July 26, 2022 by Katherine Kirkpatrick

A Charmed Week

For about a year and a half, but mostly within a week in July 2021, I experienced a series of fortuitous incidents when I was researching and writing my book The Art of William Sidney Mount: Long Island People of Color on Canvas (coauthored with Vivian Nicholson-Mueller, publication date September 5, 2022, The History Press). The book involves the Black and biracial people who modeled for William Sidney Mount, a famous 19^th century artist. Mount lived and worked in the Three Village (Stony Brook, Setauket, and Old Field) area in Long Island, New York, where I grew up. My wonderful sister, Jennifer, and I rented an Air B & B together in Stony Brook so she could take photos of old houses for the book, gather materials for the map she would draw, and most of all, for the two of us to have fun together in the setting that is very dear to both of us. I live in Seattle and Jen lives in Virginia, and it was the first one-on-one vacation we’d had in many years apart from our husbands and families.

Jen and I pose in front of the Brewster House in Setauket.

Here are some examples of synchronicity:

Mount recalled childhood experiences of knowing a Black fiddler, Anthony (Tony) Hannibal Clapp (1749-1816), and sitting at Clapp’s knee while he played folk tunes. Clapp was buried in a cemetery for people of color on land that used to belong to Mount’s grandfather. I’d read an article about an unnamed Stony Brook resident finding that overgrown cemetery in land behind his back yard. One day, about a year and a half ago, while texting my coauthor, Vivian, about Anthony Clapp, a Facebook Messenger text came in for me at the very same time from a school friend, Bob, who wanted to tell me about a webinar he thought I’d enjoy. For the first time in decades, I talked to Bob on the phone. I told him about the Mount book I was writing. He told me about the cemetery he’d discovered in back of his house. You guessed it—Anthony Clapp’s grave site!

Anthony Hannibal Clapp’s gravestone, carved by Phineas Hill, circa 1816, the Long Island Museum of American Art, History and Carriages Collection, 0007.015.2140. Photo by Katherine Kirkpatrick.

Jen and visited Bob and his wife, Anna, and they showed us the cemetery. While there, I told Bob I was hoping to see a house in Stony Brook where William Sidney Mount’s sister (and people who are likely portrayed in Mount’s Dance of the Haymakers) lived. I had an address from the 1970s; for all I knew, the house could have been torn down. Bob knew the house and its owner, and drove my sister and I over to it. The owner, named Rich, said to my surprise, “I know you! I was your father’s chauffeur.”

What chauffeur? My sister, Jen, and Rich filled in the story. My dad, Dale Kirkpatrick, broke his neck two years before I was born while teaching my brother to dive off a diving board at our beach club. Rich was the teenage son of my dad’s chiropractor. While Dad’s neck was in traction and he couldn’t drive, he employed Rich to take him places. Rich turned out to know a lot about William Sidney Mount and gladly showed Jen and Bob and me around the house.

Within a day of that visit, I had another serendipitous meeting, this time in Stony Brook’s Crazy Beans restaurant. Months earlier, I’d written to the head of a local preservation organization through a general website contact, but did not get a response. Attempts at obtaining the director’s email address had failed. I wanted to meet her because she was in charge of an old house, now a museum, where several of Mount’s models had lived. While Jen and I were having brunch with one of my longtime school friends, Paul, we were suddenly surprised when Leighton, another longtime school friend, strolls in—accompanied by the organization’s director.

Another day that week, Jen and I hiked along the narrow strip of Setauket’s Shore Road in a quest to find out where William Sidney Mount had been situated when painting Eel Spearing in Setauket in 1845. Looking across Setauket Harbor at Strong’s Neck, we searched in vain for St. George’s Manor, the house depicted in the artwork. A lot of trees had grown up and houses built since Mount’s time. Barbara, Brookhaven Town’s Historian, happened to be driving by in her convertible on the way to playing golf. “I recognize you two!” she said, pulling the car aside. We’d visited her the day before at her office in Farmingville. As it turned out, Barbara had grown up on Shore Road. She took us to a place where we could see the manor; as it was barely visible in the summer’s foliage, we wouldn’t have spotted it on our own.

Jen taking photographs on Shore Road, Setauket.

There are numerous other examples of synchronicity related to this project; I’ll tell you just one more. Jen and I ran into a family friend, Megan, while visiting the Long Island Museum. We were surprised to hear that Megan was employed by the museum. Last we’d heard Megan was living and working in Manhattan. She’s now in charge of reopening the museum’s gift shop, and is involved with a book event for me that will take place on October 2, 2022.

Out of my nine published books, The Art of William Sidney Mount: Long Island People of Color on Canvas is the only title to go into print within a year of contract. In most cases I experienced a lag of at least three years. I ask myself how I could be so lucky in regard to this book, while I’ve encountered many obstacles for other projects. Arguably, there’s a certain ease that comes about when choosing a subject related to one’s hometown. My late parents, Audrey and Dale Kirkpatrick, were very active in the Three Village community. Still, does my family’s wide network of acquaintances and friends explain the nature and timing of my experiences?

My friend author Andrea Simon uses the Yiddish word bashert (orchestrated by God) to describe a certain kind of synchronicity, in which things easily fall into place in uncanny ways. Was I experiencing bashert? I’ll leave it at this. I believe there are periods in our lives when we are particularly in the flow, and when we are particularly receptive to being in the flow. I believe that when we are relaxed and happy, as I was when I was enjoying time with my sister, that fortuitous occurrences are most likely to take place.

May the synchronicity related to my project continue. I’m hoping that the stories in the book connect descendants to their ancestors and descendants to each other. And I’m hoping for further opportunities to reconnect with those from my Three Village past.

Cover for ***The Art of William Sidney Mount: Long Island People of Color on Canvas*** by Katherine Kirkpatrick and Vivian Nicholson-Mueller (The History Press, publication date September 5, 2022). Detail from *Eel Spearing at Setauket (Recollections of Early Days–“Fishing Along Shore”)*, 1845, by William Sidney Mount (1807-1868). Collection of the Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York. Gift of Stephen C. Clark. Photograph by Richard Walker. N0395.1955.

December 1, 2020 by Katherine Kirkpatrick

A New Cover for Trouble’s Daughter

What happens when a book goes out of print? In the olden days, that was that. But nowadays you can reissue the book yourself via print-on-demand (POD) publishing. One of the pleasures of this route is to choose your own cover for the book.

For years I’d thought of reissuing my young adult novel Trouble’s Daughter: The Story of Susanna Hutchinson, Indian Captive. Part of my reluctance was due to the computer-related challenges. I also had to choose a new cover because I didn’t have the legal right to use the one made for the Delacorte and Dell Yearling editions of the book. It’s relatively easy to find stock images at little or no expense. But I wanted a professional book illustrator, though I didn’t have the kind of money to pay one.

So, the Trouble’s Daughter reissue remained on hold for a decade until recently when a small miracle occurred. One of the descendants of my true-life protagonist, Susanna Hutchinson Cole, came into my life and took a great interest in seeing the book return to print. Captain Robert K. T. Cole, Jr. (retired, U.S. Marines, and Purple Heart recipient) contacted me through my website to request more information about his ancestor Susanna, who married his fourteen-times great grandfather John Cole. The Captain was also researching Susanna’s more-famous mother, Puritan firebrand Anne Hutchinson. Our correspondence began. He wanted to purchase autographed copies of Trouble’s Daughter for his children and grandchildren. It was a pleasure to sell him the fifty remaindered hardcovers I’d been stashing in my attic. Almost unbelievably, the Captain sought to buy even more copies so we eventually got into the discussion of how that might be possible through a print-on-demand venue such as Amazon’s KDP Publishing.

