Shelley Pearsall Interview Part One

Today's guest is author Shelley Pearsall.

Born in Ohio, Shelley Pearsall has enjoyed writing and history since childhood. Her first novel, Trouble Don't Last, was published in 2002. It received the 2003 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction among other honors. Her second novel, Crooked River, was named a Junior Library Guild selection in 2005. Shelley's newest novel, All of the Above, will be released this September by Little, Brown & Co.

Before writing Trouble Don't Last, Shelley Pearsall was a public school teacher and a museum historian. In her spare time, she wrote historical scripts and short stories for Cleveland-area museums. In 1996, she was the Playwright in Residence for Cleveland's Bicentennial celebration, and, in 1999, she received an Ohio Arts Fellowship in Writing.

Welcome to Pastimes, Shelley!

Thank you for inviting me to be part of the Past Times
blog!

Tell us about your road to publication.

Winding…with many side trips and points when I didn’t
know what the road was preparing me to do! From
childhood through college, I wrote a lot -- poems,
short stories, one-act plays, feature articles --
basically, just getting practice with putting words on
paper. After college, I did a variety of “real” jobs
and side jobs -- storytelling, classroom teaching,
historical performances, freelance writing, museum
work, research, etc. Although I didn’t see how it all
connected at the time, now I can definitely connect
the dots and see how those experiences provided the
background to be a historical fiction author for young
readers. To quote Oprah, “luck is preparation meeting
a moment of opportunity” -- I was lucky to have my
first book accepted for publication just two months
after completing it -- but it took a lot of
preparation to get to the point of writing it in the
first place.

Why did you choose to write historical fiction?

I’ve loved history since childhood. As a kid, I used
to recreate Little House on the Prairie scenes in our
backyard -- that’s how much of a fan I was! Over the
years, I’ve worked in a number of historical jobs and
settings -- places where you get to see “the flies on
the pies” as I like to say, and those experiences gave
me a lot of fodder for historical writing. However,
I’m also the kind of person who likes to add a bit of
drama, imagination, and “life” to history -- so I
think that’s why I went the fiction writing route,
instead of non-fiction.

What is unique about young adult novels as opposed to writing for adults?

Writing for middle grade/young adult readers is
wonderful. I often hear from my readers how much
particular stories mean to them, and I don’t think you
get that kind of feedback from an adult audience. I
think authors also have to find where their own voices
“fit” -- do you have an “adult” voice as a writer? A
child’s voice? A teen voice? I remember being very
inspired to write and read during those late
elementary/early teen years, and so perhaps that’s why
I later returned to write for that age group…

Why did you choose to write about runaway slaves
in Trouble Don’t Last? What kind of research did you
conduct?

Readers are often surprised that a white woman who
grew up in Ohio in the 1970’s would write a novel from
the viewpoint of two runaway slaves in 1859. However,
I have always been fascinated by stories of journeys
and explorers, and the Underground Railroad seemed to
be an amazing (and challenging) journey to research.
I am very particular about using primary sources for
my work, so most of the events, vocabulary, and
details in the book came directly from primary sources
-- letters, runaway reward ads, diaries, accounts
written by runaways and guides, slave narratives,
historical interviews of former slaves -- are just a
few examples of sources I used. It was very tedious
work. For instance, I have several research pages
just filled with 19th century vocabulary I collected
from primary sources. I love to hear kids repeating
some of the historical phrases from the story when I
visit schools -- phrases like “no use singing
spirituals to a dead mule” or “quiet as a country
graveyard.”

Come back tomorrow for part two of the interview with Shelley. We'll hear about her other novels and her school visits! Don't forget to post a comment this week for the chance to win Shelley's Crooked River.