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.

April 16, 2021 by Katherine Kirkpatrick

Serving as a Mentor for SCBWI

It’s my great honor to be a mentor for middle-grade and young-adult fiction by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Editors (SCBWI), Western Washington chapter, for the 2021-2022 season. Applications for the program from the SCBWI membership are accepted from now through July 30. The mentors and mentees will work with each other for a six-month period, beginning in September 2021 and ending in May 2022. For more information, learn more here .

SCBWI Western Washington will be publishing interviews of their mentors in their bulletin. My interview follows.

Why do you like mentoring?

When I was a young woman, I was lucky to be mentored by Madeleine L’Engle, author of the classic A Wrinkle in Time. She encouraged all her workshop students to succeed in our writing endeavors. She taught us “belief.” She set a tone to be supportive of each other. A writers’ group of seven women formed from the first workshop I took with Madeleine, and more groups evolved from other workshops. Soon we had a community. At that time, none of us had any books published. Dozens of books followed, including eight of my own. Thirty years later, we are still cheering each other on, now weekly on Zoom. It gives me pleasure to foster others with the same generosity of spirit that Madeleine offered.

Dear friend Sanna Stanley, our beloved mentor Madeleine L’Engle, and me.

What can a mentee expect from your mentorship?

My aim is to help my mentees discover and nurture their writing skills. We’ll discuss their goals for our six-month time together. We’ll set dates on calendars and decide together the best method of communication, hopefully cemented by occasionally meeting in person, depending on our locations and Covid restrictions. If the mentees have a workable idea or partial manuscript, we’ll brainstorm to help them decide about plot, structure, characters, point of view, and other fundamentals. I have handouts and exercises that will be helpful in creating synopses. We will discuss the plots of books and movies in the mentee’s genre and what principles and techniques the authors employed.

When the mentees have manuscripts ready and want feedback, I’ll make notes on the manuscripts and produce comprehensive “editorial letters” with constructive comments on improving the manuscripts. I’ve worked on staff for several children’s book publishers in New York and will provide a high level of professional analysis.

What are the best parts about being an author(-illustrator)?

I love doing research, whether it’s in the library sleuthing around in dusty archives, using old maps, searching online, or reading books and taking notes. Sometimes I take trips. Once I served as a volunteer crewmate on a schooner for a week. By far the most inspiring trip I took was to Egypt to research my future novel Golden Treasure. I flew over the Valley of the Kings in a hot-air balloon. For this same novel, I visited Highclere Castle in England and met the Countess of Carnarvon.

Researching my novel at Highclere Castle.

It’s exciting to receive a bound book in the mail for the first time. I was delighted to see my book The Snow Baby, which has a gorgeous cover and design.

What’s the writing/illustrating advice you give most often?

Never give up. Writing is a journey. Let your friends and mentors uplift you when you’re discouraged. Find a writers group, or start one, but make sure the members are supportive and affirming. Set small goals and accomplish them. Try not to expect too much of a rough draft. Don’t judge it harshly. Instead, let your book evolve.

What does being a successful published professional look like to you?

Success has meant different things to me over the years. It has thrilled me to receive starred reviews, to be published by Random House, to be invited to a fancy reception with famous authors in New York’s Rainbow Room during an American Library Association conference, to have a book optioned for film. But experiences like this have been few and fleeting.

On the set of the film trailer for *Redcoats and Petticoats*.

What gives me the greatest satisfaction is to celebrate milestones with friends and family. These pleasures are long lasting. My late mother used to host book events for me and invite up to a hundred people, including my former teachers. She encouraged invitees to stop by the bookstore or museum shop and purchase autographed copies, and continue on to her house for a gourmet meal.

What are you working on next?

My collaborator and I are working on a nonfiction book about the people of color, including her ancestors, in a community on Long Island in the 19^th century. I feel very galvanized by this project, to reveal the names of people long forgotten. And it feels so satisfying to know that there’s an audience that will truly appreciate this book.

