Interview with Middle Grade Author Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich is the author of the fantastic debut novel, 8th Grade Superzero. And I fell madly in love with Reggie’s story long before he had a book deal. Gbemi and I met in a novel writing class, and I got to see her book in its early incarnations-and it was way awesome even back then.
EDITH: You really tap into that awful middle school feeling of embarrassment and hopelessness. Reggie “Pukey” McKnight is infamous for losing his lunch in front of everyone on the first day of school, and he has to work hard to get people to see past his Pukey status.
Funny how something embarrassing like that can slay your confidence and come to define you. I think it’s so easy to feel like a loser-as someone who doesn’t matter. And this book is largely about Reggie coming to realize he can be an agent for change in the world.
I’m always curious about what other writers’ day-to-day looks like. Since we met in a writing class, can you tell us a little about your process? How do you get back to that middle school place in the midst of everyday life?
OLUGBEMISOLA: Heh, sometimes I feel like I never left! Those moments when I trip, or catch a glimpse of myself in a store window and I look *nothing* like the way I think I look in my head...Those episodes from my own childhood, both the mortifying and the confidence-boosting ones, stay with me. Maybe because I did keep a journal then, and even though I don't have those journals now, I'm a firm believer in the idea that writing something down embeds it into one's memory...I'm also lucky because my daughter's school building is elementary, middle, and high school students, and through my involvement in different programs and activities, I get to stay engaged with young people at that age.
EDITH: You do a great job showing us all the characters around Reggie. You’ve got great comedic relief with Joe C. and Ruthie is so strong and smart, and I’m always interested in books with well-developed secondary characters. I really believe these characters have been friends for a long time. How do you go about creating your secondary characters and making their relationships feel like true friendships?
OLUGBEMISOLA: Character is definitely my favorite part of the process. I spend a lot of time (too much) thinking about them, just 'hanging out' with them in my head. One of the most helpful things in that workshop with Kate Morgenroth (when we met!) was that she really pushed me to enjoy writing about Reggie's relationships with his friends and family, and letting the more 'plotty' stuff come later.
EDITH: As a follow up question to that: You mention on your website that you struggled with Joe C-which is so hard for me to believe because he’s so funny. What was the struggle (was it humor related?) and how did you overcome it?
OLUGBEMISOLA: I think that Joe C. started out as kind of a caricature in the very beginning, I had a 'type' in mind, and was using him as just a way to insert some satire, some sarcasm, etc. and he was flat. But when I really started exploring his backstory, and his friendship with Reggie (I have it all in mind through their adulthood!), his story blossomed for me.
EDITH: You do an amazing job with setting. This book *feels* so much like Brooklyn to me. You live there of course, but are there things you do to see your home in a new way? Things you do to make the setting come to life in your work?
OLUGBEMISOLA: Ha! You are really generous. Setting is probably the hardest for me. The only way that I can write it is to think in scenes. So I visualize just about every scene that I write, and 'record' the details that I see in my mind's eye. I walk a lot, and ride public transportation, and hold on to a lot of little details that I see, in case they'll work in a story later, too.
We moved a lot in my childhood, and as a teen, when I visited family and friends in this part of Brooklyn, I felt a sense of 'homecoming'. I could be who I was, there were other 'hybrids' like me; plenty of children of immigrants from the Caribbean and West Africa, people who had lived in different cities, people who spoke different languages...Over the years, I've spent a lot of time in NYC schools, and tried to capture their special sensibility for Superzero -- New York City public schools get a bad rap in a lot of ways, but they have a wonderful vibrancy, some with a diversity of race & culture that is increasingly rare in many U.S. communities...they're really beautiful, like the city itself.
EDITH: A lot of my blog readers are pre-published authors curious about the journey toward publication. Reggie has some inspirational teachers in his life like Dave the youth leader. Were there teachers you learned from or classes you found particularly useful? Writing conferences you would recommend?