It was my great joy and privilege to hire, with the Captain’s financial help, the talented artist Ronald Himler, to paint the new cover art for Trouble’s Daughter. Ron illustrated my book Redcoats and Petticoats twenty years ago and we’ve been friends ever since. I also engaged a professional art director (and artist), my friend Christy Hale, to work with him. You see the happy result here. The Captain now owns the original painting.

Ron read Trouble’s Daughter, came up with a few cover concepts and allowed me to pick the one I liked best. I’ll explain the artwork. Susanna, whose original clothes had been burned by her captors, wears a deerskin cloak. The clouds behind her reflect her inner emotional tension. As the clouds descend to her right, the sun breaks through behind the misty inlet on which a Lenape warrior, Wam-Pak, rows a dugout canoe with Susanna sitting in front. Separated from her family, who were murdered in a massacre, she does not know what the future has in store for her. The two women behind her, her mother in Puritan garb, and the wise woman, Som-kway, represent the most important influences in her psyche. The swans, one of Susanna’s totem animals, express her wish to be free of emotional conflict.

I couldn’t be more pleased with the new cover art. I’m also happy that after much effort the technical challenges of launching the new edition onto the Amazon KDP website have been overcome. Susanna, again, has the promise of new life.

Now comes the fun of ordering books. If you want your own copy, it’s available as a paperback as well as an e-book. A hardcover edition through Ingram is in the works.

September 19, 2014 by Katherine Kirkpatrick

Interview with Katherine Kirkpatrick by Susan Hill Long

Susan: What made you realize you wanted to be a writer? Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

Katherine: In the sixth grade, I wrote a story about vampire bats attacking a scientist. That year I won my first English prize, the first of many, and writing became “my thing.” I followed a family pattern. My mother did quite a lot of writing, and my brother Sidney (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_D._Kirkpatrick), sister, cousin, and grandfather chose careers in writing and/or publishing.

My advice to aspiring writers is to take all assignments, paid and unpaid. Contribute to your school’s alumni magazine and local newspaper. Think about what organizations you belong to. Blog. Write a heartfelt reminiscence when your favorite teacher retires. Volunteer your talents, make people laugh, feel appreciated, hone your skills. I’m so proud of the biography of my father I self-published, The Dale Kirkpatrick Story (http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/allegra1943).

Susan: Why did you choose to write historical fiction for young adults?

Katherine: My mother loved history and partly for that reason my parents chose to settle in a community rich in colonial and maritime lore, the Three Villages (Stony Brook, Setauket, Old Field), Long Island, New York. My family liked to tour historic houses and visit old cemeteries and our local carriage museum http://longislandmuseum.org/, which has a jauntily painted American gypsy wagon, circa 1870, that always captured my imagination. Once I took a children’s writing class held in the museum’s 18th-century one-room schoolhouse.

When I started to write novels, I found myself drawn to the coming-of-age themes of independence, discovery, maturity, and relationships in young adult fiction.

Susan: Where did you get the idea that sparked Between Two Worlds?

Katherine: In the Hall of Meteorites at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, I noticed a photo of four-year-old Marie Peary, the daughter of Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary, onboard a ship with a gigantic meteorite. After researching Marie’s life, I started a novel. I showed it to editor Mary Cash at Holiday House, along with stunning photographs of Marie in Arctic Greenland. With the photos in mind, Mary encouraged me to write a nonfiction book, The Snow Baby, http://www.katherinekirkpatrick.com/book_01.html, published in 2007.

Years later I returned to the novel. It took on new life when I decided to switch perspectives, telling the story from Billy Bah’s, an Inuk girl’s, point of view.

Katherine Kirkpatrick with Jessica Baloun, Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, WA

Susan: I really enjoyed reading The Snow Baby! Can you tell us a little bit about your work writing both fiction and nonfiction, and how one approach may inform the other?

Katherine: I’d published four novels before I wrote The Snow Baby, so I brought to that photo essay/biography the novelist’s ability to think in terms of drama and scenes. After eight years of publishing nonfiction books, I returned to fiction with Between Two Worlds. Because I’d already researched Arctic Greenland, I focused on plot and character development without thinking so much about getting the history right. It’s been my tendency, like globbing on too much icing on a cake, to pile on historical details. This time around I started with the cake itself and with better results; Between Two Worlds has received excellent reviews.

It’s not a good idea, career-wise, to do the kind of zigzagging between genres that I’ve done. To establish a readership, it’s best to do the same kind of book over and over, preferably with the same publisher. But there’s value, too, in publishing individual titles. A friend of mine puts it this way: “Go to the party where you’re invited.”

Susan: Between Two Worlds is based on a true story. What’s real and what’s made up?

Katherine: About 80 percent of the book is based on historical events. Sixteen-year-old Billy Bah joined the Peary family on his ship Windward, which became locked in ice for eight months in 1900-1901. Just about everything but the triangle love story and conversations with the ancestor-ghosts is historically based.

Susan: Tell us about the real Billy Bah.

Katherine: Billy Bah, also known by her Inuk name, Eqariusaq, was born around 1884 in a remote coastal area of Arctic Greenland. When she was about eleven, she spent a year in Washington, D.C. with Peary’s family. She was both orphaned and married around age fourteen. Peary referred to her as his most expert seamstress. She sewed the fur coat that explorer Matthew Henson wore during the famed Peary expedition of 1909 to the North Pole.

Susan: The setting of 1901 Arctic Greenland plays a distinct and significant role in the novel. Also, you use a lot of Inuktun (Polar Eskimo) words in the book. Were these challenges for you, in terms of making Billy Bah’s story come alive for YA readers?

Katherine: The key to historical fiction is to put the past into the present, to bring out universal themes that a modern-day audience can relate to such as the desire to belong or the need for independence. No matter when, people have always shared many of the same core fears and desires. One common teenage dilemma is that at some point we must act under pressure and make difficult choices. The theme of romantic love is also powerful and universal. Billy Bah’s love affair with the sailor Duncan is the aspect of the book that I feel will most appeal to teen girl readers, fully drawing them into 1901 and the foreign world of Arctic Greenland.

In earlier drafts, I used a lot of Inuktun words. My editor Wendy Lamb cut out most of them, smoothing out the prose, while skillfully leaving in hints of the native sounds. Wendy also had me tone down aspects of traditional Inuit life that modern readers might find off-putting. I deleted the gory chapter in which Billy Bah’s people slaughter walruses and downplayed the cultural norms of uncombed hair, unwashed bodies, head lice, and body lice. Over five rewrites, Billy Bah became more assertive, more mature, and less historically Inuit in terms of personal hygiene.

Susan: What’s the most unusual thing you’ve had to Google for a work in progress?

Katherine: I researched Inuit women washing their hair with urine. It would have put off readers, so I ended up not including that info. Again, sometimes we need to sacrifice a little accuracy for accessibility.

Susan: We all struggle to maintain “balance” in our writing lives. Could you describe your typical writing day?

