Author

“How Literature Saved My Life”

              When I left home for the first time, I met a boy.

              Many stories begin that way.

At college I met a boy who was smart and charming and handsome and interested in me. As we dated, every conversation became an exploration—we left our own known worlds and set off together into a new landscape, awestruck by the ideas we encountered.

I loved him.

But there were many things about college to love, and many conversations to be had. Most conversations—even the fleeting ones—were like journeys into the unknown. I found little discoveries everywhere.

My boyfriend told me that he wanted all of my conversations to be with him. He didn’t like it when I spoke to other men. He told me that my attitude was flirtations and my behavior “inappropriate.”

I considered his words. The first instinct of most young women in our culture is to blame ourselves rather than question others. I wondered if the excitement I was feeling over others’ ideas could be confused with sexual desire. I knew that sex was not my desired goal, but might others see things differently?

At the time I was navigating my new romance, I was taking a class on Shakespeare and reading Othello.

Othello is, arguably, the most poetic and majestic character to walk across the Shakespearean stage—which means he’s the most majestic and poetic character to walk across any stage. To be fair, he was majestic and poetic until he wasn’t—until he was rendered inarticulate and helpless by jealousy.

In Othello, the process and nature of jealousy are laid bare. I read that play and watched the exact moment that jealousy took hold of Othello. In 3.3, Othello looks at himself and says:

Haply for I am black,
And have not those soft parts of conversation
That chamberers have; or for I am declined
Into the vale of years—yet that’s not much—
She’s gone. I am abused, and my relief
Must be to loathe her.

As long as Othello saw himself positively, he loved Desdemona. As soon as he doubted himself, he doubted her. Othello’s jealousy did not stem from Desdemona’s actions but from his own insecurities. When Desdemona explains to Emilia that she never gave Othello a cause to distrust her, Emilia replies:

But jealous souls will not be answered so.
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they’re jealous.

After reading that play, I broke up with that boy. On my own for the first time, without the proximity of parents or the guidance of friends, I had no one to turn to for counsel. It was Shakespeare who saved me. I felt like his genius reached out over four-hundred years of literary history and snatched me from a potentially abusive relationship.

Thank you, Shakespeare.

In Dani Argyle Takes on the Universe, my protagonist is also on her own. She’s not away from home, but her father is missing in action, her mother is missing in grief, and, because she is overweight, she has few friends. When Dani’s boyfriend begins to be controlling, Dani only has literature to guide her.

From Othello, Dani learns about the nature of jealousy. From The Inferno, she learns about the nature of weakness, violence, and fraud—conditions that exist, not only in hell, but also in high school.

From The Odyssey, she learns that suffering can bring wisdom and that it is possible to lose oneself in grief.

It is true that a story once saved me and that stories guided the protagonist in my novel, but these are not individual cases.

Stories save us all.

As Joan Didion explains:

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children into the sea. The naked woman on the ledge outside the window on the sixteenth floor is a victim of accidie, or the naked woman is an exhibitionist, and it would be “interesting” to know which…. We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely… by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

We see stories everywhere. As humans, we can’t help it. Our actual existence might be made up of “disparate images” and a “shifting phantasmagoria,” but, just as nature abhors a vacuum, so does the human mind abhor chaos, and stories are the primary cure for chaos.

Because of story, we see beginning, middle, end. Because of story, we see cause and effect. Because of story, we see change over time. Because of story, there is more than chaos: I was that. I am this. I will be something else.

Aristotle asserted that man is an animal who thinks. Nietzsche that man is an animal that laughs. Mark Twain explained that man is the only animal that blushes—or has a need to.

I would argue that man is an animal who tells stories.

Stories are not superfluous. They are the primary unit we have for communicating meaning. Beware of that man. Things are not as they seem. Suffering saddens us, but it also strengthens.

But stories are not only the primary unit we have for communicating meaning: they are the primary unit we have for creating meaning. We all narrate our own story. We are each our own protagonist. Research reveals that we are more likely to be mentally and physically healthy when we see ourselves as the protagonist of our own story rather than the victim of someone else’s. Because of our ability to tell our own story, we experience agency, and our lives are more clearly understood.

Man is an animal who tells stories. About the world. About others. About ourselves.

Our students’ lives will be richer when full of stories: stories they hear, stories they read, stories they tell, and stories that they—as their own protagonist—journey through.

We enrich our students when we give them story. May their stories be diverse and full of wonder.

