Carolyn Marsden, award-winning author of fourteen middle grade and young adult novels -- twelve out, two on the way -- has opened a new chapter in her career. She has turned from creating stories about children of other cultures, often in countries outside the U.S., to write about and illustrate her own bizarre multi-cultural past, and how it led to her literary present. Here’s how she describes her latest book.
MEXICO, JUPITER, SUBMARINE: How I Became a Writer
Exploding volcanoes! Harrowing escapes! Ouija Boards and Gong Gong on Jupiter. UFOs, auras, and fairies. Jules Verne’s submarine, under the sea and on Mars. The Beatles as a Communist plot. And the way all of this led to my resplendent writing career.
As I began MEXICO, JUPITER, SUBMARINE, I tumbled into the unknown. With big pieces of paper, scraps of this and that, found objects, cheap paint, and glue, I set out to write and illustrate my odyssey. I loved the trial-and-error, the feeling of free fall. What I created made me laugh.
What made you w
Carolyn Marsden, award-winning author of fourteen middle grade and young adult novels, (twelve out, two on the way,) has opened a new chapter in her career. She has turned from creating stories about children of other cultures, often in countries outside the U.S., to write about – and illustrate – her own bizarre multi-cultural past and how it led to her literary present. Here’s how she describes her latest book.
MEXICO, JUPITER, SUBMARINE: How I Became a Writer
Exploding volcanoes! Harrowing escapes! Ouija Boards and Gong Gong on Jupiter. UFOs, auras, and fairies. Jules Verne’s submarine, under the sea and on Mars. The Beatles as a Communist plot. And the way all of this led to my resplendent writing career.
As I began MEXICO, JUPITER, SUBMARINE, I tumbled into the unknown. With big pieces of paper, scraps of this and that, found objects, cheap paint, and glue, I set out to write and illustrate my odyssey. I loved the trial-and-error, the feeling of free fall. What I created made me laugh.
What made you want to write a memoir?
As a writer I always wanted to somehow make use of my wild and crazy childhood. But whenever I tried straight-out writing about that early life, the writing came off as self conscious.
Then I saw a trailer for David Small’s graphic memoir, Stitches, and thought AHA! that’s the way to go. Right away the idea of doing an illustrated memoir clicked for me. For years I’ve loved playing around with collage and it was natural to combine my art and my writing.
How was this experience – writing and illustrating -- different from writing a novel?
Writing a novel is a very serious and ofte
The Teaching Authors are thrilled to present an interview with our dear friend and Guest Teaching Author Carolyn Marsden.
Carolyn grew up in Mexico City and Southern California. Although she wrote for adults for many years, she began to write for children after the birth of her daughters. She attended Vermont College and earned an MFA in Writing for Children. Her first book, The Gold-Threaded Dress, published by Candlewick, was a Booklist Top Ten Youth Novel of 2002. Her second novel, Silk Umbrellas, was a Texas Bluebonnet nominee and Booklist Top Ten Art Novel of 2003. Since then, Carolyn has published several more award-winning middle grade chapter books with Candlewick and Viking, almost all with multicultural themes. The Buddha’s Diamonds was a Southern California Booksellers Association finalist and a Booklist Top Ten Religion Novel of 2008. Her latest book, Sahwira: An African Friendship, is set in what is now Zimbabwe. Carolyn lives in La Jolla with her Thai husband and two half-Thai daughters. 
To celebrate Carolyn’s appearance on our blog, we're giving away an autographed copy of her newest book, Sahwira: An African Friendship. To enter the drawing, see the instructions at the end of this post. Welcome, Carolyn! How did you become a Teaching Author?In 1981, when I was living in Tucson, Arizona, mostly writing poetry for adults, I got a job as a Poet-in-Residence. For either a week or a month at a time, I visited urban and rural schools (K-12), including those on the Navajo and Pima reservations. Whenever I entered a classroom, I had about one minute to convince the kids that writing poetry could be fun. Following the lead of Kenneth Koch (Rose, Where Did You Get that Red?), I never used poetry written for children as my examples. I enjoyed seeing the children’s writing rise to new levels when I used poems by writers like Shakespeare or William Carlos Williams, or poems from other cultures. The students absorbed the rich language, rhythms, and subject matter. To my eternal delight, the kid at the back of the class, the one the teacher told me wouldn’t write anything, the one with the learning disability, invariably wrote the best poem.
What’s a common problem your students have, and how do you address it?
The most c
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This sounds fascinating - for kids and other writers. But isn't it sad that she's "not famous enough" for it to be in book form. Hopefully, Carolyn will prove them wrong.
Great experiment Gretchen and Carolyn. Good for you for venturing out. It would be great to hear a followup at some point.
Looking forward to checking it out.
Thank you for the responses! I would love to prove the publishers wrong and have this in book form! In the meanwhile, if you have an i-Phone or i-Pad, it looks very good digitally.
I bought it and loved reading it!