Katherine: I block out about fifteen hours of morning time, Monday to Friday, for writing, and this time is for writing only. I’ll work in email or phone calls before or after, and in between my family-related commitments, such as taking my 90-year-old father-in-law to his medical appointments and my two middle-school-age children to their music lessons and other activities. I also try to squeeze in exercise time. I like to cook and we make a sit-down dinner a priority. Though I don’t write in the evenings or on weekends, I’ll sometimes do work-related reading or editing. Evenings I like to relax with my cat and play the harp.

Susan: What are you working on now?

Katherine: My novel in progress is set in England and Egypt in 1922-1923, during the opening of King Tut’s tomb. Two years ago, with my sister, brother-in-law, and niece, I visited the book’s Egyptian settings. We toured archaeological sites by small boat on the Nile and flew over the Valley of the Kings in a hot air balloon. This past April, during a family trip to England, I visited my novel’s main British setting, Highclere Castle in Berkshire, outside of London, for the second time. Highclere is now popular as the set for the hit British TV series “Downton Abbey.” I’ve been enjoying myself researching and writing, and I hope that spirit of fun and adventure will go into the book.

Susan: What was it like to have the great Madeleine L’Engle as a writing teacher?

Katherine: Madeleine was the most extraordinary person I’ve ever known. Quite tall, regal, and magnificent in her long purple and blue dresses and exotic jewelry, she projected the same sense of wonder as her classic fantasy novel A Wrinkle in Time. She was more than a little like the three otherworldly presences Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Which. Her expansive vision included a belief in angels, whom she was sure appeared regularly to all of us. She emanated power, knowing, and love, and had a great talent for bringing out her students’ inherently good qualities.

As a writing teacher she wasn’t what you would expect. Instead of talking about plot, character, or story structure, she preferred more abstract themes about the larger role of writing and art in our lives, such as the concept of story being truth. Invariably she advised, “Write for an hour. Don’t think. Attempts to direct only interfere with creative work.” Her belief about writing was that it’s an entry into the larger Cosmos. Publishing books is a happy by-product, she said. The shared journey is what matters.

In the ten years I knew Madeleine, she taught me about the life of spirit and the value of community. I met most of my closest friends through her. To learn more about Madeleine as a teacher, see the book I edited, A Circle of Friends: Remembering Madeleine L’Engle ( http://www.katherinekirkpatrick.com/book_02.html ).

Thanks for interviewing me, Susan!

* * * * *

This interview was previously published in abbreviated form on the fabulous historical fiction blog “Corsets, Cutlasses, & Candlesticks” http://corsetsandcutlasses.wordpress.com/ on June 30, 2014.

published by Wendy Lamb Books/ Random House, 2014

June 6, 2014 by Katherine Kirkpatrick

Celebrating Fifteen Years of Redcoats and Petticoats

Recently an envelope arrived in the mail from the literary agency that represented my earliest published work. Only one of those titles, my 1999 picture book Redcoats and Petticoats, remains in print.

When royalties start to dwindle, an out-of-print notice usually follows. It seemed to me I had a fifty percent chance of receiving disappointing news about Redcoats and, especially since I was about to leave for London the next morning, I decided not to open the envelope. Several weeks later, home again but caught up in busyness, I continued to shelve the envelope and any feelings of sorrow that might come from discovering its contents.

Finally, one evening I felt ready to face what the wheel of fortune had dealt me. As I took out my paper knife, a favorite Buddhist teaching popped into my mind: “The dharma wheel turns, pay no mind to it.” In other words, when we’re down we’re on the way up and vice versa, so knowing that ever-changing state of things let’s try to live with grace, trust, and equanimity. Somewhere, at the center of the wheel, I reminded myself, there’s always a place of peace.

I’d hoped to find a check of at least six hundred dollars. I feared I’d receive a hundred or less. The check in my hand amounted to nearly four thousand dollars. Woo-hoo! Score! I could hardly believe it. Then I remembered that the subject of my book, George Washington’s spies on Long Island, had been featured in a recent AMC television series, “Turn.” Obviously, the public’s renewed interest in the topic accounted for my boon in sales.

I laughed so hard I felt giddy. I told one of my daughters what happened. Grinning, she gave me the thumbs up. I giggled some more, at the sheer surprise of the news, but also at myself for the way I’d behaved by waiting to open the envelope.

Redcoats and Petticoats, published by Holiday House, Inc., and illustrated by Ronald Himler, has continuously been in print in hardcover since 1999. Privately owned and managed, Holiday House remains one of the few independent book publishers in New York.

* * * * *

Redcoats and Petticoats tells the real-life story of a brave woman named Anna (Nancy) Strong who used her clothesline to help her group of fellow undercover agents relay news to General George Washington. I’ve known the story as long as I can remember. I don’t think it’s possible to grow up, as I did, in the Three Villages of Stony Brook, Setauket, and Old Field, on the north shore of Long Island, New York, without knowing of our beloved Setauket Spy Ring. This handful of heroic citizens, via a person-to-person assembly, on foot and by horseback, by rowboat, and finally by whaleboat across Long Island Sound to Washington’s headquarters in Fairfield, Connecticut, passed on news of Tory battle plans that secret agents had overheard in the tearooms and taverns of the city of New York. In Setauket, sixty-three miles from the city, Nancy Strong did her part by signaling to a fellow spy a code that indicated the rendezvous spot in one of the nearby coves, where the secret missives would be waiting for a whaleboat captain to row them across the Sound to Patriot shores.

As part of a fourth-grade school assignment, my mother took me to meet Kate Strong, a blind woman, by then well into her nineties, the great-great-granddaughter of the famous clothesline patriot. The essay I wrote subsequently won me my first award in a writing contest sponsored by the Long Island chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. No doubt this early recognition contributed to my becoming a writer.

The locations in Redcoats and Petticoats, beautifully and accurately rendered by artist Ronald Himler, serve as fixed points in my childhood. The Setauket Neighborhood House on Main Street, where George Washington paid a visit, was where I’d taken ballet and where my mother attended historical society functions. In the waters off Strong’s Neck, near the spot where Nancy Strong hung her clothesline, I’d clammed its muddy shallows, rowed, sailed, and, with my high-school chum Elke Dee, learned to water-ski. In the summers during college, and after, I spent many happy evenings star-gazing, boating, and barbecuing with my dear friend Lisa Lesko and her family.

The book’s opening spread shows the Battle of Setauket on the Village Green, in front of the Setauket Presbyterian Church. Here my parents, Audrey and Dale Kirkpatrick, performed marionette shows at church fairs. And here, loudly bellowing traditional Highland melodies, a bagpiper opened and concluded our family weddings, including my own in the same year Redcoats was published. Six years later, in the church cemetery where the Tories camped and uprooted tombstones to use as cooking tables, my father was buried, and four years after that, my mother laid to rest beside him.

The present Setauket Presbyterian Church structure was built in 1812. Its graveyard dates to the 1660s.

Walking the path of history.

The Caroline Church of Brookhaven, on Setauket’s Village Green, was built in 1729.

Writing the book put me in touch with our distant Revolutionary War past. Reflecting on the book now puts me in touch with my own past, the flow of my life, and the lives of many dear to me. Through beloved local landmarks, I see and appreciate the distances we’ve traveled, and the well-worn, age-old paths still ahead of us.

I’m so grateful that my book has beaten the odds in the competitive venue of publishing and I now celebrate its fifteenth anniversary. Viva Redcoats and Petticoats!

Checking proofs for Redcoats with editor Mary Cash.