Published March 31st, 2025

About the Book: Dani feels like she’s fighting the world. Her peers do not accept her because she is overweight; her school is ill-equipped to handle an astute girl with ADHD, and the popular girls hate her for attracting the attention of the mysterious student from Japan. When everything about her life makes her feel confined and powerless, her only goal becomes dropping out of the institution that makes her feel stupid. But when Dani discovers that a psychic has been gutting her mother’s finances, she finally has an adversary worth fighting . . . if only she can control her emotions long enough—and trust her new romance deeply enough—to out-con a con artist.

This book includes discussion questions for class, small group, and individual reflection

About the Author: Vivian Jewell studied English Literature at The University of Virginia where she graduated with high distinction and studied Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Oxford. Her poetry has appeared in The Virginia Literary Review, The Kindred Spirit, and The English Journal. She is a teacher with Fairfax County Schools. This is her first novel.  

Thank you, Vivian, for sharing your journey and reminding us about the importance of stories!

“Building Writer’s Voice”

On a television show I watched once, there was a curvy girl trying out for a ballet program. She got cut almost immediately. Her ballet teacher gave her a wig and told her to audition under another name. She quickly got cut again. Her ballet teacher sent her in under a third name. Someone who was watching said, “This is madness. They saw her, and she got cut.” The ballet teacher said, “They didn’t see her. She’s auditioning with all these skinny girls and they see that she has the biggest thighs and the biggest hips and they cut her. They aren’t actually seeing her. Eventually, she’ll go in with a group of girls and someone else will have big thighs, then they will see her.”

This statement blew my mind. How many times have we been rejected from an opportunity, not based on merit but on some external bias beyond our control? And how many times have we taken that judgment to be a ruling on our talent (or lack thereof) rather than a prejudice against our being. Students fight this battle of perception on a daily basis. I have a colleague who is working in an afterschool program. There are two boys in the program who are constantly getting in trouble together. One of them, however, has a behavior plan and goals that the adults in his life are monitoring. The other boy has nothing. She asked, “Why doesn’t this boy have a plan too?” The head of the program said, “Because we don’t care about him.” He laughed when he said it, but it was true. Two troublemakers, but one was seen as redeemable and one was not. We internalize the judgments that are made on us—but we have no idea what biases may be at play when people are reacting to us. That was really all the ballet teacher in the TV show was looking for. She wasn’t pushing to have her student selected, she was pushing to have the biases stripped away so her student could be seen. Isn’t that what we are all looking for?

As humans we all need relationships in which we are authentically seen, valued and appreciated, but being seen can be a really tricky proposition. For the main character in my YA novel Tempest, being seen is dangerous. Born with the power to control the wind, Veronique grows up knowing that there are threats to her life and her freedom. To keep her safe, her grandmother insists that she hide, but a life of hiding is limiting—and safety based on hiding can quickly become a trap. Over the course of the novel, Veronique learns how to face the forces that are hunting her—and she learns how to face herself and fully embrace her power.

The dangers of being seen may not be life-threatening for all of us, but very early in our lives, we learn how closely judgment is tied to visibility. Being seen means opening ourselves to being criticized. For the entire first half of my career, being seen was an intensely uncomfortable sensation. I didn’t like sharing pictures of myself or personal information about myself. And, the idea of sharing my work—my raw, unpolished, initial drafts—was excruciating. I remember years ago when a magazine editor asked me to submit an article. I told her I didn’t know where to begin. She told me to write a draft off the top of my head and send it to her unedited. I looked at her like she was crazy. She said, “I know sharing your work at such a raw stage feels strange, but I think the first draft holds power.” It was painful for me to even consider turning over a first draft of anything. With MASSIVE reluctance, I shared my first draft with her. The process unfolded just as the editor said it would. She gave me some guidance and I completed the piece.

Fast-forward 12 years. An editor asked me for an essay. I was willing but busy. I sat down and banged out a draft in two hours. I sent it to her without reading it over even once. “I need to edit this piece,” I wrote, “but please review it and let me know if this is what you’re looking for.” I trusted that she could see the essence of the essay in the draft, she could read the bones and I could fill in the flesh later. She reviewed it and affirmed that it was exactly what she was looking for. She gave me a deadline to turn in edits. I made some tweaks and the work was done.

