glamorous. But some of the questions were hard!

They said, "Describe yourself in eight words...." I was like, "Umm..." (Can "umm..." be one of my words, please?)

So, why am I bringing this up now? Well. It's getting to be about the time when I can email my editor and ask if I can see it. The video people will have done their editing work, and they'll send me a nice shiny copy. I'm half eager about this, and half not. I always think I look a little funny on camera, so I'm nervous to see it! The camera man said it was good. The interviewer said it was good. My editor said it was good. But I am still nervous.

But I can't wait until I have a video clip... :)

Richie's Picks Review!

I'm pleased to report that The Rock and the River was reviewed on Richie's Picks today! Richie says of the book...

"In the course of Sam Childs' coming of age story, amidst the American history I thought I knew so well, author Kekla Magoon has radically altered my understanding of the Black Panther Party. In her debut novel, Magoon, who studied history as an undergraduate, does an exceptional job of integrating many sides of very complex racial and political issues into this tense tale of an adolescent who has grown up in the Civil Rights Movement."

Cool, huh? Take a peek at the full review HERE.

Author Visit: Pontiac Library

This week I'm in my hometown, Fort Wayne Indiana, for some library visits and book signings.

The first was at Pontiac Library, where I got to speak to kids in the after school program there. It was my first visit to this particular library branch, which had recently been remodeled. A very nice facility, that seemed popular with neighborhood teens.

They loved my interactive Readers' Theatre; I had more volunteers than I had speaking parts in the piece! Well, it's something to keep in mind for next time: Create a readers' theatre that involves ten readers instead of six!

We did a raffle to see who got to take home each of the three copies of my book that I signed for them. The winners (and friends) lined up for a picture.

All in all, a fun afternoon!!

School Visits: Boston, Massachusetts

I spent this weekend at Newton Country Day School in Massachusetts, doing school visit with my friend and fellow YA author Bethany Hegedus. We gave a joint presentation on The Rock and the River and Bethany's novel, Between Us Baxters. Both novels are set in the Civil Rights Movement, hers at the beginning of the era and mine at the end - so they are great books to present and discuss together. Here we are talking to the middle school girls of Newton Country Day!

The next day, Bethany and I spoke at the Associated Independent Schools of New England's annual Middle School Students of Color Conference. We each did small-group writing workshops, and also were the afternoon keynote speakers for the whole conference! Here we are, doing our readers' theatre presentation with all 300 conference attendees!

A Special Valentine

I participated in Kids - Heart - Authors Day today, at Oblong Books in Millerton, NY. It took me a long commuter train ride to get there, but it was worth it. I signed books alongside fellow children's book author Nancy Castaldo. It was fun to see a new bookstore and meet new people. One person bought ten copies of The Rock and the River! She was a teacher, who wanted to use the book in her classroom. I'm pretty sure that was my biggest single sale so far. Very exciting!

Fuse #8 Blog Review

I'm pleased to report that a new review was posted about The Rock and the River on A Fuse #8 Production, a blog on School Library Journal, in which kidlit blogger/reviewer Elizabeth Bird refers to the book as "a smart, sensible, deeply layered title."

The in-depth review highlights the books strengths and uniqueness in the children's book market.

Click here to read the review in full.

First Encounters of the Child Reader Kind

Today, I volunteered at a reading program, where I got to read The Rock and the River with kids for the first time. It was fun. The girl I read with was nine years old - a bit young for the novel, I thought at first - but as it turned out, she understood and could even relate to some of the events that occur early in the book. As I read a scene in which my character (Sam) encounters racism, my new friend stopped me from reading on. "Yeah," she said. "That guy's racist." Then she proceded to tell me about how she had seen racism in action in her own community. I was impressed by the way she took the scene and connected it to her own experiences. It was exciting to realize that the book was beginning to have the effect I hoped it'd have - at least on one reader!!