May 14, 2014 by Katherine Kirkpatrick

Boreal Ties: Part II

Katherine Kirkpatrick’s Interview with Kim Fairley and Silas Hibbard Ayer III

In July 1901 two New York businessmen paid the hefty sum of $500 each ($10,000 by today’s standards) to travel to a remote area of the northwest Greenland Arctic on the SS Erik. Their names were Clarence Wyckoff, 25, and Louis Bement, 35. The voyage was designed to bring supplies to explorer Robert E. Peary and to find Peary’s wife and daughter, who had departed on Peary’s ship Windward the previous summer and had not returned. When the relief party reached the Arctic, they discovered the Windward trapped in ice but the ship intact and all on board safe. Unlike Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated vessel Endurance, Peary’s ship became ice-locked close to land. Consequently the passengers and crew easily walked back and forth on the ice to shore, where a community of Inuit helped to provide them with food and warm clothing. The Windward and the Erik sailed back together to America in August 1901.

A century after Wyckoff and Bement’s voyage, their descendants Kim Fairley and Silas Hibbard Ayer III annotated their diaries and published them along with their photos in a beautiful book called Boreal Ties: Photographs and Two Diaries of the 1901 Peary Relief Expedition (2002). This invaluable reference helped me research two of my own books, The Snow Baby, nonfiction, and my new novel, Between Two Worlds.

Kim Fairley is Wyckoff’s great-granddaughter. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Michigan where she specialized in mixed media and used Wyckoff’s photographs to create large collages. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan. Silas Hibbard Ayer III, is Bement’s grandson. He lives in Ellicott City, Maryland, and is retired from his position as executive production underwriter for the Hartford Insurance Company, where he spent most of his time in Baltimore.

Cover of Boreal Ties, edited by Kim Fairley Gillis and Silas Hibbard Ayer III, published by University of New Mexico Press, 2002. Louis Bement, left, and Clarence Wyckoff, right. Copyright © Kim Fairley and Silas Hibbard Ayer III.

Katherine: Tell me about the original diaries and photographs and how they look. Where are they? How did they come into your possession? Please explain to our readers why in some cases you both own the same photographs.

Kim: Wyckoff’s photographs were given to me by his daughter, Betty Wyckoff Balderston, my great aunt, and they are still in my possession. The Wyckoff collection is in a book and is in excellent condition.

One of the things I find most interesting about the two collections is the fact that many of the images were taken seconds apart, and from slightly different angles. Since the photographs were similar but of differing quality, we were able to pick and choose the best for the book.

Silas and I have spoken about the idea of donating the collections to Cornell University, since the two men were from Ithaca and the Arctic collection of their friend Fred Church is already there.

Silas: The original diaries and photographs were handed down to me through Louis Bement’s daughter, Ariel Bement Flanagan. They were in mint condition considering they were 100 years old. The Bement pictures were numbered with an index describing the people and scenes. This index became invaluable in tracking pictures with the diary entries. The pictures were in various sizes due to the different cameras that were shared on the expedition. The pictures also were shared which explains why Kim and I own some the same photographs.

The Bement diaries were also in very good condition. The print is small and took several months to transcribe. The key to the preservation of the diary was that the entries were done in lead pencil and not ink, which has a tendency to fade and blur with age.

Katherine: When and how did the two of you meet? How did you come to publish Boreal Ties? Did working on the book enrich your lives in any way?

Kim: In writing the book I learned a great deal about my family. I feel proud of my connection to Arctic history and it felt good to be able to work on it with the descendant of one of my great grandfather’s friends. Silas and I developed a close friendship and we often talked about how Clarence and Louis would be so pleased that we had met and done something positive with their material.

Silas: Kim and I had corresponded 13 years about our Arctic collections before we met for the first time in the late nineties at the National Archives branch at College Park, Maryland. The purpose of this visit was to check out the Robert E. Peary collection to see if there were items in his collection which reflected on the 1901 Expedition and to peruse the material in our collections with the thought of donating to a museum.

At the National Archives I brought all the Bement pictures (300 plus) and diaries (2) and Kim did the same. We had over 700 pictures between us. After extensive review, I recall Kim looked at me and said, “We have enough to write a book.” Thus, Boreal Ties was born. It took a little over two years to put this together with the University of New Mexico Press.

Kim Fairley and Silas Ayer at a book signing, copyright © Kim Fairley and Silas Hibbard Ayer III.

Katherine: Tell us why the diaries and photos are of great historical value.

Kim: I discovered in running around to the various Arctic collections that our collections were unique. Most of our images had never been published, and since they were taken years before any of the explorers became bitter enemies, there was a lightness about many of the photographs. In several you see the men relaxing on deck, laughing, or conversing like tourists on vacation.

Silas: The Expedition of 1901 consisted of many who were later to become celebrated names in polar exploration, such as Dr. Frederick Cook, Commander Robert Peary, his wife Josephine and daughter Marie, and Matthew Henson, to name a few. The diaries and photos were primary source material that captured early historic moments in Arctic exploration.

Katherine: Tell us about the hardships of Wyckoff’s and Bement’s journey.

Kim: The men left in the early summer months and thought they were well stocked and prepared. What they found was that they were somewhat unprepared for the journey and at one point felt desperate when the ship was trapped in ice and forced up and onto its side. Wyckoff speaks in his diary about eating rice for a long time before he realized they had actually been eating maggots.

Katherine: Can you think of one thing about the diaries or photographs that readers would be surprised to learn?

Kim: The humanity. This is an age of great discovery and yet the subjects appear to be friends enjoying their time together. You can relate to the people. They aren’t famous explorers striking heroic poses, but down-to-earth people.

Katherine: Do you have a favorite photograph? Journal entry?

Silas: I love the photo of the iceberg in the front of the book, with the high contrast and beautiful light.

Kim: My favorites are of the Inuit, especially the expressive group photographs that show their native dress with the backdrop of the Greenland landscape.

Icebergs by Clarence Wyckoff, copyright © Kim Fairley and Silas Hibbard Ayer III.

Woman and Five Children at Upernavik by Louis Bement, copyright © Kim Fairley and Silas Hibbard Ayer III.

Katherine: How are Wyckoff’s and Bement’s photographs similar to or different from Australian photographer’s Frank Hurley’s famed 1914-1916 Antarctic photographs of Shackleton’s Endurance expedition?

Kim: Frank Hurley’s photographs are magnificent but the difference is that they seem somewhat staged and heroic in comparison to the Wyckoff-Bement photos. Wyckoff and Bement encountered indigenous people and took a large number of photographs of them. These images added a humanness that dominated the collection, unlike Hurley’s that concentrated more on the heroic nature of the expedition.

Katherine: Wyckoff and Bement, as was typical of Westerners in 1901, referred to the Inuit they met in derogatory terms as “Huskies.” Bement wrote that he “did not suppose human beings could live and stink so . . .” (p. 75) and “. . . it must be worse than a dog’s life they lead” (p. 113). But at the same time, their close-up portraits and candid photos of the Inuit hunting walrus and tanning skins appear to come from a friendly, inquiring, and respectful point of view. These photos look dignified. They contrast sharply with many explorers’ typically formal posed shots, which could almost be labeled “the powerful Western newcomer/conqueror vs. the wary natives.” Why do you think Wyckoff and Bement’s photographs are different?

Kim: The quote, while accurate, represents the racism and arrogance of the early 20^th century, but from my own research, I found that these two men—Wyckoff and Bement–came to appreciate the skills and ability of the indigenous people. They embraced the native lifestyle, and applied the skills that had developed over thousands of years in a harsh environment. Their photographs bespeak warmth, camaraderie, and respect.