The difference between these two experiences was about a decade of writing. When I was less developed as a writer, I was more rigid and more controlling about my work. Now, I’m happy to hear critique and insight. I welcome new suggestions and perspectives. And I don’t mind sending out an underdeveloped draft for feedback. I believe it is because more experience = more confidence. More confidence = less need for every single thing I write to be perfect.

The biggest thing artists need as they are developing their voices, as well as when they are maturing to deeper and deeper levels of mastery, is the willingness to follow their ideas. So often, the need for perfection stops people from bringing their ideas to life. Willingness and acceptance are the biggest barriers to developing skill and identity as a writer. The only way to grow is to make mistakes, to write clumsily, and to discover the potholes of storytelling. When we are willing to be imperfect, we learn the rhythm of writing more quickly. We must also accept that all writers have both gifts and challenges. No matter how much mastery we gain, we are constantly called to both acknowledge our imperfections AND validate our writing

But how do we get there? If seasoned writing requires time and space, and for so many evolving writers, just staring at the blank page sparks vulnerability and the intense desire to hide, what do we do? Evolving writers need frequent, low-stakes practices that build fluidity and confidence into their writing. It’s a huge gift to offer people—both grown-ups and students alike—the space to play freely and explore creatively. In his excellent Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, Stephen Nachmanovitch draws on Buddhist philosophy to talk about the tendency of humans to compare ourselves to others. Nachmanovitch defines the “fear of ghosts” as our habit of measuring ourselves against the talents and directives of our “teachers, authorities, parents or the great masters.” That’s why writing assignments that are not graded, that are short, and that are frequent can give growing writers a little bit of breathing room.

When guiding developing writers, it’s important to remember that for so many people, writing just feels like setting themselves up to be judged. When we share our writing, negative marks can validate self-criticism and strengthen our certainty that our writing voice is faulty and our efforts are useless. If the only focus in writing is the right way to structure a sentence or a paragraph or a paper or a story, we lose our own personal relationship to writing. We rob ourselves of the ability to personally connect to the work and discover our own reasons for writing. The academic side of writing is essential, but without valuing the uniqueness of our voices, we can end up frozen and afraid to write. Finding value in our own writing style is essential— it’s not just about healthy esteem, it is literally the key to forward motion. We all need to learn about topic sentences and paragraphs, but we also need support and guidance to celebrate our authorial voice, just as it is.

Published June 24th, 2025 by Qull Tree Books

About the Book: In this lyrical and epic contemporary novel with magical fantasy elements, a girl must learn to master her powers over the wind before a sinister secret organization finds her. Perfect for fans of Legendborn,  A Song Below Water, and Vespertine.

After Veronique’s parents died, her grandmother raised her on a farm in rural Louisiana. For sixteen years, it’s just been Veronique, MawMaw, and an ocean of trees. That’s because Veronique has a secret—one MawMaw has warned her she must always keep safe.

Veronique has the power to control the wind.

But when MawMaw falls ill, Veronique is forced to move to New Orleans to live with family she never knew she had. New Orleans is a far cry from her old quiet life, but Veronique finally gets her chance for a normal life—one with school, friends, and even love. But when her new life threatens her ability to control her powers, she quickly learns that the world is bigger and more dangerous than she’d ever imagined. Veronique must uncover what MawMaw was trying to protect her from before it’s too late.

About the Author: K. Ibura is a writer and visual artist from New Orleans, Louisiana. The middle child of five, she grew up in a city full of music and culture, a neighborhood full of oak trees and mosquitoes, and a home full of art and activism. She has written two short story collections for adults: Ancient, Ancient—winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Literary Award—and When the World Wounds. Her debut novel and first book for young people, When the World Turned Upside Down, was published in February 2022. Find her online at kiburabooks.com.

Thank you, K, for this thought-provoking and inspiring post!

“Finding Inspiration in Video Games”

“Inspiration” is a very popular word within the writing world. The question “where do you get your inspiration?” is easily the most commonly asked question any writer or author will receive. I think inspiration is different for every author. For me, much of my inspiration comes not from books or movies, but from video games. I’ve been a huge gamer ever since I was a kid playing Super Mario bros. on my Nintendo. And over time, as consoles have gotten even better and game graphics have evolved to movie-like quality, I continue to be immersed in the stories, characters, and worlds of certain games. The phrase “video games will rot your brain” sounds very hollow to me, as all the elements of a good story can be found within a video game world. You become engrossed in these stories and characters because you are the one controlling them. You are the one going through all their hardships, trials and challenges right alongside them. You journey with them, fight with them, discover with them and, in some cases, find love with them.

