Laurie Halse Anderson: Mad Woman in the Forest

1. Laurie Halse Anderson:Mad Woman in the Forest Emily C. Molin molin@email.sc.edu Author Presentation, 757 Dr. Gavigan June 27th, 2012

2. “Books took me everywhere---ripping through time barriers, across cultures.” -Laurie Halse Anderson in Wendy Glenn’s Laurie Halse Anderson: Speaking in Tongues Laurie’s Parents and Early Childhood Laurie Halse Anderson (originally Laurie Beth Halse) was born October 23, 1961 in Potsdam, NY. She was the daughter of Frank A. Halse, Jr. and Joyce Holcombe Halse, and had one younger sister, Lisa. Anderson describes her early childhood as “idyllic”, and often references her father specifically as a major influence in her writing career. Frank Halse was from a long line of factory workers, and was expected to graduate high school and eventually run the local gas station. His life took a detour when he was drafted into the army at age 18. His stories of the horrors of opening concentration camps at Dachau, Germany are still vivid in Laurie’s mind and impacted her greatly. Anderson fondly remembers her father in the role that he would devote himself to until her adolescent years---that of a Methodist minister and eventually chaplain at Syracuse University. She saw her father as a storyteller, poet, and minister all wrapped into one, and has fond memories of sneaking downstairs after her bedtime to listen to his detailed stories of the local families and the latest news of the town. Her childhood home in Syracuse, NY, was a revolving door of college students from the university to whom her father ministered, and they became her friends and pseudo older siblings. Frank was a minister at a pivotal point in time in the United States, the late 1960’s and 1970’s. His belief in social justice and peace, as well as his work with the Civil Rights movement as part of his ministry, attracted these young students and subsequently molded Laurie’s beliefs and motivations. Laurie Halse Anderson’s mother, Joyce, was the daughter of a woodsman, who Anderson says could “move through the forest in absolute silence” and who taught Laurie how to “be still enough to see and hear the world around me.” Joyce, also a good listener, served as Laurie’s first audience and supported her love of books. Laurie loved making her mother laugh and entertaining her with her stories. Laurie was shy as a child, and struggled greatly with reading and spelling in school. She credits her second grade teacher with igniting her passion for writing by teaching the class how to write in Haiku. For Anderson, Haiku was a portal to writing and expressing her feelings, because the poetic form required only short words and thus helped relieve Anderson’s feelings of frustration with spelling. Anderson started writing at a very young age, using her father’s old typewriter to pen stories and letters that came to mind. She also became a voracious reader early on,citing the elementary school library as one of her favorite places as a child. Anderson would stay at school on the days that the librarians kept the library open late and absorb every book possible. She also recalls reading every single article in the World Book Encyclopedia that her parents purchased for her as a child.

3. Adolescence to Adulthood “I remember feeling tall and awkward.” -Laurie Halse Anderson on her teenage years in Laurie Halse Anderson: Speaking in Tongues A disagreement with the church about the direction of his ministry led Frank Halse to leave the ministry, and led the Halse family to leave Syracuse during Laurie Halse Anderson’s early teenage years. Laurie Halse Anderson as a teen. Anderson’s mother Joyce found various ways to support the family, and they moved into a small apartment in a town outside of Syracuse and away from her friends. Laurie felt like the poor girl in a rich community in high school and struggled to fit in. After moving into the apartment, Anderson met a boy, a high school senior, who also lived there. She stated in a 2009 biography that she was sexually assaulted by him at the age of 13. Anderson never told her parents. As a result of losing his job, her father fell into depression, and Anderson also battled with depression after this traumatic event in her early teenage years, adding to the life experiences that greatly influenced her writing. Anderson survived high school but did not particularly enjoy it. She was still interested in all kinds of books as a teen---except for the ones assigned for English class! She actually greatly disliked analyzing books in English class and challenged a teacher once on the existence of symbolism. If she was a teacher, she would have been a history teacher because this was the one class that she was passionate about during those tumultuous years of her life. After an experience abroad in Denmark her senior year, Laurie put herself through college. She graduated from Onondaga Community College in 1981 with an Associate in Arts degree and then from Georgetown University in 1984 with a Bachelor of Science in Languages and Linguistics. Laurie began her career as a reporter for newspapers and magazines, but soon after started writing children’s picture books and eventually young adult fiction and historical fiction.

