ASIDE: So, you won this [Newbery] Award, this magnificent award - congratulations. I am going to ask the obvious question: how has this changed your writing career? It dramatically changed it I would suspect.

LINDA SUE PARK: Let's see. I have been told it has completely changed my career. One of the very interesting things about the Newbery is that it has a greater impact on sales than any other literary award. Very strange. More than the Pulitzer. More than the Nobel. The Newbery keeps a book in print. And this is because the major market blitz in most cases is the school and library market. So, all school libraries and public libraries all over the country have two or three copies of every Newbery book. That is a lot of libraries. And when the books wear out, they get replaced. So you will find far more old Newberys still in print than you will old Nobel Prize winners and so forth.

ASIDE: Have you found the book appearing more in curriculum-type reading lists now?

PARK: It's too early for that. The award was given in January, and curricula are done a year or two ahead of time. I expect that sort of thing to happen - all these poor kids forced to read Shard. (laugh) But I mean, when you think about what you'd like to do as a writer, and you imagine the best case scenario--well, wouldn't it be great if you could make some money off your work, and then it would live on after you're gone. What could be better than that?

In terms of my daily life, it has changed really dramatically from what I was doing before. I used to sit in front of my computer for three or four or five hours and write or pretend to write, and since that phone call - January 21 - I've done almost none of that. So that is kind of disconcerting. I have had to do some writing, but it's mostly been speeches and talks and presentations. I was in the middle of a project when I got the phone call, and I think I've opened the file twice and kind of looked at it just so that I don't forget the story. And I've learned from past winners that this is standard. Richard Peck, who won last year, says the Newbery costs you a book. Other winners have told me you cannot write during the Newbery year. Mostly I think because the Newbery usually goes to a novel, and most novel writers have to have an extended period, you know - you have to have a week or two to get your head into the story again and then a week or two to do some really bad writing and then four or five weeks when you might get something going. And you never have a stretch of time like that during a Newbery year.

ASIDE: I remember you mentioning in the past that you would go to schools and the big competition when you talked with various students was Harry Potter. Is Harry still making an appearance?

PARK: Oh yes, yes. It's a great way to connect with the kids. They often ask me what my favorite books are, and I say it's impossible for me to pick a favorite one, but I tell them I have read all the Harry Potters and I like Number Three the best, and it's a good way to make a connection.

ASIDE: Let's talk about your new book for a bit, When My Name Was Keoko. Has the Newbery Award had any impact on that?

PARK: Yes.

ASIDE: It's a different book for you.

PARK: Yes, very different. Actually, it's been interesting. Some people will say, "Oh, another Korean historical from Linda Sue Park." But one interviewer a couple of days ago said, "Wow, this book is really different." - which was my feeling when I was writing it. Things like, from the technique side I was using first person for the first time.

ASIDE: It's a departure from myth for starters. It's very 'hard' as compared to, say, Seesaw Girl.

PARK: Right, exactly, and older and longer. The wonderful thing about it is that when somebody wins the Newbery, there can be a lot of anxiety about the next book, the writing of it and the responsibility and so forth. And that book was completely finished. My part of it was done probably in late fall of 2001 because it was scheduled for a spring, 2002 release date. So, the writing part of the book after the Newbery I didn't have to worry about at all. And that was a big relief. The print run was up - I think it doubled - after the Newbery announcement. And the response has been very good, which has been a tremendous relief. Some reviewers think it's better than the Newbery book.

ASIDE: What were the differences in writing the Keoko book as compared to A Single Shard or Seesaw Girl?

PARK: It's different every time. Shard was a once in a lifetime 'muse' experience. You know, the muse came down and sat on my shoulder and the book wrote - well, writing is never easy, but I'd say if any of my books were easy to write, it was Shard. It came out pages and pages at a time. I sat down to write Keoko, and I had a terrible time. I had maybe six drafts written only from Sun-hee's point of view. I had the start of one draft written from Tae-yul's point of view. It wasn't until maybe draft fifteen that the idea for two narrators finally came - that became the structure for the book. Then I couldn't get their voices right. It was a nightmare. Shard probably took around eight months to write, although it was in my head for a lot longer than that, but Keoko took around two and a half years, and I think all together, I had thirty-seven drafts. So, it was a much more difficult book to write, and it was a much more difficult book to research because if you look up 12th century Korea in the library, you've got only a few books that mention it. And you can read them all. Whereas, if you look up World War II, you get thousands of titles.

