Diana Wynne Jones almost made me miss my flight.

I was so entirely inside FIRE AND HEMLOCK that it was only the final boarding call that managed to penetrate my consciousness.

Are you surprised that I was reading it for the first time? Me, too. But somehow I grew up without discovering her work, and somehow, although I heard many times how amazing a writer she is, was, is — somehow I’d only read THE TOUGH GUIDE TO FANTASYLAND, which, while excellent, is a different sort of project altogether.

I need to tell you that these days it’s hard for me to fall into books. It’s hard to repress a reverse-engineering, how’d-they-do-that style of reading after I’ve spent years honing my ability to pay that kind of attention.

But FIRE AND HEMLOCK felt simultaneously unpredictable and inevitable; like I wasn’t reading, I was dreaming. When I heard that boarding call I was angry, like anyone would be if you woke them up from a dream. And it was the wonderful kind of dream where you feel like you’re learning important things about life and yourself and the world. Not directly, not by someone telling you flat out This is how things are, but by swimming through experiences like a deep-sea diver.

FIRE AND HEMLOCK tells you, slantwise, how to be a writer:

Things seemed to make themselves up, once you got going.

You mustn’t ask it to bits.

What they mean by ‘iron nerve’ is the same as a thick skin.

You have to learn not to notice how silly you feel.

FIRE AND HEMLOCK is also about memory.

Polly gets her memories back.

Until she does, though, and until she understands what she needs to do, she feels a frantic sense of loss.

I’ve felt that loss again and again the past several years, as I’ve watched both my parents’ memories fail, knowing there’s nothing I can do to restore them. The plane I was waiting to board was going to take me home after a stint of that watching.

You could say that I needed an escape, and FIRE AND HEMLOCK provided it. But like a dream, it was singular and strange and deeply familiar at once. And even though the book seemed to be about other people, Diana Wynne Jones’ skill made me feel like it was for me.

How do we keep our memories? The ultimate answer, of course, is that we can’t. As I was writing this, I found out my childhood home was up for sale. My room,  that was pink and then, when I was a little older, cream, with the maps of Narnia and Middle-Earth and that one poster with the violin and the rose, and the other one with the bicycle, and the bookshelves, and the window that faced the street that made me love the sounds of cars driving by and the shapes their headlights made on the wall — this is what it looks like now:

I won’t be in that room again. But writing about it makes it, somehow, present, even though now all the time I spent in it almost feels like a dream.

It’s exactly that space, between memory and dream, that FIRE AND HEMLOCK occupies, and why it’s so perfectly a book about stories as well as everything else it is. And I haven’t even talked about the ballads, or the books Polly reads, or the stories the characters tell each other.

I’m sorry that I’ll never meet Diana Wynne Jones. But I’m extremely grateful that I can know her, through FIRE AND HEMLOCK and the other books I have yet to read, and reread.

Tonight I went to see April Henry talk about her latest books at Powell’s. Yes, that’s books, plural — Girl, Stolen; The Night She Disappeared, and Eyes of Justice. I am in awe not just of how quickly she can write, but how frequently she thinks of gripping plot ideas — including the premise for her new series, that I can’t tell you about, but of which I am, full disclosure, totally jealous.

At any point, April is usually dividing her attention between six different books; writing two, editing two, promoting two. She writes both teens and adult books, but says there’s no difference in her approach except that the teen titles are shorter. Someone asked if she worries about keeping up to date with today’s teens. She does do some research, but  ”Teens in my books are usually running for their lives, not thinking about their prom dates.”

If April is doing an event in your town, you should totally go. You should also ask a question, because when you do, she will throw you chocolate.