4. Personal Details • Laurie Halse Anderson’s Life Motto • “Adapt and overcome. • Read or die. • It’s not a mistake if you learn from it.” • http://madwomanintheforest.com/laurie/ Laurie married Gregory H. Anderson in 1983, and had two daughters from this marriage: Stephanie and Meredith.Her daughter Meredith was 9 when she wrote Speak; she is now a middle school science teacher. Laurie divorced, but in 2005 she married her childhood sweetheart, Scot Larrabee. Scot isincredibly supportive of her work and actually built her a cottage where she could escape and write in the nearby woods of their home. She has two stepchildren, Jessica and Christian. Laurie’s hobbies are reading,history, and travel. She is also an avid runner and believes running helps her writing process by keeping her mentally and physically strong. She feels that she is blessed to be doing something she loves and hopes that her books bring some good into young people’s lives.

5. Interesting Facts About Laurie Halse Anderson “We have almost total control over how we react to the bad things that happen to us in life.” -Laurie Halse Anderson in her acceptance speech for the Margaret A. Edwards Award • Laurie struggled learning how to read as a child and had a speech impediment. • Her favorite place to read as a child was on top of an ornate tomb in a cemetery near her house. She says it was quiet in the graveyard, and did not frighten her.Time devoted to that favorite spot, along with many hours spent pretending and storytelling in the woods, led to her website and blog title “Mad Woman in the Forest”. • She considers the color orange a representation of her teenage years: SyracuseUniversity’s colors, the décor of the 60’s and 70’s, and the qualities it represents such as vibrant, intrusive, creative, loud. For Anderson, her adolescence was a time when her life went from yellow to red---when her father lost his job and fell into a depression. • Anderson spent her senior year abroad as an American Field Service exchange student in Denmark. She lived on a pig farm and learned to speak Danish.

6. A Few More… • All of Laurie Halse Anderson’s teen novels have been censored at some point because of sexual references or language. • Anderson admits she never matured emotionally past 15, and that is why she can write for and relate to young adults. • Laurie Halse Anderson has a YouTube Channel with reflective videos and advice for young writers: http://www.youtube.com/user/halseanderson • The stubbornness seen in all of her characters is the one trait that reflects her own personality. • Anderson read a chapter from Fever 1793 to her daughter’s 5th grade class and she decided to edit it after a girl passed out from hearing the gory details of yellow fever. • Her husband Scot Larrabee has known her since she was 3. Anderson posted a YouTube video of his loving creation of her writer’s cottage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxNkZzKmJl4

7. Writing Style “I just have such respect for teenagers, especially the teenagers right now. It’s so much harder than when we were growing up. But what I’m seeing is kids who are coming up with more tolerance, more respect for each other.” “I love teenagers because they are honest…they are raw and passionate. They think in black and white and are willing to go to extremes to defend their beliefs.” -Laurie Halse Anderson Laurie Halse Anderson says that she writes books for herself as much as she does for anyone else. Before Laurie starts a writing project, she thoroughly researches what she is going to write about. For example, before writing Wintergirls, a book about anorexia, she talked to a pediatrician and psychiatrist, read mountains of medical journals, and went to pro-anorexia websites to see opposing viewpoints on the disease. Writing for Anderson is “a process of gathering crumbs of information and stowing them all away and waiting for the voice to come.” In fact, she doesn’t read many young adult books because she is afraid the voices of those characters will get in her head. Anderson schedules time to write and read every day, even on the weekends and holidays. Her normal daily writing routine is as follows: she wakes up at 5 or 6 a.m., blogs for a short time, and then begins her daily task of either writing or researching, ignoring all distractions like the phone, the internet, email, or television (thanks in big part to her writer’s cottage). She often creates a playlist of music to go along with each book she writes for inspiration, and these are available on her website.If she is having writers block, she puts the project away for a while to get some distance and works on another project—which is very easy for her to do since she is often involved in multiple projects such as children’s books, historical fiction novels for young adults, and young adult fiction novels. Her biggest hurdle is managing all of the different facets of writing, and the time needed to cover each facet. Laurie Halse Anderson cares deeply about teenagers and focuses on addressing what they are going through and what they are interested in head-on. She therefore writes about hard-hitting, often unpleasant issues such as rape, slavery, war, and molestation. She uses a straightforward writing style with basic, simple sentences and everyday vernacular. Her historical fiction books generally have much more structure than her young adult fiction books. Anderson gives greatly detailed imagery and background information to help readers picture the setting or the characters.She often develops her characters and plot separately—the plot is more organized and planned out, while her characters evolve as she writes.

