Public Library, reading through the 800s on how to write, and practicing at night, after my kids were in bed, writing longhand on a yellow legal pad. I spent my lunchtimes across the street at the Tenley Circle branch of the D.C. I became a single parent very young as well, so I was working at a construction site by day-the only woman on the job, in the trailer, ordering the supplies and making the coffee and, once I got my feet under me, writing the newsletter-helping to build the D.C.

I got married as a teenager and had two children before I was 21, so am very self-taught as a writer, and worked my way into freelancing by basically asking for the job and then teaching myself how to do it. When I teach, I teach personal narrative writing, because that is the backbone of all other writing, and if you can dive deep into personal essays (which are my first love), your fiction will thank you. I take my life and I turn it into stories. I hope to celebrate their 20 th anniversaries in some meaningful way in 2021.īoth of those books, and each of my successive books, is about those earliest and most profound themes in my life. Both of these books are still in print and going strong. My first picture book, Freedom Summer illustrated by Jerome Lagarrigue, was published in January 2001 by Atheneum/Simon & Schuster/Anne Schwartz, followed a few months later by my first novel, Love, Ruby Lavender, published by Liz Van Doren at Harcourt Books. Some of my earliest and most profound memories involve issues surrounding fairness, race, justice, and confusion, along with a deep desire for home and the love of a family, kinship, and connection, although I wouldn’t have been able to articulate any of this then. I was born in Mobile, Alabama and grew up around the world in an Air Force family, but spent my summers in Mississippi, where my parents were from. It took me a long time to learn to write my own story. Reflecting on your personal journey (creatively, career-wise, and your writer’s heart), what bumps did you encounter and how have you managed to defy the odds to achieve continued success? In children’s-YA writing, maintaining an active publishing career is arguably an even bigger challenge than breaking into the field. Deborah Wiles is a successful children’s-YA author with a long, distinguished career.

Anthem deborah wiles