September 19, 2016 by Katherine Kirkpatrick

Reflections on My Stepping Stones Lighthouse

I have always felt that City Island in the Bronx, within greater New York City, where I lived in my twenties and early thirties, possesses a certain magic. There’s a feeling, when listening to the symphony of halyards chiming against the masts of sailboats or the eerie sound of wind blowing through the rigging, that it’s possible to slip back in time one hundred years or more. And if you sail from the island in the dark of night toward a redbrick Victorian lighthouse, its green light flashing through the cold mist, you may see the eternal visage of a ghostly man peering through the glass windows of his tower. He watches over you to prevent your vessel from crashing on the jagged, partially submerged shoal of the “Stepping Stones.” Magic, indeed.

Not one but two working lighthouses flank the mile-and-a-half-long City Island. Stepping Stones, my favorite because of its picturesque architecture, was first illuminated on the evening of March 1, 1877, with an oil-fired mantle within a Fresnel lens. Every morning when I waited for the express bus that took me to my book publishing job in Manhattan, I gazed out over the water, a mile away, at Stepping Stones lighthouse. The sight of the lonely place never ceased to fascinate me. Like many people who enjoy lighthouses, I am drawn to the romantic notion of living in a house surrounded by water. From the vantage point where I often stood, near the terminus of City Island Avenue, Stepping Stones appears in Long Island Sound as a small, square building atop a round platform. The building has a handsome rectangular tower and mansard roof.

Delacorte Press cover by Kam Mak

Sometimes when City Island friends took me out on their sailboats or motorboats, we circled around the lighthouse. Then I could make out certain details such as the square balcony near the top of the tower, the bright green automated lantern, the tall windows (bricked-in to prevent vandalism), and the mount on which a large bell had once hung. Whenever I crossed the Throgs Neck Bridge to go to Long Island to visit my parents, I’d enjoy yet another view of the lighthouse, one from above. From that high, arching suspension bridge, the lighthouse resembles a tiny, antique doll house, surrounded by deep blue water on all sides.

Like many City Islanders, I came to regard Stepping Stones as “our” lighthouse (never mind that all maps and charts indicate that it belongs to Great Neck, Long Island). Eventually I wrote a novel set there. Called Keeping the Good Light and intended for a young adult readership, the novel takes place in 1903, during the heyday of City Island yacht building and sail making. My friend the late Skippy Lane, a retired captain of oil tankers, helped me research the book and provided many interesting anecdotes. The shipwreck incident in the book came directly from an experience Skippy had as a boy on City Island. Another plot choice, the idea of putting messages in bottles and casting them out to sea, came from Skippy’s pastime of releasing such messages. Sometimes he’d sign his friends’ names with their addresses as a joke.

Delacorte Press published Keeping the Good Light in the fall of 1995. The cover by Kam Mak shows my main character, sixteen-year-old Eliza, in a long vintage dress, seated in a rowboat (Skippy’s) with an accurate representation of Stepping Stones lighthouse in the background. Skippy quickly pointed out when he saw the cover image that anyone just sitting in a craft like that, hands crossed on her lap, not holding the oars, would quickly be blown back out to sea. Mary Cash, the book’s editor, replied, “She’s so pretty it doesn’t matter what she’s doing.”

Captain Fred (Skippy) Lane

Katherine Kirkpatrick poses in Skippy Lane’s rowboat

Sara (Sally) McPherson at The City Island Current, the island’s local newspaper, reproduced the book cover in its exact size—5-1/2 by 8-1/4 inches—on the front page in 1995. As a result of this phenomenal publicity, my book signing party at the City Island Nautical Museum, a former school building, was extremely well attended.