Katherine: I’m reading between the lines that Wyckoff and Bement weren’t just taking a “vacation” to enjoy a pleasant time. I think they journeyed to the Arctic, consciously or subconsciously, for something deeper: to learn and to grow. From what you know of Wyckoff and Bement, how did the voyage transform their lives?

Kim: The trip to the Arctic was the biggest event of Wyckoff’s life. When he returned, he started a business, married, and had children. His whole life changed. I would say that Wyckoff and Bement both went on the expedition with the idea that they might discover Peary was dead. There was rumor that he had lost his toes due to frostbite and nobody had received word from him in several months. This was in a way a secret expedition. There must have been a huge sigh of relief when they arrived and discovered that Peary was alive and well.

Katherine: Did you have an interest in the Arctic when you were growing up as a result of your great grandfather’s journey?

Kim: I didn’t know about my great grandfather until I was an adult. What I learned had a big impact on me when I did my graduate work, however.

Silas: My interest in the Arctic began when I was young and inherited a collection of letters written by Ross Marvin, Robert Peary’s personal secretary. Marvin wrote to my grandfather, Louis Bement, saying that he feared for his life but couldn’t talk to him about it. He said he would explain when he returned home. As it turned out, Marvin never made it home because he fell through the ice and drowned. Years later, a couple of Inuit converted to Christianity and one confessed to having killed Marvin. Unfortunately, the news was never made public. This polar mystery has always intrigued me.

Katherine: Tell us about your own journey(s) to the Greenland Arctic. Did you retrace your ancestor’s journey?

Kim: No, neither one of us ever made it to the Arctic region.

Katherine: Peary often gave his backers geographical names. Is there a place named after Wyckoff? Did Peary give him any carvings or other tokens of appreciation?

Kim: Wyckoff returned from the expedition with various objects that remained in the family. One was a large narwhal tusk that leaned against my great-aunt’s wall in her living room. I am not aware of any gifts to Clarence Wyckoff from Robert Peary. There was a Cape Wyckoff named after Wyckoff but I’m not sure that it was Peary who named it.

In fact, Wyckoff had a falling out with Peary when Wyckoff gave his rifle to Dr. [Thomas] Dedrick, who decided to stay in the Arctic after the 1901 expedition. Dedrick had the rifle inlaid in ivory by the Inuit as a gift to Wyckoff. When Dedrick gave the rifle to Peary to return to him, Peary donated it as his own to the American Museum in New York. Eventually Wyckoff got the rifle back, but Wyckoff was never particularly fond of Robert Peary after the 1901 expedition.

Silas: There were discussions especially with Wyckoff of assignment of names with Peary but my records do not show this was ever finalized. Peary did give Bement a full walrus head. Bement loaned his head to Cornell University with the understanding that the real ownership was to remain with me. The head was displayed in Willard Hall and disappeared in later years. I told this story to a Cornell archivist who conducted a search of the university. It was never found.

Katherine: Thank you Kim and Silas for the interview and relating so much interesting information to our readers!

March 8, 2014 by Katherine Kirkpatrick

As Good as It Gets

The price of one of my young adult novels, throw in a few bucks for tax, is about what you’d pay for a bottle of wine to take to your host for dinner. People used to stop by the autographing party at the local museum’s bookshop to purchase Katherine Kirkpatrick’s latest young adult historical tearjerker, and then continue up the road a half mile, past the duck pond, through lush woods, to Audrey and Dale Kirkpatrick’s home and a gourmet meal. Anyone from the Three Villages (Stony Brook, Setauket, Old Field) of Long Island, New York, might be there: the tennis players, the bridge players, the bank teller, my mother’s hairdresser, the neighbors, some of the teachers my siblings and I had had at school, and people my parents knew through the Presbyterian church, puppetry, charities, real estate, Dad’s travel agency, or his heart surgeries.

Whether anyone read my books or not didn’t matter, not really, because I had the great satisfaction of selling a hundred hardcovers in an hour. Even better, the sense of celebration that filled the air was as palpable as the aroma of sautéed onions and mushrooms. The Kirkpatricks knew how to throw a party. Chicken cacciatore, anyone? Genoese seafood risotto? Champagne cocktail? In the octagonal living room decorated with carved screens from India, in pivoting chairs with colorful satin pillows, around a central coffee table and low-hanging lamp, the drinks and the conversations flowed.

Audrey and Dale Kirkpatrick.

Autographing copies of my first novel, Keeping the Good Light.

Signing copies of my first novel, Keeping the Good Light.

This was how my parents celebrated the publication of my first three books in the mid-to-late 1990s, when I was in my early and mid thirties, before I married, moved coasts, and gave birth to twins. Four other books for older children and young adults, both fiction and nonfiction, followed. But three thousand miles away from family, friends, and my New York writers community, I found it difficult to attract more than a handful of people to my book events. For a while I stopped doing signings altogether. I stopped celebrating. It was as if my last two titles dropped into holes the minute they were published.

There is nothing more depressing for an author than to sit at a table with a forced smile in front of a pyramid of books, facing a room full of vacant chairs. The feelings of loneliness and isolation of such situations can be intense.

I’m happy to say I’ve found a middle path, a joyous way of celebrating new books that comes in second to my mother’s former parties. Our Western Washington chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) hosts a fabulous twice-yearly event called “The Inside Story.” In this event, fifteen or so local book creators share “the story behind the story” in short presentations of their new and upcoming books to independent booksellers, fellow authors and illustrators, and their families. Many school and public librarians also attend.

Our November 3, 2013, The Inside Story at Seattle’s Mockingbird Books drew several hundred people. In her introduction, Laura McGee Kvasnosky spoke of how The Inside Story has greatly expanded in scope and in popularity since she and fellow children’s book creator George Shannon launched the program on October 4, 1998. “I feel like the proud mother and George the proud father,” she said, “and I’ve enjoyed watching the event grow up.” I happened to be sitting near Laura in the crowd and, indeed, like a proud mother, she was smiling and smiling during the trivia prize awards and presentations.

The Inside Story #31 at Mockingbird Books.

I am so grateful to Laura and George for creating this wonderful community forum where we can give ourselves a boost. Book releases can be as stressful as they can be joyful, because of the expectations we set for ourselves and our publishing companies have for us. Knowing that I can bring my new young adult novel to the Inside Story when it comes out this spring transforms a responsibility into an honor, a burden into a celebration, a dread into a feeling of optimism.

Also, by the way, there are small mountains of fruits and cookies served at our Inside Story events. Next time, at Mockingbird Books on May 6, I’ll also contribute goodies home-cooked according to recipes left to me by my greatest literary supporter of all time, Audrey Kirkpatrick. She who cut sun-dried tomatoes into strips for me, who shredded prosciutto and grated Parmesan cheese for me, who invited everyone she knew to her home for me, would have enjoyed our Inside Story festivities and approved.

Audrey Kirkpatrick celebrates.

February 4, 2014 by Katherine Kirkpatrick

The Commander and I

Commander Edward P. Stafford, USN (Ret), July 16, 1918 – Sept. 24, 2013, was the grandson of polar explorer Robert E. Peary and son of Marie Peary, called by the newspapers “the snow baby.”

The Snow Baby published by Holiday House, 2007, was a James Madison Award Honor Book and a Booklist Top Ten Biography for Youth.