And if a video game can break your heart or make you feel intense joy because of something that happened to the characters, then it has achieved full emersion, something that all authors should strive for in their own books. I remember the games that did this to me. A few special titles, where I was not okay at one point in the game. Even today, Final Fantasy X will never fail to make me tear up at its heartbreaking conclusion. When I first played it, I sobbed like a baby after the credits rolled. But you can’t just watch the finale of FFX and get it; you have had to have gone through everything with the characters to understand the significance of what was sacrificed at the end. Watching just the end is like flipping to the last page of a book to see what happens. You have to experience the entire story to understand.  In a similiar vein, the ending of Dragon Age: Origins had me smiling and feeling all was right with the world, because the two characters you had been rooting for the entire game finally (if you made certain choices) got their happy ending. (There is also a tragic, “ultimate noble sacrifice ending” as well, which I appreciate just as much, but for this purpose we’ll go with the happy ending.)

So, video games have played a huge part in me becoming a writer. Which brings us to FATELESS, a tale about theives, assassins, curses, and ancient gods, set against the backdrop of a harsh desert world. Think Dune and The Mummy vibes. And while both of these stories did play a small part in creating the world of FATELESS, I owe the largest inspiration to a video game series called Assassin’s Creed.

I think what I loved most about Assassin’s Creed was the world. Throughout the whole series, you are given this massive open world to explore, journey through, and live in. The world feels alive; from bustling city streets to sprawling rooftops to temples that seem to touch the sky, you could move through this world and feel like you were a part of it. I also loved the assassins—their Order, their code (“We work in the dark to serve the light”), even their clothing: the distinguishable red and white outfits that subtly changed throughout the series but still stayed true to the original.  The plot was complex and mind-bending, especially in the earlier games, but it was the world and the characters themselves that fascinated me.  Their individual stories kept me playing, kept me immersed, long after I would have gotten bored of endless repetitive missions where I had to assassinate yet another nameless captain of an outpost.  Whether it was Ezio’s desperation to save his family, Kenway’s journey of self-discovery and redemption, or the ill-fated love between an assassin and their sworn enemy (a templar), the stories presented in Assassin’s Creed are as old as time. And they played a huge part in shaping the world of FATELESS and its characters, especially the two main protagonists, Sparrow and Raithe. One is a thief, the other an assassin. Their stories and fates become entwined with each other’s, as they race to stop the rising of an awakened god that will destroy their world. And, just like the characters in Assassin’s Creed, they are individual souls trying to stand against a far greater darkness.

I could wax poetic about the virtues of video games for hours, but I will end this post with this. For me, gaming has been a huge part of my life, and has definitely shaped me as a writer. So, the next time you hear the phrase “video games will rot your brain,” remember that at least one book might not ever have been written, were it not for the hours spent sitting in front of a screen, playing a video game series about assassins.

Published July 15, 2025 by HarperCollins

About the Book: Deep in the forgotten city of the Deathless Kings, an ancient relic of untold power waits—for one bold enough to steal it.

When seventeen-year-old Sparrow joined the Thieves Guild she made a vow of binding loyalty to their cause. So when a mission comes along from The Circle, a group of mysterious, dangerous beings who control the Thieves Guild from the shadows, Sparrow is determined to cement her place in the guild.

What ensues is a death-defying adventure that has Sparrow and her band of thieves venturing into the heart of the forgotten city of the Deathless King. The fate of Sparrow, her companions, and Raithe, the enigmatic yet alluring assassin Sparrow is forced to join forces with during their quest, all hang in the balance as they find themselves battling ancient forces within the tombs and facing the unwavering hold of fate.

Perfect for fans of Alexandra Bracken and Sabaa Tahir, this new fantasy trilogy from New York Times bestselling author Julie Kagawa will sweep readers into a bold and exciting new world, where a twisted game of destiny has far-reaching consequences.

About the Author: Julie Kagawa is the New York Times, USA TODAY and internationally bestselling author of The Iron Fey, Blood of Eden, The Talon Saga and the Shadow of the Fox series. Born in Sacramento, she has been a bookseller and an animal trainer and enjoys reading, painting, playing in her garden and training in martial arts. She lives in Kentucky with her husband and a plethora of pets. Visit her at www.juliekagawa.com.

Thank you, Julie, for showing how inspiration comes from anywhere someone finds passion!