• Making oatmeal with a lot of stuff in it. Tips: toast the pecans before you chop them. Use frozen blueberries when fresh ones are out of season. Frozen banana works too, and is actually great with the toasted pecan. Do not stint on the cinnamon.
• Working on my works in progress  in longhand, to see if the different feel of pen on paper will make my brain go different places than it does with fingers on keyboard while grimacing at glaring screen.
• Reading A Different Shade of Blue: how women changed the face of police work, by Adam Eisenberg. Specifically, it’s about the history of women in the Seattle Police Department. Really interesting perspectives on the changing role of female cops and the discrimination they’ve dealt with over the years, sometimes compounded and complicated by prejudice based on their ethnic & cultural backgrounds and/or sexuality.
• Listening to The Modern Scholar: The Second Oldest Profession, Part 1: A World History of Espionage by Jeffrey Burds. A line I liked, on the complexity of managing/handling spies: “Rare indeed is the field agent who is a mere executor of his master’s will.”
• Pondering how not to be a clever writer.

 Her mind was groping after something that eluded her experience, a something that was shadowy and menacing and yet in some way congenial; a something that lurked in waste places, that was hinted at by the sound of water gurgling through deep channels and by the voices of birds of ill-omen. Loneliness, dreariness, aptness for arousing a sense of fear, a kind of ungodly hallowedness—these were the things that called her thoughts away from the comfortable fireside.

Because the premise of this book is that this very brilliant small child, Salome Jensen, is taken from her home by the man who came to fix the water heater, and she accepts her new life without struggle or question, and in fact with great aplomb and sophistication, and the fact that her circumstances fall into the realm of the surreal detracts not in the least from the acute perceptiveness with which Bradfield evokes the way she interacts with the world. Here is a long quote from one of the pages with the turned-down corners (p. 43, for those of you following along at home) — Salome, Sal for short, is at this time in the narrative living in a laundromat:

For the first time in her life, Sal didn’t have to go looking for people, or leave them behind when they grew frivolous. Instead, people were always coming towards her and walking past as if she didn’t register, hefting lumpy pillow-cases packed with soiled linens like shabby Santas, or bearing big wicker baskets overflowing with cottony fabrics, and sloshing around primary-colored tubs of detergent and bleach. They nattered into their cell phones about personal issues or where they put the mayonnaise or when they’d catch the next bus, or peered into the USA Today crossword, or ate packaged meals from fast food restaurants laid out in their laps like road atlases. Meanwhile their anonymous children — wild, half-formed, useless, and deeply inappropriate for every worldly condition — constantly banged things for attention, or stained their faces with purple juice-like substances. They hid under chairs and benches and watched each other like wolves watching mice. But none of them possessed the intensity of wolves, or would know what to do with a mouse if they caught one.

It is that juxtaposition of utterly implausible situation with absolutely real and resonant detail that completely captures my attention and affection. If that sentence reminds you of other books I would love to know about them.

This time Mr. Gibson was juxtaposed with a taxidermically-themed art exhibit, which made it appear among other things that a bear was enthusiastic and amused and a deer was pensively, almost sternly contemplating his words. This photo, which I did not take, gives you a bit of an idea of the effect:

One thing I always find slightly disconcerting at readings, and which was definitely in evidence at this one: people who follow along in the copies of the book from which the author is reading. To make sure the author isn’t deviating from the printed text? Because you like to look at words on a page while hearing them pronounced by the person who decided to put them in that particular order? If you do this, I would love to know your reasons.

I enjoyed the reading itself — selections from his essay collection, Distrust That Particular Flavor — but his answers to audience questions were especially good. Gibson is eloquent and funny even in his casual speech — although I suppose you could argue that any public speaking is by its nature not casual. But his nonchalant delivery makes his smart and well-turned phrases feel more off-the-cuff than they perhaps are, and the effect is extremely pleasant.

So mostly what I did was scribble quotes, or near-quotes.

About influences:

“Being human, you tell people you like who you think it’ll sound cool if you say you like.”

“As writers, how we learn what is good is from everything we read — a personal microculture of literature.”

“Someone setting out to write sf who has only ever read sf is at a certain disadvantage.”

I can’t remember what question this next bit was in response to — I think someone asked if he considered himself a watcher? (Were they thinking of Juvenal? Or Alan Moore?)

