Holly Thompson

Q&A WITH HOLLY THOMPSON

What started you writing?
A love of stories and words. I started in my teens by writing poems that I shared with my brother. Later, at Mount Holyoke College, several writing teachers inspired me to try creating short stories. I loved the challenges and limits imposed by the short story form. When I first lived in Japan I began writing stories seriously but they were all set in the U.S. At New York University I wrote my first stories set in Japan. This bicultural life, going back and forth between the U.S. and Japan, has fueled most of my writing since.

What were your favorite picture books as a child?
I loved The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf about a bull who doesn't want to fight, and The Story of Ping by Marjory Flack about an adventurous duck whose curiosity is almost his downfall. Also Crocket Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon. As a child growing up in New England, I read and reread the Robert McCloskey books Make Way for Ducklings, One Morning in Maine, and Blueberries for Sal. But I think my all time favorite picture book was Go Dog Go by P.D. Eastman--the dog party at the end just can't be beat.

Why did you write Orchards in verse?
Orchards is a first person narrative told from the point of view of bicultural Japanese and Jewish/​American Kana who has been sent to spend the summer with Japanese relatives after the suicide of a classmate. The emotions Kana struggles with as she settles into Japanese farm village life and tries to make sense of what happened are intense. Verse seemed a natural vehicle for Kana's voice.

What inspired you to write Ash?
Ash (Stone Bridge Press) began as a short story that burst its bounds and became a novella then further burst those bounds to become a novel. Novelist E.L. Doctorow, my thesis advisor at New York University, was the one to encourage me to develop the story into a novel. The plot of the novel developed from witnessing a near-drowning incident during travels in China, and from my visits to the southern Japanese city of Kagoshima, which is overshadowed by a sometimes very active ash-spewing volcano.

Do you think MA or MFA programs are useful?
An MFA or MA in creative writing will not guarantee you publication or a job, but, by seriously focusing on writing for two years, your craft is certain to develop and improve. I loved my years in the New York University graduate creative writing program and often wish I could return for more of that intensity of focus on fiction writing.

Are you writing more novels?
Several! I'm busy researching and writing a second YA verse novel about a non-Japanese girl raised in Japan then relocated to the U.S. I'm also working on a middle-grade novel that deals with bullying and aikido. And yet another is an adult novel set on a mikan (mandarin orange) farm in Shizuoka, Japan, similar to the setting for Orchards.

When did you start writing for children?
As soon as I began teaching - immediately after graduating from college. But I would work on a story then put it away...for years. As I became involved in organizing events and workshops for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators in Tokyo, I began seriously tackling picture books and novels for children and young adults.

Are you a mikan farmer?
No, but I spent 18 months apprenticed to a mikan farmer absorbing everything I could about mikan cultivation for my book research. My daughter and I moved into a small agricultural community for several months so that I could learn more about farm cooperatives and experience life in a tiny Japanese farm village.

How did you become interested in wakame?
For years I've lived in a seaside town southwest of Tokyo. During the winter and early spring, local fishing families cultivate and harvest wakame seaweed which they hang to dry from clotheslines along the beach. I have always loved the sight of wakame drying in the wind. My kids and I learned how to gather wakame during the winter months when it washes in with the surf. Some elderly wakame gatherers taught us how to fashion gathering poles and how to distinguish wakame from the many other seaweeds that wash ashore. And the many ways to eat it!

Why HAT in your website and blog name?
Well, my full name is Holly Ann Thompson. I guess I'd better write a story about hats, right?

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