OLUGBEMISOLA: That workshop with Kate was monumental for me, for the reasons that I've already mentioned, and because she (and all of you YaYaYas -- you'll have to explain that one) didn't let me get away with just writing 'cute'; I was pushed to write from the heart. I didn't get very much done in term of volume (I think I spent a lot of time rewriting the same scenes again and again), but that workshop was also sort of my re-entry into the 'writer' mindset. I had put Superzero away for years, and hadn't expected to do anything with it. I worked as a freelance writer for a long time, writing articles, grants, curricula, PR materials, whatever. But I couldn't get that yearning to write fiction for children out of my mind. I had started Superzero in a workshop with Paula Danziger, who became a good friend and was amazingly supportive and giving of herself. When she died, I was really compelled to finish that manuscript, no matter what. I wasn't so focused on publication, but decided that I owed to it myself and all of the people who encouraged me, like my mom (and I had just become a mother myself), to finish a book. Another workshop, with Madeleine L'Engle was a turning point; mostly because she chastised me one evening about the perils of perfectionism. "If you're going to be a perfectionist," she said, "you'll never get anything done!" That will always stay with me and was some of the best writing advice I've ever gotten. I had to let go of that illusion that 'perfectionism', in addition to being at all possible, was some sort of badge to wear with pride. It's an immobilizer.
EDITH: This is something I’m learning lately too. I read a great article in the February issue of the Romance Writer’s magazine by Hillary Retttig about the dangers of perfectionism. I loved the article so much, I made copies for the Yayayas. The Yayayas (also known as the ladybugs) are my critique group that grew from the class that Gbemi and I took with Kate Morgenroth (author of YA novels Echo and Jude). Of course, Gbemi is an honorary member. ;) Okay, back to the question about what workshops have inspired you.
OLUGBEMISOLA: I am always awed by the storytelling of Scripture. Reading is always a wonderful workshop for me, just any good books, in any genre; that is part of why I go back to my favorites again and again -- to see what good writers do, and to figure out how to get close, in my own way. The authors that I've already mentioned, Paula Danziger and Madeleine L'Engle...I've mentioned mostly 'children's authors' in other places, so here I'll point out some authors of fiction and nonfiction, short- and long form works, speeches and articles that I learn from and am inspired by: Susan Isaacs, Julia Alvarez, Zora Neale Hurston, Junot Diaz, Pete Seeger, C.S. Lewis, John Irving, Octavia Butler, Barack Obama, Langston Hughes, Isabel Allende, Kathleen Norris, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Buchi Emecheta, Chimamanda Adichie, Helen Oyeyemi, Sharon Flake, Amy Tan, Francisco X. Stork, Dai Sijie, Malcolm X, Anne Tyler, Sandra Tyler, Barbara Brown Taylor, Chinua Achebe, Grace Lin, Lenore Look, James Marshall, William Steig, Cyprian Ekwensi, Rita Williams-Garcia, A.A. Milne, Bill Russell, David Almond, Frank Cottrell Boyce. Also Mitali Perkins has inspired me for a long time. OK, I'll stop, because obviously this will never end!
Many of the 'craft' books, like The Rock That Is Higher: Story as Truth; Bird by Bird; Respect for Acting; The Creative Habit; On Writing; and Writing a Novel by John Braine...and others like Jeff Yamaguchi's 52 Projects; bell hooks' Talking Back; Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, Orson Scott Card's Characters and Viewpoint; Origins of Story; The Invisible Child; Sojourners; Yes; and Weavings magazines...Fred Rogers' eulogy...I'm also helped in my own writing by some texts that I've used to prepare workshops, by authors like Nancie Atwell, Lucy Calkins, Mary Pipher, and Katherine Bomer. More recently, books like How Fiction Works by James Wood. And then there is the whole other type of 'craft' book that helps me with my writing, books about needlework, knitting, paper arts, etc..
SCBWI conferences and workshops are always great for motivation and inspiration, especially the smaller regional ones. I haven't been to the annual in LA yet, but have always heard fantastic things. And I think that conferences in general are just great for the reminder that there are other people in a similar boat, struggling with or triumphing over the same issues of the writing life. I *highly* recommend my editor Cheryl Klein's website. She has a number of fantastic talks and outlines with which a writer could create her own master class. Her blog has even more. Darcy Pattison also has some fantastic articles, especially on revision. I first read about the 'shrunken manuscript' technique on her site, and that was very helpful when I was revising Superzero -- it helped me re-vision the manuscript and get out of some ruts.
EDITH: Ruthie is my favorite character, and you mentioned to me once that you were working on another book that features her? What can you tell us about Ruthie and what’s to come?
OLUGBEMISOLA: Thank you! I love Ruthie too. I'm not sure what's going to happen with the Ruthie book right now, but the premise is that it's a couple of years after Superzero takes place, and Ruthie is spending the summer in Jamaica, though not for the reason she'd planned to be there -- there's a love triangle, some hard truths about identity and homeland, some songwriting and entanglements with NGOs and the Peace Corps...and probably more. I'd hate to be all spoilery, and *I* don't even know the whole story yet -- Ruthie is full of surprises!