“…a watcher in the sense of an anthropologist without any of the discipline…also a flâneur, walking about pointlessly in large cities…”

Someone asked if the Blue Ant books were meant to remind us that we’re living in someone else’s future:

“I write novels to find questions, not because I know the answers…the only conscious purpose of the Blue Ant books was that I realized after All Tomorrow’s Parties that the yardstick I used for measuring cognitive dissonance on the page as opposed to the world outside was an eighties yardstick. So I wrote Pattern Recognition to update the yardstick.”

“Google Streetview changed how my imagination worked — you could spend the rest of your life describing a single block — inadequately.”

I wanted to ask him what he thinks about the way search tools are increasingly being designed to bring us the Internet they think we want, but I did not get a chance. Next time, Mr. Gibson.

SR: Your bio says you learned to fly at 18. What got you excited about flying in the first place, and how did you go about learning to do it? 

CM: I learned to fly as part of my first degree, which is in Aviation Management. My stepfather was a pilot & he really wanted me to fly and I graduated in 1986 when Top Gun was the biggest movie in the world and flying seemed like a good idea to me, (and a way to meet boys) so I obtained my private pilot license as two elective courses my freshman year.

SR: When you worked for the Company, did you ever want to be one of the pilots?

CM: The reason I never tried to fly professionally is that it was not easy for me. I was a competent pilot but “behind” the airplane. That’s not a problem when things are going fine but if you are in trouble you need to be ahead of the airplane; you need to be anticipating what will happen next. I think knowing how to fly is essential for people in the aviation field (it has helped me in countless ways) but I never wanted to do it professionally; I know my limits.

SR: I was really struck by the way you shift the voice from a collective “We” to an “I” to a more neutral journalistic tone in different sections of the book. How did you decide on this approach to the narrative?

CM: I wish I could say the shift in voice was easy but it’s actually something I worked on a lot and my agent and editor helped me with. The journalistic sections were easiest as I really was conducting standard historical research when I wrote those passages but it was harder to maintain balance between “we” and “I” in the narrative. At first I was too much a part of the story and then I was too little. Finding the balance was something I worked on until the end; this was where the writing really got tough.

SR: I wondered a lot as I read about gender dynamics in the Company. It seemed like the pilots were almost entirely male — were there women in other departments, or were you more or less on your own? How did you make a place for yourself in the organizational culture? (I’ve been the one-girl-among-the-guys at various times in my life and I’m always curious about how other women negotiate it.)

CM: There were other women in the office (accounting mostly) but we made up only about 10% of the employees. There was one female pilot at the Company; I knew of less than a dozen who flew statewide while I was there. (The reason I made all the pilots at the Company males in the book was to protect her – a female pronoun would have made it obvious who I was writing about.)

I never was belittled because I was female and I made the best friends of my life at the Company but I did have to get tougher, both physically and mentally. I loaded airplanes to gain respect from the cargo guys, I stood up to more than one jerk (mostly passengers) who was threatening and I learned to be assertive. The biggest thing was being willing to work – to get out on the ramp and deal with the mail and talk to the mechanics and sort the baggage and on and on.

It’s a job where everyone had to work hard; in the past women in my position had claimed they couldn’t do some of the work because they were girls. I wanted to be respected on every level so I did the work and showed that it didn’t matter if you were a girl. That’s a big part of why I was so successful.

SR: I also wondered about the Bosses and the Owners. When you were in the process of writing this book, did you try to interview any of them? (Or did you even want to?)

CM: Part of why I referred to the owners and bosses by such general names is because they are basically the same at every small airline in Alaska. They all do the same thing, say the same thing and cause the same problems. I wanted them to be interchangeable (much as the “company” stands in for all airlines up there as well.) I didn’t talk to the specific ones from the Company when writing the book though – I already know what they think and I’m sure their version of events will never be the same as mine. (Some things never change!)

SR: And of course, the ever-popular question: What are you working on now?

CM: You know, I’m working on several different things right now because I’m still a bit overwhelmed by what I have to do to help market MAP. I’m just not up to a big project right now. (I don’t have the organizational time for it mostly.) I’m primarily working on two essays – one about Jack Kerouac and my French Canadian family and one about the mystery surrounding my great grandfather’s grave on my NYC Irish side. I am sure that the next big project will be another combination of history and memoir – it’s what I seem to be best at writing.

