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MEET STEPHANIE HEMPHILL
by Bonnie O'Brian

What audience did you have in mind for your career as a writer?

Stephanie Hemphill

I always wanted to write for children. During my senior year of undergraduate school, I created a special independent study program for myself to write children’s literature. This program allowed me to take some remarkable graduate courses in Library and Information Science, a unique acting class and to read hundreds of picture books. I really thought that I would write picture books. But after I graduated from the University of Illinois I found myself writing poetry nearly every day – serious adult poetry. When I moved to California, I took courses at UCLA in poetry and in children’s writing, and even while I maintained a full-time job at an Engineering Design firm. I never stopped writing. It took a course in Children’s Poetry for me to discover that my true voice was a teen voice. I had published poems in adult literary magazines and had pieces accepted by Cricket, but when I tried out the teen voice, I found my home. I still write adult poems and have a wish to someday publish something in The New Yorker ( a very lofty goal, but I figure if you are going to dream, dream big.) But I love to write for children and am honored to be able to do so. This is my calling, and I am so grateful to have a career as a young adult writer.

Where do you get your ideas?

Ideas come from everywhere. Helpful, huh? Ideas are marvelous beginnings – the sunrise of possibility – but at the end of the day a great book always comes from your heart. I know that sounds trite, but it is the truth. All written ideas filter themselves through the mind and heart of the writer, and there is no escaping this. So writing for me is at its best when authors give their whole hearts to their books.

More specifically, I love to work on collaborative projects where my editor or friend or agent suggest a topic to me and then I do the research and discover the story. YOUR OWN, SYLVIA was born that way. It was the idea of my editor to write a novel in poems about Sylvia Plath, and then my agent thought I would be the right person to create that book. It then became my challenge to discover the way to make it a compelling story and a book people would want to read. A novel is the work of many people not just the author. I find that the more people I have involved with and in love with a book, the better it seems to turn out.

Do you enjoy researching or do you prefer working totally from your imagination?

 I love to research. I find that it triggers my imagination, and the story of my book emerges from there. Research can be fun and an adventure. Fact-finding is archeology, and I guess I secretly want to be Indiana Jones. I find that for me the key to making historical fiction work is when I discover the current relevance of what I am writing. In other words, how history relates to us today. And then, even deeper, what is the personal story that connects both the author and the reader to these historical events, because ultimately that connection is what makes us want to turn the page.

I never imagined I would write historical fiction. First historical fiction is difficult, and also as a reader I did not always relate as well to the characters. But when I muse about many of my favorite books, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, THE GREAT GATSBY, FRANKENSTEIN, TUCK EVERLASTIN, CHARLOTTE’S WEB, PETER PAN, GRIMM’S FAIR TALES, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING, OUT OF THE DUST, and this list goes on and on, so many of them are not contemporary novels.

Have any of your fiction stories been about real people or events?

All of my novels in poems are about real people or events. My first book, THINGS LEFT UNSAID, is based on my experience in high school and a friend who tried to commit suicide. YOUR OWN, SYLVIA offers a verse portrait of the life of the brilliant poet Sylvia Plath. My upcoming book, WICKED GIRLS, tells the story in verse of the teen girls whose accusations spawned the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Another forthcoming book that I have just begun writing, HIDEOUS LOVE, will focus on the life of Mary Shelley, the girl who wrote Frankenstein, and her crazy romantic teen adventures with the poet Percy Shelley and his circle. Finally, I have plans for a book based on the real Renaissance glassblowing family of Angel Barovier.

Do you write everyday and do you have set hours that you work?

 When I am on a deadline, which seems to be always lately, I write everyday. I work best with a schedule because otherwise real life tramples over my writing time. Daily tasks, like laundry or phone calls or email or groceries or getting my nails done or shopping or even watching TV, seem to become way more important to do than writing. Basically I will procrastinate if I do not have a set schedule. I set daily writing goals for myself that vary book to book and depend largely upon where I am in the book and how close my deadline looms. Usually I work numerically; meaning I will have to write three poems a day or something like that. However, the hours I work can be quite different. It could take me only a couple of hours to finish three poems or it could take me twelve hours. But when I am on DEADLINE, I do not go to sleep until I meet my goal.

Do you work on more than one book at a time?

I wish that I was one of those writers who could juggle multiple novels. I think about many books at a time, but I prefer to write only one at a time. I fear that I will tangle up my characters’ voices. Also, because what I am writing now is exclusively historical fiction, I do not want to have objects appear in my nineteenth century novel that were contemporary to the Renaissance and vice versa. I will, however, begin research on one book while I am revising another. In a perfect world I would work completely on one book until it was ready for print and then begin the next, but that is usually not possible.

Which of your books did you most enjoy writing?

Surely this is a trick question. It is like asking a mother to choose her favorite child. I think I always enjoy writing the book I am working on until I get to the gritty revision stages, and then I long to work on the next new book. I fully enjoy writing first drafts where all possibilities stand open, and the pen moves quickly and excitedly across the notebook page. After I get over the fear of sitting down in my chair to write, I love the trance-like state of pure writing and of living inside my characters. What an amazing journey they take me on and what an incredible joy it is to create! I feel lucky and often I cannot believe that I actually write anything until I look down on the page. I just try my best to capture the words and dialogue and story that are being hurled and hurricaned to me.

Have any of your books earned special recognition?

 My first book, THINGS LEFT UNSAID, won the Myra Cohn Livingston award in poetry from the Southern California Children’s Literature Council. My second book, MY OWN, SYLVIA also won the Myra Cohn Livingston award and has received considerable recognition, the most notavle of which is the 2008 Michael J. Printz Honor from the American Library Association, which is the Newbery equivalent for Young Adult Literature. YOUR OWN, SYLVIA is also part of the 2009 High School California Collection. I am humbled and so grateful to the librarians across this country who have championed this little book and thereby brought so many readers to Sylvia Plath which was our greatest hope for YOUR OWN, SYLVIA.