8. Speak “Speak, in addition to being a skillfully written novel, is a book that might ‘speak’ to teen readers and help them cope with problems such as dating violence divisive peer groups and cliques, and feelings of isolation and alienation from school.” “We can no longer draw a thick line between what students are doing after school hours and what we can talk about in school…While reading Speak, perhaps students will see a little of themselves in Melinda, or in her friends.” --Janet Alsup, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy Speak was released in 1999 and since then more than 1 million paperback copies and 80,000 hardbound copies have been sold. It was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award. Although it was written twenty years after Laurie Halse Anderson graduated from high school, she captures the emotions and frustrations of freshman year, cliques, parental expectations, and teen peer pressure. For part of her “research” she listened to conversations between her adolescent daughter and her friends as she drove the carpool to and from school. Anderson took note that our children often do not feel as if anyone is listening to them, and she gave them all a voice via Melinda Sordino. Melinda is a freshman in high school who has been ostracized by her peers after she called the police on a summer party. As the novel progresses, readers begin to piece together that Melinda did this because she was sexually assaulted in the nearby woods by senior Andy Evans. Speak was seen as daring and bold when it was first realized, because of the serious subject matter it dealt with, and therefore faced many challenges by school administration and community members where it was being read and studied by teenagers. After over a decade on the shelves, Speak is now becoming a standard in curriculums. Anderson told about her own experience being sexually assaulted at age 13 by a high school senior in a biography of her life and books by Wendy Glenn. Laurie says, “ I was so young and sexually naïve, I wasn't even sure what was happening to me.” As in many of her books, Anderson draws on her own real-life experiences to eloquently speak to teenagers and encourage them to speak up for themselves. At the ten-year anniversary of Speak, she wrote a poem, Listen, that was created with the abundance of reactions to the book that she had received from teens and adult fans alike.

9. Catalyst Laurie Halse Anderson wrote Catalyst, released in 2002, as a vision of two paths her own life could have taken but didn’t—Kate’s path to academic success and athletic accolades if her family had not gone through the struggle it did; and Teri’s path as the outcast girl she could have become if she had made the wrong decisions, gone down the wrong road. In Catalyst, Laurie Halse Anderson draws from her childhood as the daughter of a Methodist minister, to create the character Kate Malone. Kate, the daughter of the widowed local preacher, is an academic overachiever, caught up in her own world of college acceptance letters and class rankings. She continues on this self-obsessed journey until her life collides with the school’s black sheep, Teri Lynch. Teri is foul-mouthed, unkempt, and unconcerned about academic success—Kate’s opposite in every way. The intersection of their lives and the crisis that ensues drives the plot of Catalyst. Anderson did not relate at all to Kate’s passion for science while writing Catalyst---it was well out of her comfort zone considering she passed with a 68 in Algebra and a 66 in Geometry, Trigonometry, and Chemistry in high school.Interestingly, Anderson has stated that of her many characters throughout the years, Teri Lynch is a character she would like to write about again and relates to her struggles. Catalyst, along with Speak and Fever1793 earned Anderson the Margaret A. Edwards award in 2009.

10. Awards for Laurie Halse Anderson “Laurie Halse Anderson masterfully gives voice to teen characters undergoing transformations in their lives through their honesty and perseverance while finding the courage to be true to themselves.” -David Mowery, 2009 Edwards Committee Chair • ALA Quick Pick for Young Adults • ALAN Award 2008 • Best Book for Young Adults (ALA) (Fever 1793, Catalyst, Speak) • Booklist Editor’s Choice (Speak) • Edgar Allan Poe Award finalist • International Reading Association’s Teacher’s Choice Award • International Reading Association’s Young Adults Choices List (Speak, Twisted) • Michael L. PrintzHonor Book 2000 (Speak) • Margaret A. Edwards Award 2009 (Catalyst, Fever 1793,Speak) • National Book Award finalist (Speak, Chains) • New York Public Library’s Best Books for the Teen Age (Catalyst, Fever 1793) • New York Times Bestseller List • SCBWI Golden Kite Award • School Library Journal Best Book of the Year (Speak) • School Library Month 2010 Spokesperson for American Association of School Librarians • Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction 2009 (Chains) • YALSA Popular Paperback for Young Adults

11. References Alsup, J. (2003). Politicizing young adult literature: reading Anderson's Speak as a critical text: critical texts confront difficult topics. Students need to read, write, and talk about these relevant issues. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 47(2), 158-166. Retrieved from http://encore.greenvillelibrary.org:50080/gale-go/ps/i.do?action=interpret&id=GALE%7CA109025679&v=2.1&u=greenvillecl&it=r& p=GRCM&sw=w&authCount=1 Anderson, L. H. (2012). Mad woman in the forest. Retrieved from http://madwomanintheforest.com/ Anderson, L. H. (2012). Mad woman in the forest. [Web log post].Retrieved from http://halseanderson.livejournal.com/ Anderson, L. H. (2009). Margaret A. Edwards speech. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/yalsa/sites/ala.org.yalsa/files/content/booklistsawards/booka wards/margaretaedwards/edwardsspeech.pdf Glenn, W.J. (2009). Laurie Halse Anderson: Speaking in Tongues. Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature, Vol. 36. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield/Scarecrow Press. Horning, K. T. (2009, June). Fearless: date rape. Anorexia. Slavery. Is there a topic that Laurie Halse Anderson won't tackle? School Library Journal, 55(6), 30-33. Retrieved from http://encore.greenvillelibrary.org:50080/gale- go/ps/i.do?action=interpret&id=GALE%7CA201711734&v=2.1&u=greenvillecl&it=r& p=GRCM&sw=w&authCount=1