ASIDE: That alone [World War II], my impression anyway, makes it a different Linda Sue Park book from the others. It doesn't get any more concrete than that. But I still notice the influence of - I'm going to say "poetry" for the lack of a better word - this crisp image and language that have been a through-line in everything you've written. There's the one line at the start of Keoko that absolutely blew me away: "Ears don't close the way eyes do." Just stunning. When you're writing, do you think about the poetry aspect?

PARK: A couple of things there. Poetry was what I wrote for most of my young life, and I think it was just tremendous training. I dabbled in fiction through college and so forth, but I always thought of myself as writing poetry more than writing fiction. Children's books and poetry have a nice merging point which is no fat - you can't write a lazy line or a line with too many words. You have to keep things moving in a children's story. Adult novels, especially contemporary ones, which I find myself getting impatient with, the story might stop for pages while we're in somebody's head, hearing what they're thinking or reading what they're thinking or description or back-story - you can't do this in a children's book. You will lose your reader. In children's books, the story is king, and you have to keep it moving. And that means extra stuff gets mercilessly slashed, both in terms of the story and the sentence. Everything I try to do, I try to make it as clean as I possibly can. You don't need a word, it goes out. And I think that may have been easier in many respects for me because of the years I wrote poetry. Fiction writers talk about how hard it is to cut their work, and how usually when a novel gets edited, it's a lot of cutting. I have never had that problem. I get asked to add, and I think that's a better problem to have.

ASIDE: What about characterization in a children's novel as compared to say a contemporary adult novel. You know, you have your main character that has to arc from one point to another. You're saying story is key, but what about characterization - is there a difference?

PARK: Yes. In the end, what we think is not important. When we're in the world, what we do is important. You can say or write or read something in somebody's head or in your head forever and it doesn't have any effect. What is in your head, as long as it's in your head, doesn't mean anything. Okay, so then you're thinking something, or you're feeling something about something - what do you do about it? And that's where it comes out into the world. Among other people, in the community, in society, it's what you do that counts. Somebody like King or Gandhi can have all the wonderful thoughts they want, it doesn't do anything, it doesn't mean, you know, jack. So, for a children's book, characterization comes out in what a person does. You don't have pages where a person is examining what a person is thinking. You may have a line or two that says what the character is thinking, and then he does something. He responds to whatever is happening, or he does something that moves the story along. So, in terms of a personal philosophy of how I feel about the world, I think that our current age will come to be known as the age of when we had our heads stuck up our heads way too much. And it's a post-Freudian thing, and what we think can be very interesting, and it is helpful often to learn of people's motivations and so forth and so on, but in the end, it's what people do that counts. And in a story, it's what happens that counts. I try always to show a character's personality, to develop character, not through what they're thinking, but through what they do.

ASIDE: Was it a conscious decision to write children's books?

PARK: When I sat down to write what turned out to be my first novel for children, I did not know what it was going to be. I had this story in my head, I started writing it, and I thought maybe it would be a picture book, but I wasn't sure -

ASIDE: How do you get - I mean, where do the pictures come into play? Is that after you write the story?

PARK: That's the publisher's decision. That has nothing to do with me.

—but then, Seesaw Girl got longer. And then I thought: well, maybe this is a short story for the adult market, and I kept writing it, and it got too long for a short story. When I finished, I realized, "Oh, I've written a novel for young people, that's what this is." If you're writing for children, certain genres require you to make writing decisions with your audience in mind. For example, if you're writing an easy reader, something along the lines of Cat in the Hat, you have to consider vocabulary choice. But, ironically, when you're doing a picture book or a novel, you don't have to think about those things, or at least I don't. You just write the story. I have had only one occasion when the editor said, "You've got several big words in this sentence, can you get rid of one or two of them to make the sentence flow?" With Kite Fighters, I did sit down to write a book for young people because the way Seesaw was marketed, they put this beautiful picture of a girl on the cover, and it was called Seesaw Girl, and it was clearly a girl book. And I wanted to write a boy book. So that was a conscious decision. With Shard, I did not know what I was writing when I started out. It was going to be about pottery. Maybe this would be an adult thing. I mean, I don't know how many kids will be into pottery. It isn't until a good way into a project that I start thinking, "Well, this might be 'this.'"