8th Grade Superzero (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2010) is now available in hardcover. Shop your local bookstore or click here to purchase from Indiebound.
EDITH: You really tap into that awful middle school feeling of embarrassment and hopelessness. Reggie “Pukey” McKnight is infamous for losing his lunch in front of everyone on the first day of school, and he has to work hard to get people to see past his Pukey status.
Funny how something embarrassing like that can slay your confidence and come to define you. I think it’s so easy to feel like a loser-as someone who doesn’t matter. And this book is largely about Reggie coming to realize he can be an agent for change in the world.
I’m always curious about what other writers’ day-to-day looks like. Since we met in a writing class, can you tell us a little about your process? How do you get back to that middle school place in the midst of everyday life?
OLUGBEMISOLA: Heh, sometimes I feel like I never left! Those moments when I trip, or catch a glimpse of myself in a store window and I look *nothing* like the way I think I look in my head...Those episodes from my own childhood, both the mortifying and the confidence-boosting ones, stay with me. Maybe because I did keep a journal then, and even though I don't have those journals now, I'm a firm believer in the idea that writing something down embeds it into one's memory...I'm also lucky because my daughter's school building is elementary, middle, and high school students, and through my involvement in different programs and activities, I get to stay engaged with young people at that age.
EDITH: You do a great job showing us all the characters around Reggie. You’ve got great comedic relief with Joe C. and Ruthie is so strong and smart, and I’m always interested in books with well-developed secondary characters. I really believe these characters have been friends for a long time. How do you go about creating your secondary characters and making their relationships feel like true friendships?
OLUGBEMISOLA: Character is definitely my favorite part of the process. I spend a lot of time (too much) thinking about them, just 'hanging out' with them in my head. One of the most helpful things in that workshop with Kate Morgenroth (when we met!) was that she really pushed me to enjoy writing about Reggie's relationships with his friends and family, and letting the more 'plotty' stuff come later.
EDITH: As a follow up question to that: You mention on your website that you struggled with Joe C-which is so hard for me to believe because he’s so funny. What was the struggle (was it humor related?) and how did you overcome it?
OLUGBEMISOLA: I think that Joe C. started out as kind of a caricature in the very beginning, I had a 'type' in mind, and was using him as just a way to insert some satire, some sarcasm, etc. and he was flat. But when I really started exploring his backstory, and his friendship with Reggie (I have it all in mind through their adulthood!), his story blossomed for me.
EDITH: You do an amazing job with setting. This book *feels* so much like Brooklyn to me. You live there of course, but are there things you do to see your home in a new way? Things you do to make the setting come to life in your work?
OLUGBEMISOLA: Ha! You are really generous. Setting is probably the hardest for me. The only way that I can write it is to think in scenes. So I visualize just about every scene that I write, and 'record' the details that I see in my mind's eye. I walk a lot, and ride public transportation, and hold on to a lot of little details that I see, in case they'll work in a story later, too.
We moved a lot in my childhood, and as a teen, when I visited family and friends in this part of Brooklyn, I felt a sense of 'homecoming'. I could be who I was, there were other 'hybrids' like me; plenty of children of immigrants from the Caribbean and West Africa, people who had lived in different cities, people who spoke different languages...Over the years, I've spent a lot of time in NYC schools, and tried to capture their special sensibility for Superzero -- New York City public schools get a bad rap in a lot of ways, but they have a wonderful vibrancy, some with a diversity of race & culture that is increasingly rare in many U.S. communities...they're really beautiful, like the city itself.
EDITH: A lot of my blog readers are pre-published authors curious about the journey toward publication. Reggie has some inspirational teachers in his life like Dave the youth leader. Were there teachers you learned from or classes you found particularly useful? Writing conferences you would recommend?
OLUGBEMISOLA: That workshop with Kate was monumental for me, for the reasons that I've already mentioned, and because she (and all of you YaYaYas -- you'll have to explain that one) didn't let me get away with just writing 'cute'; I was pushed to write from the heart. I didn't get very much done in term of volume (I think I spent a lot of time rewriting the same scenes again and again), but that workshop was also sort of my re-entry into the 'writer' mindset. I had put Superzero away for years, and hadn't expected to do anything with it. I worked as a freelance writer for a long time, writing articles, grants, curricula, PR materials, whatever. But I couldn't get that yearning to write fiction for children out of my mind. I had started Superzero in a workshop with Paula Danziger, who became a good friend and was amazingly supportive and giving of herself. When she died, I was really compelled to finish that manuscript, no matter what. I wasn't so focused on publication, but decided that I owed to it myself and all of the people who encouraged me, like my mom (and I had just become a mother myself), to finish a book. Another workshop, with Madeleine L'Engle was a turning point; mostly because she chastised me one evening about the perils of perfectionism. "If you're going to be a perfectionist," she said, "you'll never get anything done!" That will always stay with me and was some of the best writing advice I've ever gotten. I had to let go of that illusion that 'perfectionism', in addition to being at all possible, was some sort of badge to wear with pride. It's an immobilizer.