12. References Laurie Halse Anderson. (2002). In Something About the Author (Vol 132, pp. 1-4). Detroit: Gale. Laurie Halse Anderson. (2008). In Something About the Author (Vol 186, pp. 3-7). Detroit: Gale. Laurie Halse Anderson. (2003). In Beacham’s Guide to Literature for Young Adults (Vol 16, pp. 165-172). Detroit: Gale. Penguin Young Readers. (2009, February 19). Laurie Halse Anderson- Speak poem. Retrieved June 23, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic1c_MaAMOI Prince, J. (2008). Writing from the heart: an interview with Laurie Halse Anderson. Teacher Librarian, 36(2), 70-72. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA191954450&v=2.1&u=greenvillecl &it=r&p=GRCM&sw=w Reading Rockets. (2012). A video interview with Laurie Halse Anderson. Retrieved fromhttp://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/anderson/

13. Image References • Picture of Anderson’s poem Listen from Brie’s YAL Portfolio blog (http://briesyalportfolio.blogspot.com/p/great-yal-books.html) • Picture of Anderson signing Forge for students from the website of Carol H. Rasco, CEO of Reading Is Fundamental(http://www.rascofromrif.org/?tag=laurie-halse-anderson) • Picture of Catalyst cover from the Weird Quiet Girl in the Corner blog (http://weirdquietgirl.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/book-review-catalyst-by-laurie-halse-anderson/) • Picture of Edwards Award Seal from the YALSA Margaret A. Edwards Award website (http://www.ala.org/yalsa/edwards) • Picture of forest for background from Power Animals Unleashed website (http://www.poweranimalsunleashed.com/enchantedforest.htm) • Picture of Laurie finishing marathon from Laurie Halse Anderson’s blog (http://halseanderson.livejournal.com) • Picture of Laurie Halse Anderson and her husband Scot from Laurie Halse Anderson’s blog (http://halseanderson.livejournal.com/185288.html • Picture of Laurie Halse Anderson as a toddler from Laurie Halse Anderson’s website (http://madwomanintheforest.com/laurie/) • Picture of Laurie Halse Anderson at a Forge book signing from the website of Carol H. Rasco, CEO of Reading Is Fundamental (http://www.rascofromrif.org/?tag=laurie-halse-anderson) • Picture of Laurie Halse Anderson from the Kansas Association of School Librarians website (http://kasl.typepad.com/kasl/2009/02/margaret-a-edwards-award-2009.html) • Picture of Laurie Halse Anderson from the Off the Shelf blog (http://off-the-shelf1.blogspot.com/2012/02/little-about-laurie-halse-anderson.html)

14. Image References • Picture of Laurie Halse Anderson from the YALSA Margaret A. Edwards Award website (http://www.ala.org/news/mediapresscenter/presskits/youthmediaawards/margaretedwardsaward) • Picture of Laurie Halse Anderson on bed as a teenager from Laurie Halse Anderson’s website (http://madwomanintheforest.com/laurie/) • Picture of Laurie Halse Anderson’s father, Frank, from Frank Halse Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/frank.halse.1) • Picture of Laurie Halse Anderson’s mother, Joyce, from Laurie Halse Anderson’s blog (http://halseanderson.livejournal.com/) • Picture of Laurie Halse Anderson’s writer’s cottage from the Teaching Books blog (http://forum.teachingbooks.net/?p=3438) • Picture of Margaret A. Edwards from The Author Corner website (http://www.carr.org/mae/trust.html) • Picture of poster signed by students from the website of Carol H. Rasco, CEO of Reading Is Fundamental (http://www.rascofromrif.org/?tag=laurie-halse-anderson) • Picture of Speak cover from the Dina Runs blog (http://dinaruns.com/2012/03/book-review-speak-by-laurie-halse-anderson.html) • Picture of Speak film poster from the Dina Runs blog (http://dinaruns.com/2012/03/book-review-speak-by-laurie-halse-anderson.html) • Picture of updated Catalyst cover from Laurie Halse Anderson’s blog http://halseanderson.livejournal.com/