SR: Thanks so much, Colleen — I’m looking forward to whatever’s next from you!

New Kids grew out of an article Hauser wrote for the New York Times in 2008, “This Strange Thing Called Prom,” about how students at the International High School — many of whom had no idea what a prom was or why they might want to attend — planned one. You’ll find out more about the prom in the book. You’ll also learn more of the individual stories of several students — how they arrived at the school, what their lives are like outside it, how the school staff supports them, and the limits of that support.

School stories in YA often take place in particularly privileged settings — fancy boarding schools in contemporary realistic (for some) novels, equally fancy schools of magic in fantasy. I’d like to see more stories set in schools like the International High School.

First I went to see Emily Warn and Ursula Le Guin, both reading poems. Warn read several, then Le Guin read one long magnificent one called “The Conference;” a conference, it turned out, of gods.

I loved Warn’s evocation of the mind as an off-kilter wobbly gyroscope with flimsy wiring and dull mirrors.

I asked a question during the Q & A, and I was vaguely taken aback by my own intensity as I asked it. Le Guin had spoken about discovering A.E. Housman at thirteen, which was, she said, a good time to discover him because “you got the big gloom that tasted so good at thirteen;” and Warn had talked about poets that she’d read in high school, without analyzing them, without any training in literary theory. I demanded to know how they read now without taking the work apart analytically. (I find it harder and harder to fall into books without trying to reverse-engineer or otherwise deconstruct them.)

Warn said that you had to find work you love, and also work that you can’t even try to imitate. Le Guin said that she’d never been trained to read critically, and that she’d studied Romance languages in college instead of majoring in English precisely because she wanted to avoid being told how to read.

Also, Le Guin’s mention of A.E. Housman made Warn recommend A.E. Stalling. Based on “A Lament For The Dead Pets Of Our Childhood,” I will definitely seek out more from her.

Also also: this short interview with Le Guin, about Portland literary culture among other things, is worth reading, too.

During his first year in Mexico City, even the air seems hostile: “My throat feels like a cat pissed in it and my head feels like it’s spent four hours listening to the same Daddy Yankee song on full volume, on loop.”

So what brought Hernandez to the Distrito Federal, and what’s kept him there? He explains early in the book:

“Mexico’s history, like any nation’s history, is not a tale of black and white, but a parade of gray. The Conquest, the Colonial period, the Inquisition, Independence, the Reformation, the Porfirian period, the Revolution, the era of modernization and authoritarian rule under the Institutional Revolutionary Party — all markers in a story of multiplying layers, where mestizaje is not only a state of ethnic mixing but of historical mixing as well. From a young age, figuring out where I fit into that story became my objective.”

Hernandez has been doing a lot of interviews about the book. I particularly recommend this one with DJ Rupture on WFMU, a conversation punctuated by music.

He was kind enough to answer a question from me, too.

SR: What struck me most in reading D&D was how you had to be simultaneously a participant and observer in order to access the scenes you were writing about. Were there times when you wished for a bit more journalistic distance? And, conversely, were there times when you wanted to lose yourself completely in an experience without thinking about how you might write about it? I’m just generally interested in your take on the relationship between journalist and subjects and how it can shift depending on what you’re covering.

DH: I definitely sometimes wanted more distance and definitely sometimes wish I had total freedom in an experience.

Sometimes with a source a relationship is formed. Sometimes I find myself suddenly involved in someone’s personal life. On the other hand, sometimes you’re having so much fun, or watching something so illegal or inappropriate for a family audience, you wish you didn’t have to document. That’s usually when I draw the line. This is too good for the page. Why share it all? I love editing and shaving anyway. Less is more.

Some stuff is just yours and not the readers’. Something else totally belongs to the reader and not you and you have to be responsible with it.

My one rule is to always keep in mind that your subject, the person or place you’re writing about, will one day read and consider what you wrote. Or should. I always try to keep that in mind. Will this person feel they were treated unfairly by the end of reading this? If so, I’m doing something wrong.