A photo of a spunky four-year-old Marie Peary, posed near a gigantic meteorite on a ship, inspired me to write a book called The Snow Baby. A photo biography, it tells of Marie’s childhood, from her 1893 birth in the Arctic to the age of sixteen, when her father, Admiral Robert E. Peary, reached the North Pole in 1909. My forthcoming novel Between Two Worlds also includes Marie as a character.

It was easy for me to fall in love with this child, who at the age of eight, dressed in seal furs on an ice-locked ship, played tricks on sailors and found ways to celebrate Christmas while the adults around her worried for their lives.

In 2005, in the early stages of writing The Snow Baby, I met Marie’s son Commander Edward Stafford, who was at that time in his late eighties. Though he lived in Florida, he periodically returned to Eagle Island near South Harpswell, Maine, to lead tours of the Peary family’s former summer home, now a state park. I was so eager to go on one of these tours, I took a plane trip of 3,000 miles from Seattle to New York with my four-year-old twins. After meeting up with my dear friend, author/illustrator Sanna Stanley and her three-year-old son, we drove three hundred miles to Portland, Maine. A small outboard motorboat took us across Casco Bay, past many green, forested islands, to our destination.

Set on Eagle Island’s rocky bluff, which to Admiral Peary looked like a ship, Peary placed his house where the pilot house of the ship would have been located.

Considering his age and how my previous attempts of e-mailing him through a university museum had gone awry, I’d thought perhaps he suffered ill health. On the contrary, the man I met on Eagle Island, wearing long shorts, T-shirt, and baseball cap, vigorously marching up and down the narrow stairs of the old house, was astonishingly robust. He held his back straight. His face conveyed the certainty of a man sure of himself. Indeed he’d earned seven battle stars in World War II on anti-submarine duty on naval destroyers and destroyer escorts in the Caribbean and Mediterranean. Stafford remarked that though his illustrious grandfather died when he was nineteen months old, he knew the man through Peary’s wife and daughter who loved him. Through them, something of his grandfather’s force of character transferred itself to him. True, as far as I’m concerned.

In my great enthusiasm to meet Stafford, I made a nuisance of myself, asking him one detailed question after another. Perhaps with a frown or inclination of his head, Stafford conveyed his irritation to his wife, who was on the tour with us. She asked me to please refrain from asking Stafford questions until the end. “He needs to save his voice,” she said diplomatically. Meanwhile, for the next hour, ten other tourists fired away their questions and he happily answered them. Then as we stood on the house’s sloping green lawn near the boat dock, he finally gave me ten minutes of his time.

Katherine Kirkpatrick, Commander Edward Stafford, Peggy Stafford, and tour boat captain.

Reflecting back, I realize it was naïve of me to assume Stafford would be happy to meet me just because I was writing a book about his mother. Celebrity families often keep to themselves for good reason. Stafford’s initial brisk attitude had everything to do with defending the honor of his often maligned grandfather.

But setting aside any feelings of disappointment about Stafford’s reaction to me, I spent an absolutely wonderful day on Eagle Island. Stafford told stories with flair, as well as with knowledge and authority. He was the best of guides. He said the island was part of him, and obviously he took great pleasure in sharing it.

I loved the house with its snug, shiplike, wood-paneled rooms, its panoramic views, its many tokens and reminders—such as Peary’s stuffed birds, mounted twenty-pound lobster, and Marie’s collection of tiny ivory figures—of the way an extraordinary family lived. My friend and I greatly enjoyed the island’s seventeen acres of fragrant woods, foxgloves everywhere in the underbrush, and rocky beaches. While I’d toured the house, she kept our active young children from the dangerous rocks and wild surf. Then the five of us explored the island together.

A three-sided stone fireplace separates the downstairs rooms in the Peary family’s home on Eagle Island.

The view from an upstairs room in the Peary family house.

Marie Peary’s books and keepsakes.

What’s more, just prior to leaving for an enchanted return boat ride in which dolphins leapt about our craft, Stafford gave me his business card. On the top right, printed in dark blue ink was the icon of a ship’s wheel with his name “Edward P. Stafford, Commander, U.S. Navy (Ret.)” and his address and phone number in Florida.

I wrote to him, enclosing a first draft of my manuscript for The Snow Baby, which by then was contracted to be published. About two months later I heard back, not from Stafford, but from a man whom Stafford had given the manuscript to, a representative of an historical society in Maine. He pointed out numerous shortcomings in the draft, then concluded, “if I should decide to go forward” (implying I should abandon my book?): “Keep in mind you have chosen to work over ground that has been covered many times over the past 100 years by experienced writers, many of them well versed in Arctic lore and possessed of years of actual Arctic exploration experience. To cover this subject matter with anything less than thoroughness and accuracy could expose you, the Peary and Stafford families, and organizations devoted to Arctic education programs to serious ridicule and embarrassment.”

With that splash of frigid polar water thrown on me, I set about a new draft, this time enlisting the expert help of members of a university museum. Within the next two years, I completed eight more drafts, two of which Stafford provided helpful feedback on.

By then, though I had no expectations whatsoever that Stafford would like my book, I myself felt pleased with it. In the end, the commander did voice his approval. Inside a Christmas card picturing Santa Claus delivering packages by rowboat to a lighthouse, he’d written in block capital letters, “A BEAUTIFUL BOOK, WELL-WRITTEN AND A PLEASURE. THANKS SO MUCH. ED STAFFORD.”

Sanna Stanley.

The Peary family house on Eagle Island, Maine.

January 7, 2014 by Katherine Kirkpatrick

ALA Award Envy

Elizabeth Wein and Katherine Kirkpatrick, Setauket, New York, 1999

On Monday, January 27, 2014, I’ll be watching the webcast of the American Library Association’s Youth Media Award announcements, broadcast live from Philadelphia. Everyone in children’s and young adult publishing will be eagerly anticipating the results. In our field, the garnering of a Newbery, Caldecott, or Printz Award is equivalent to an athlete winning a gold medal in the Olympics.

My annual February/March readathon, a time of discovering new books and engaging in stimulating discussion, begins after the announcements. Some years, I’ll read not only every Newbery and Printz winner and honor book, but I’ll also work my way through YALSA’s Best Fiction list. Other years, I’ll stop reading after only a few books; especially if a title of my own has come out. While reading an award-winning book that I don’t feel is worthy, I snap it closed and return all the others to the library unread—shelving the feelings of frustration that their gold and silver seals invoke.

I know better than to view the ALA awards as the be-all and end-all of my writing life. Nevertheless, I get caught up in the annual fervor. The truth is there are thousands of us authors out there, and there are thousands more of our books published every year than there are ALA awards and citations to go around. No matter how good a book may be, chances are excellent that it will go unnoticed among the vast sea of other titles.

In my clearer moments I realize that notions of awards and their perceived value are dark, swirling storm clouds in our minds: If we can guide the plane above such foggy distractions, the view will be beautiful, bright, and expansive. For we can all enjoy a true and lasting sense of abundance on a higher level when we give up our limited definitions of success.

The image of the airplane is an apt one to illustrate the story I’m about to tell.

Last year, on Monday, January 28, 2013, I was in the audience at the ALA Media Awards press conference in Seattle when I heard that my dear friend of 27 years, Elizabeth Wein, won a Printz Honor for her aviation-themed book Code Name Verity.