ASIDE: What I find fascinating in what you're saying is that it seems you are trying to write an adult book, but it always winds up, somehow, a children's book.

PARK: Yeah, that could be correct, although the opposite has happened with the current project. I was trying to write a YA [Young Adult]  novel. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in young adult literature right now. I was trying to write a young adult historical. I did maybe half-dozen drafts, or I should say half-dozen starts, although all together it's been about a hundred thousand words I've thrown away - I couldn't find my way into the story. And I finally sent a draft, about sixty pages that I was pleased with, to the editor at my children's house, and asked do you think this could be YA? And she looked at it, she said it was wonderful and she really liked it and there was no way it was YA. So that is turning into what might be - if I ever finish it - an adult novel. And I feel really lucky that way. I feel really fortunate. I mean, the award has changed perception in a lot of people's minds and has given me the label of being a children's author, but I don't feel like that.

ASIDE: Are you worried about that label at all?

PARK: Not really. I mean, I worry about it on one level in the respect that there is, to me, an inexplicable lack of respect in the general literary world for children's writing. There's this perception that because we write for younger people, we're really not serious and so forth and so on, when I think there's nothing harder to write than a great picture book. But, there are all kinds of ways around that. I mean, if I do finish this adult thing, I could publish it under a pseudonym. I feel fortunate that when I sit down, I feel like a storyteller. I don't feel like a writer for either any particular age group or market.

ASIDE: Are we ever going to see a book of poetry from you? Obviously, with the children's writing out there, I don't think many people know you as a poet.

PARK: I do have a book of poetry coming out. It's for young people, a collection sijo, and two of the other picture books that are coming out were written in rhyme. So, the poetry never dies. I do think that like novels, writing really good poetry requires a sustained effort. A single poem might not, but to get into, you know, poetry mode in your head means that, at least for me, I would need to spend several months - which I did in between Kite Fighters and Shard. That's when I got to know places like The Alsop Review, when I was in an extended period of writing and reading poetry, and if I have any good poems, they were written during that stretch.

ASIDE: What qualifies for you - I mean, this is the cliché question of a lifetime - what writers, what writers do you keep coming back to time and time again? Who are you reading these days, who do you keep going back to?

PARK: You mean poets?

ASIDE: Poets or prose.

PARK: Let's see. Prose writing: I am a complete whore. I read everything. Obviously I read a lot of young people's books. I read novels for adults, I read non-fiction - I love really good non-fiction because it tells a true story. I read food books, travel books, I just read all over the place. I consider myself a reader more than a writer. If you put a gun to my head and told me I had to pick one or the other for the rest of my life, I'm sure it would be reading - no question there. I'm more of a 'title' reader than an 'author' reader. But I do have writers whose body of work I admire. Robertson Davies, Lois Lowry, Penelope Fitzgerald, Katherine Paterson, Elizabeth Enright. Joyce of course. Nonfiction, Russell Freedman, John Thorne, Oliver Sachs, Simon Winchester, MFK Fisher.

Poets: when I was writing poetry, I was reading it - Louise Gluck, Elizabeth Bishop. I studied in Ireland for a year, so there's the Irish poets like Heaney. Probably my touchstone poet is Yeats, who I couldn't say I love, he can be such a pain in the ass, but he would be the one I go back to the most.

ASIDE: Which Yeats are we talking about, early or late? There are two animals there.

PARK: Yeah, that's true. I suppose the early ones are much more appealing and quote unquote easier.

ASIDE: I am a fan of the whole "slouching" thing.

PARK: That's one that I have by heart because it just blew me away. I even became a Joan Didion fan because she'd written a book called Slouching toward Bethlehem. By the way, I think that memorizing poems, or at least reading them aloud, is the best way for a writer to develop an ear for language. I love reading poetry aloud or hearing it read aloud.

Linda Sue Park writes poetry for both adults and young people. Her work has been published in several journals both print and online. She also writes fiction. Her third book A Single Shard was awarded the 2002 John Newbery Medal.

Email: Linda Sue Park.

© The Alsop Review