Writing Keeping the Good Light brought me, at least on City Island, the greatest celebrity I will probably ever enjoy. “She’s the one who wrote the book,” I’d hear people say. Occasionally, if I visit the island, someone will make the same remark even now. Always it is “the book,” although I’ve now published eight. For the Clam Diggers (those who grew up on the island) it obviously remains a matter of great importance that “the book” features “our lighthouse.” The late Bronx historian John McNamara told me he’d been reading the novel at JP’s Restaurant on the island and a passerby offered to buy his copy on the spot.

Those were fun times, times of sharing and community. For my thirtieth birthday party, my sister made a cake with a model of a lighthouse on top. The house where I rented a room, 150 Marine Street, a former telegraph station that contained a glass-paneled rectangular chamber reached by an upright ladder and trapdoor, filled to overflowing with visitors of all ages and backgrounds come to celebrate my birthday. Old, heavy-set Skippy, known to be a little rough around the edges, entertained my friends from Manhattan with his lively storytelling, replete with occasional swearwords.

Katherine Kirkpatrick signs copies of Keeping the Good Light

Skippy regarded the publication of Keeping the Good Light as a highlight of his later years. He called it “our book” and proudly gave an autographed copy to his friend and next-door neighbor on Horton Street, Oliver Sacks. To my surprise and delight, I received an autographed copy of one of his own books in return. On the title page of a British paperback edition of Awakenings, its pages now a bit yellowed, is inscribed:

For Katherine

(I loved your book!)

With best wishes,

Oliver Sacks

City Island

Xmas 1996

autograph by Oliver Sacks

Now, a quarter of a century after I first became acquainted with Stepping Stones lighthouse, I love the lighthouse just as passionately as I ever did. Perhaps even more, because my feelings about the place combine with a sense of remembrance and of longing for City Islanders I knew who are now dead. Others island friends have, like me, scattered around the country. We won’t ever live together on that mile-and-a-half-long island again. I also find myself reacting to further commercial development that has taken place and missing the way the island used to look. But whenever I visit the island or drive across the Throgs Neck Bridge, there is Stepping Stones lighthouse, rising as ever on a shoal in Long Island Sound. The lighthouse serves as a visual, tangible reminder to me of a time in my life that remains very dear to me. Not only that, but I have a special place in my heart for historically significant places.

Very recently, my personal chronicle involving Stepping Stones lighthouse has gained a new chapter. I have recently made a new friend through e-mail, Alice Kasten of the Great Neck Historical Society, who keeps me informed about her organization’s exciting new plans to restore Stepping Stones lighthouse. The town of North Hempstead, the Great Neck Park District, and the Great Neck Historical Society have joined in a public/private partnership, with assistance from the City Island Maritime Museum, to raise $4 million for the renovation. Already they’ve had some success with garnering grants from New York State and the National Park Service. I can hardly believe that this gargantuan, expensive venture is actually happening in this day and age of dwindling funds for worthy projects and causes.

Ravaged by salty seas and severe weather, in recent years Stepping Stones developed a hole in its roof and another hole in its foundation. The U.S. Coast Guard might well have demolished it and replaced it with a navigational beacon mounted on steel poles if not for the Great Neck Historical Society’s commitment to saving the building. Engineers who completed an underwater survey have now identified places where pilings for a dock will be put down. Once a dock exists and more funds become available, building materials can be delivered and the renovation can begin.

This past summer, the society has organized a number of tours for people to see the lighthouse from the outside. I can’t wait to go on one of the tours next summer. I’ve also decided it’s an apt time to put Keeping the Good Light back into print. A new Kindle version is available on Amazon.com, and a print-on-demand paperback edition will soon be in the works. I do not have the rights to use the Delacorte cover for new editions, so I commissioned a new one. (Note that the girl in the vessel is now actually rowing.) Victoria Yeh, the talented new cover artist, created the cover when she was only seventeen.

Half of the net proceeds from the new editions of Keeping the Good Light will go to the Great Neck Historical Society for the lighthouse renovation. I’m honored and grateful to help preserve this good lighthouse.

New Kindle cover by Victoria Yeh

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.