Elizabeth Wein and Katherine Kirkpatrick in Avebury, England, 1999

I’d surmised from the buzz at the ALA Midwinter Meeting that Code Name Verity was a contender for the Printz. My friend, half a world away in Scotland, suspected it, too. Her enormously popular breakout novel had already garnered a ton of starred reviews and media attention. But of course, ALA award announcements often defy expectations, and frequent surprises add to the drama of this high-stakes event.

I wanted Elizabeth to win the Printz, really and truly. But at the same time, as I took my seat that morning in the mobbed auditorium of the Seattle Convention Center, I wasn’t completely sure what my reaction would be if she did. I gave myself a little talk: If Elizabeth wins this award, and if you, Katherine Kirkpatrick, are not one hundred percent happy for her, then you are a miserable, selfish, covetous wretch and you don’t deserve to win any awards in the future.

For those of you who watch the live webcasts of the ALA press conference, let me tell you, there’s nothing like attending the event in person. You notice the MC’s bright red socks. And hear how incredibly loud the audience applauded. And feel the heat of the bright lights and movie cameras. Experience the palpable excitement in the air.

The MC encouraged us to cheer as he read the names of the Printz judges, and I shouted heartily along with everyone else. I had no idea who they were; it didn’t matter. It was fun to get caught up in the energy of the crowd.

Katherine Kirkpatrick and Elizabeth Wein, Errwood Hall, Goyt Valley, England, 1984

When I heard the words “Code Name Verity” in the honor category, my heart stopped. Honor? Why not winner?! Not that I’d yet read the winning title or any of the other honor books. But at that moment I felt childishly defensive of Code Name Verity, while also knowing that attaining a Printz Honor is almost equally as awesome, weighty, and life-changing as receiving the grand prize.

It wasn’t until about an hour after the press conference that the good news really sank in. I remember standing by myself at the top of the convention center’s escalator under a sky-high ceiling, surrounded by towering walls of glass. A feeling of expansive joy came over me. I was, and am, so proud of Elizabeth and happy for her, for getting her pilot’s license, for writing her fabulous breakout novel, for receiving the fame and recognition she deserves.

I felt happy about myself, too, for being a good friend and for feeling a generosity of spirit. As I was telling a complete stranger at the coat check, your character is tested when someone you’re close to gets something you’ve always wanted.

Friendship, all forms of love and true caring, exist outside of man-made rankings and hierarchies. I feel this truth profoundly when I think about Elizabeth and the good times we’ve had together, before and after college graduation, dreaming of becoming authors, having books published, getting married, having children. We traversed the map of Britain together, and even flew in a private plane to the Isle of Wight.

I wouldn’t trade this friendship for the Printz Award.

Katherine Kirkpatrick, Elizabeth Wein and daughter, with the Piper Warrior, Isle of Wight, England, 1999

December 9, 2013 by Katherine Kirkpatrick

Christmas Card from the North Pole

Floodlights cast yellow circles over the snow, over blocklike buildings, over a dark ocean full of icebergs. Small figures dart from the direction of the ocean toward the buildings. Under this photo, e-mailed to me from Qaanaaq, northwest Greenland, the hunting culture’s most northerly town in the world, the caption reads: “I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Our weather is fine. Right temperature for the area with snow. All my best, Navarana.”

Qaanaaq, Northwest Greenland

There may not be a Santa Claus, but there are indeed people living 550 miles (885 km) from that invisible point in the Arctic Ocean known as the North Pole.

Navarana is one of many interesting friends and acquaintances I’ve made over the years through my writing. A native speaker of Inuktun, she helped me with words and phrases for my forthcoming young adult novel, Between Two Worlds (Wendy Lamb Books, Random House, April 2014), a historical fiction adventure story about an Inuk girl on Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary’s ice-locked ship in 1900. Based on a number of true characters and incidents, the book features sixteen-year-old Eqariusaq, also known as Billy Bah, who lived in America with the Peary family for one year, returned to the Arctic, and sewed furs for members of Peary’s expeditions.

Getting to know people like Navarana, whose backgrounds are very different from my own, is my favorite perk of being an author. Here I am in Seattle, the “emerald” city of towering evergreens, and there she is in the treeless polar Arctic, surrounded, at least at this point in the year, by snow and ice.

For the next seven weeks, Navarana will live in total darkness, though the springtime will bring brilliant sunshine and, with the melting snows, patches of green with an abundance of plants and flowers. All summer, beautifully and intricately formed icebergs pass by in the fiord in front of the town. Temperatures in the winter months can drop as low as -30 degrees Celsius (-22 degrees Fahrenheit). The town has cars, pickup trucks, SUVs, a water truck, an oil truck, and an ambulance, though people also travel by foot or dogsled; the only outside road leads to a small airport. At most times of year, residents use motorboats for hunting and other transport.

Navarana has Internet access at home and through her work at the local hospital, where she serves as interpreter and translator. In this community, Danish, Kalaallisut (or West Greenlandic) and the predominant local Thule dialect, Inuktun, mix together with low, wonderful gutteral sounds and long complex words that form whole sentences. Here’s a sample of Inuktun: takuleqangakkit nuannaartunga (“I am happy to see you”). And yes, natives of the hunting culture use cell phones, though, speaking from personal experience, the around-the-world service is a little erratic and very expensive.

Navarana Sørensen

Over the past four years or so, while answering questions for my book, Navarana has occasionally offered intriguing glimpses into her life. Once, while explaining a several-month hiatus from her computer, she told me she’d been filming a documentary movie called Vanishing Point (National Film Board of Canada, 2012). During two successive summers, the directors had taken her on narwhal hunts both in her local waters and off Baffin Island. Scenes in the film include Navarana and her group traveling on sea ice by dogsled, hunting, preparing narwhal meat, and feasting. Another scene shows the group capturing little auks and stuffing them in sealskin bags for fermenting into a delicacy to be eaten later. Making the movie was great fun, she said. While in Canada, she’d also enjoyed a visit with her two daughters and grandchild.

During the final editing of my manuscript last winter and spring, I tried reaching Navarana a few times, to no avail. My book had changed titles from Box of Secrets to Between Two Worlds. Because the title represents an important theme in the book, I wanted to include the Inuktun phrase for “between two places” somewhere in the text, but the translation cannot be found online or in any printed dictionary. (It’s pivvit mardhuk akornganni, as I later learned.) What had happened to my living-and-breathing, and occasionally whale-hunting, resource?

Worried when I didn’t hear back from Navarana, I contacted the director of an Arctic museum in Maine who’d first referred me to her; the museum director, too, had unsuccessfully tried to reach Navarana. She confirmed what I’d vaguely suspected: Navarana was ill.

A few more months passed with silence from that wintery top of the world. In early summer, my publisher returned first proofs to me with further language-related questions. By this time, nearly a year had elapsed since my last communication with Navarana. I feared the worst, but I thought I’d try to reach her again anyway.

To my surprise and delight, Navarana, ever her cheerful, friendly self, shot back an immediate reply with many apologies. She’d been in Denmark for medical treatments, she said, but she’d recovered and was overjoyed to be back among her own people again.

What happy news! All that day, I walked about with a light heart. My friend and collaborator whom I’d thought dead was alive. We exchanged a few more e-mails. I sent her my book cover, which shows an Inuk girl running against an icy landscape. She wrote back, “Waow!” which, I think, means she likes it.

It’s happened to me so many times now but it still seems miraculous that I can reach out across continents and oceans to touch another life, and that a faraway person can touch my life in return.