EDITH: This is something I’m learning lately too. I read a great article in the February issue of the Romance Writer’s magazine by Hillary Retttig about the dangers of perfectionism. I loved the article so much, I made copies for the Yayayas. The Yayayas (also known as the ladybugs) are my critique group that grew from the class that Gbemi and I took with Kate Morgenroth (author of YA novels Echo and Jude). Of course, Gbemi is an honorary member. ;) Okay, back to the question about what workshops have inspired you.
OLUGBEMISOLA: I am always awed by the storytelling of Scripture. Reading is always a wonderful workshop for me, just any good books, in any genre; that is part of why I go back to my favorites again and again -- to see what good writers do, and to figure out how to get close, in my own way. The authors that I've already mentioned, Paula Danziger and Madeleine L'Engle...I've mentioned mostly 'children's authors' in other places, so here I'll point out some authors of fiction and nonfiction, short- and long form works, speeches and articles that I learn from and am inspired by: Susan Isaacs, Julia Alvarez, Zora Neale Hurston, Junot Diaz, Pete Seeger, C.S. Lewis, John Irving, Octavia Butler, Barack Obama, Langston Hughes, Isabel Allende, Kathleen Norris, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Buchi Emecheta, Chimamanda Adichie, Helen Oyeyemi, Sharon Flake, Amy Tan, Francisco X. Stork, Dai Sijie, Malcolm X, Anne Tyler, Sandra Tyler, Barbara Brown Taylor, Chinua Achebe, Grace Lin, Lenore Look, James Marshall, William Steig, Cyprian Ekwensi, Rita Williams-Garcia, A.A. Milne, Bill Russell, David Almond, Frank Cottrell Boyce. Also Mitali Perkins has inspired me for a long time. OK, I'll stop, because obviously this will never end!
Many of the 'craft' books, like The Rock That Is Higher: Story as Truth; Bird by Bird; Respect for Acting; The Creative Habit; On Writing; and Writing a Novel by John Braine...and others like Jeff Yamaguchi's 52 Projects; bell hooks' Talking Back; Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, Orson Scott Card's Characters and Viewpoint; Origins of Story; The Invisible Child; Sojourners; Yes; and Weavings magazines...Fred Rogers' eulogy...I'm also helped in my own writing by some texts that I've used to prepare workshops, by authors like Nancie Atwell, Lucy Calkins, Mary Pipher, and Katherine Bomer. More recently, books like How Fiction Works by James Wood. And then there is the whole other type of 'craft' book that helps me with my writing, books about needlework, knitting, paper arts, etc..
SCBWI conferences and workshops are always great for motivation and inspiration, especially the smaller regional ones. I haven't been to the annual in LA yet, but have always heard fantastic things. And I think that conferences in general are just great for the reminder that there are other people in a similar boat, struggling with or triumphing over the same issues of the writing life. I *highly* recommend my editor Cheryl Klein's website. She has a number of fantastic talks and outlines with which a writer could create her own master class. Her blog has even more. Darcy Pattison also has some fantastic articles, especially on revision. I first read about the 'shrunken manuscript' technique on her site, and that was very helpful when I was revising Superzero -- it helped me re-vision the manuscript and get out of some ruts.
EDITH: Ruthie is my favorite character, and you mentioned to me once that you were working on another book that features her? What can you tell us about Ruthie and what’s to come?
OLUGBEMISOLA: Thank you! I love Ruthie too. I'm not sure what's going to happen with the Ruthie book right now, but the premise is that it's a couple of years after Superzero takes place, and Ruthie is spending the summer in Jamaica, though not for the reason she'd planned to be there -- there's a love triangle, some hard truths about identity and homeland, some songwriting and entanglements with NGOs and the Peace Corps...and probably more. I'd hate to be all spoilery, and *I* don't even know the whole story yet -- Ruthie is full of surprises!
8th Grade Superzero (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2010) is now available in hardcover. Shop your local bookstore or click here to purchase from Indiebound.