April 7, 2014 by Katherine Kirkpatrick

Boreal Ties: Part I

While I was writing Between Two Worlds, I returned again and again to the stunning photographs in a gorgeous book called Boreal Ties: Photographs and Two Diaries of the 1901 Peary Relief Expedition, edited by Kim Fairley Gillis and Silas Hibbard Ayer III. Its panoramic shots of the towering cliffs and massive ice floes of the Greenland Arctic set me in the mood to write. And best of all, the book’s informal shots of both Inuit and Westerners offered me a rare chance to view my main characters: Inuk girl Eqariusaq, also known as Billy Bah; Robert E. Peary’s wife, Josephine; and his daughter, Marie.

The photos and journals were created by two New York businessmen, Clarence Wyckoff and Louis Bement, who journeyed to the Arctic as what we would call today “adventure tourists.” Explorer Peary’s ship Windward, carrying among other passengers Peary’s wife and daughter, did not return to America as expected in the summer of 1900. So the following summer Peary’s financial backers in New York arranged for a relief party, journeying to the Arctic on the steamer Erik to investigate. Paying a fee of $500 each, Wyckoff, 25, one of Peary’s supporters and a manufacturer of typewriters, and a friend, Bement, 35, a salesman of hats and caps, joined the expedition.

Louis Bement, left, and Clarence Wyckoff, right. Copyright © Kim Fairley and Silas Hibbard Ayer III.

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, with the icebound Erik in Melville Bay, Greenland. Copyright © Kim Fairley and Silas Hibbard Ayer III.

The businessmen traveled with multiple cameras, the latest and best Eastman Kodak had to offer. Though not professional photographers, Wyckoff’s and Bement’s unique images far exceed Robert E. Peary’s own photographs both in technical and artistic qualities. While the adventure tourists enjoyed nearly three months of intense sunshine, Peary often took his tripod and old glass plate cameras out in typically poor Arctic weather.

Fortunately for Wyckoff and Bement, they weren’t in Peary’s employ, or else they wouldn’t have been permitted to have cameras. Always thinking of public relations and secretive about what he was up to, Peary kept tight control of all images taken on his expeditions. (He made a rare exception when he allowed Matthew Henson to publish a few photographs in his 1912 autobiography).

The businessmen endured maggots in their soup, hives, and head lice. Three weeks into the journey all the meat on ship went rotten and had to be thrown overboard. More than once, the Erik’s incompetent crew almost steered the ship into mountain-sized icebergs.

After the voyage, the friends pasted copies of each other’s prints into their scrapbooks; in some cases they annotated who took the photograph, and in other cases not. The Wyckoff photo labeled “Billy Bah, a girl of 16” offers a vivid portrayal of a young Inuk woman looking straight at the viewer. She seems pleased; it appears she feels appreciated by the photographer. There is reciprocity between them. It is a close-up portrait taken in a spirit of friendliness.

Billy Bah, age 16, by Clarence Wyckoff, 1901. Copyright © Kim Fairley and Silas Hibbard Ayer III.

This photo, more than any other, worked on my psyche and helped many images and facts coalesce as I created the main character in Between Two Worlds. And later, when the story was complete, illustrator Sam Weber used this same picture as reference to recreate Billy Bah’s face on my book jacket. He modeled the Windward, which appears in the background, after another image in the collection.

Historians are lucky to have Wyckoff and Bement’s rare and extraordinary record of their voyage, and as a novelist I absolutely cherish my copy of Boreal Ties.The businessmen were not only in the right place in the right time, they were paying attention. To take such photographs, they clearly put themselves on scene, front and central, entering into a landscape and into the lives of people they depicted.

This fundamentally is what making art is all about.

Keystone glass negative of explorer Robert E. Peary’s ship Windward (right) and his expedition’s relief ship Erik (left), 1901. Copyright © Kim Fairley and Silas Hibbard Ayer III.

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.

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

Katherine Kirkpatrick

Historical Fiction Author

Writing Process