I’ll close with the memory of another holiday card: the now ubiquitous UNICEF image of children of different ethnicities holding hands and encircling the globe. However diluted the message has become through commercial use, it’s still true, powerful and relevant:

The world is one big family.

November 4, 2013 by Katherine Kirkpatrick

Teen Interviews YA Author/ YA Author Interviews Teen

Part 1: High school student and young artist Victoria Yeh interviewed me for a school project.

Victoria Yeh

Victoria: Why did you choose to be a writer?

Katherine: I always wanted to be a writer from the time I was in sixth grade.

Victoria: What personal attributes are necessary for success?

Katherine: To be a successful writer, you need to have a “thick skin,” which means that you can’t take criticism too personally, and you need focus, persistence, and the ability to work hard.

Victoria: What kinds of skills are essential to succeed in your field?

Katherine: Successful writers not only know their craft but also have a marketing sense about what the public wants.

Victoria: How plentiful are the job opportunities in your field?

Katherine: In my case, I’m freelance (I work for myself), so there are unlimited job opportunities if I’m able to find and take advantage of them. Sometimes it’s difficult to sell articles and book ideas but good writers are always in demand.

Victoria: What are the approximate starting and maximum wages?

Katherine: Fiction authors receive advances anywhere from $10,000 per book to $100,000 or even higher. How much you earn depends on the type of market there is for any given book.

Victoria: What are the fringe benefits (dental, retirement, medical)?

Katherine: The fringe benefits are traveling, learning new things, meeting lots of different kinds of people, and often making new friends. As far as dental, health, retirement, and those kinds of benefits, none!

Victoria: What are the hours like? Can you determine them yourself?

Katherine: I generally work three to four hours a day, in the mornings. Yes, my hours are entirely flexible.

Victoria: What kind of education is necessary for a job in your field?

Katherine: A college degree is very helpful. A graduate degree isn’t necessary, but helpful if you want to teach writing; many writers also teach. I advocate a broad education, studying a wide variety of different subjects. Volunteering for high school, college, and community-based publications is a great way for students to receive writing practice and exposure.

Victoria: What did you major in during college?

Katherine: I majored in English Literature with a minor in Art History.

Victoria: Were you focused completely on studying, or did it ever help you to play sports or be involved in extracurricular activities?

Katherine: I didn’t play on any sports teams in college, but I did swim on a regular basis and enjoyed other extracurricular activities such as drawing, painting, and music. Right now I’m learning to play the harp. It’s always good to try new things outside of your field of study or career. It’s hard to quantify exactly how these activities affect your career, but they do. Music, for example, is very enriching. Do what makes you happy! When you know how to relax into these other activities then you can sometimes carry that stillness into your daily life.

Victoria: Do you ever regret choosing this career? If you could change your career, what career would you choose?

Katherine: I do not regret my career choice. In a way, my career chose me, as I’ve always been a writer. I also considered archaeology as a profession. Fortunately, I can write about archaeology, so I can satisfy this other interest.

Victoria: What are the best and worst aspects of your career?

Katherine: The best parts about being a writer are learning new things, traveling, meeting people, and seeing the books finally go into print. The worst aspect of the job is waiting for months for responses from editors. Sometimes it’s several years before a book goes into print, and always there are delays. So I tend to work on several book projects at the same time.

Victoria: What advice or wisdom would you give a high school student about his or her career choice?

Katherine: Follow your passion. Aim high. Know that you can accomplish large tasks by breaking the tasks down into smaller tasks and tackling them one by one. Try to smile and be cheerful and get along with people. Establish trust by assuming the best from people. Try not to choose sides in any disagreement. If people around you are having disagreements, try to look at the underlying causes. Generally when people are angry there is a feeling of someone not being respected. Do not judge. Instead, try to understand the context of people’s lives and why they act the way they do. Turn negative energy into positive energy; choose not to be offended, as everyone you will meet in life is carrying some burden.

Talk less and listen more. Feel in your heart what the person’s words are saying. Speak personally from the heart. Don’t offer advice; do not argue or criticize; do not interrupt. Be a professional, and you can start right now by assuming a “professional attitude” by respecting yourself and others, presenting yourself in an appropriate and balanced way, not indulging in outbursts or moods, and refraining from giving mixed signals. Being a professional also means pulling yourself together and dressing appropriately for the job at hand. Always write a thank-you note to someone who helps you; a handwritten note is better than an e-mail note in many cases. Try to be flexible and open to outcomes.

Try to be upbeat. Be kind. Remember, energy flows from intention. Envision yourself being happy and successful in your chosen career. Let go of the idea that success is about striving and effort. Have fun, try to relax and enjoy yourself, and what you do won’t seem like work—in a sense you can “do nothing” and achieve everything.

Part 2: In my first post, Victoria Yeh, a high school student interviewed me. Later, after I’d commissioned her to create a cover for the Kindle version of my novel Trouble’s Daughter, I interviewed her in return.

Victoria Yeh's Kindle cover art for Trouble's Daughter

Victoria Yeh’s cover art for Trouble’s Daughter, now available on Kindle

Katherine: How old are you now, and how long have you been drawing and painting?

Victoria: I am currently fifteen, and have been drawing since I was four. I started painting at around nine or ten.

Katherine: When did you decide you wanted to be an artist?

Victoria: Ever since I started drawing I wanted to be an artist when I grew up, but I only recently started to seriously consider exactly what kind of career in art I want.

Katherine: Are you currently taking art lessons? If so, how long have you been studying?

Victoria: Yes, I am currently taking art lessons, and have been taking them since I was six.

Katherine: What is your favorite medium?

Victoria: Currently, my favorite medium is oil paint.

Katherine: What medium did you choose for the Trouble’s Daughter cover?

Victoria: I sketched the cover of Trouble’s Daughter on an 11-inch x 14-inch paper and inked the drawing with black pen first. Then I scanned it into my computer and colored it digitally using Photoshop.

Katherine: Tell us about that cover. How did you decide on the subject matter? Did any of the details on the cover come from details in the book?

Victoria: Trouble’s Daughter is about Susanna Hutchinson’s captivity. I believed that I should focus on her emotions over the course of the story, so the initial sketches portrayed her fear right before she was captured and her determination and fortitude through her captive years. Susanna wasn’t unhappy, and even grew to love her Native American family, so I didn’t want to make her look listless or depressed in the illustration. A small detail in the book described Susanna to have small clefts in her nose and chin, which is slightly noticeable in the cover illustration. The clothing Susanna is wearing is an outfit from a scene in the book, and the turtle shell rattle she is holding has some significance in the story.

Katherine: Tell us about your process for making the cover. Did you start out by making rough sketches? How many?

Victoria: I made two rough sketches with different compositions first to show you. After hearing your input I surveyed a few of my classmates and chose the sketch with more votes.

Katherine: Did you learn anything when you were creating the cover for Trouble’s Daughter?

Victoria: Artwise, I learned about lighting, color choice, and how to vary values as much as possible, because Kindle only displays black and white, which makes distinctions between colors obsolete. The illustration needed to look good in both color and black and white. I also learned about how to manage time between schoolwork and drawing the cover.

Katherine: What are your plans for the future?

Victoria: I hope to attend Rhode Island School of Design, which is known for being the best art school in the country. I visited the school during April 2012. I will probably major in either Illustration or Animation.

Katherine: What is your advice to other young artists?

Victoria: Practice all the time and learn the basics before trying to create your own style.

Victoria Yeh’s cover art for Keeping the Good Light, available on Kindle in 2014