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A Writer's Scribbles
Ever wondered what’s in some of those little notebooks writers interrupt conversations, or suddenly sit up in bed, to scribble in? As the year draws to a close, I’m going to give you a peek at a sampling of my 2011 scribbles, with remarks added at the time of this posting in square brackets. 4/4/11…
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Do you get along well with your publishers?
Here I am with Margie Wolfe at a party in spring 2006. Her company, Second Story Press, published King of the Castle (for readers of all ages) and 101 Ways to Dance. Margie and I don’t always agree about everything, but we get along famously just the same. (Thanks to Naseem Hrab for permission to use…
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“An Intimate Examination of Sock Fluff” Part 1
“Spectacular!” “Inspiring!” Two words people used to describe my keynote speech at CANSCAIP’s Packaging Your Imagination conference last month. Pretty gratifying feedback! You missed it? Fear not! I’m going to post the whole speech here at “Turning the Pages.” “Sock Fluff” was my introduction to Loris Lesynski, back in the early 90s, before it was…
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Do you ever visit book clubs?
I haven’t done it often, but within a reasonable distance from my home in Rockwood (which is near Guelph) Ontario, I do. So far I’ve only met with adult book clubs, but I think it would be fun to meet with mother-daughter, mother-son, father-daughter, father-son groups too. Depending on who your book club members are,…
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Did you create your own website?
I wanted a website that would help promote me and my books, but I had no idea about how to set one up, and wasn’t willing to take time away from my writing to learn. Luckily for me, my sister knew how to do it. Creating websites is part of her business. Since setting up…
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Will you come and speak at our conference?
If your audience is teachers, librarians, booksellers, writers, parents, students, or seniors, chances are I’d love to come talk about just about any aspect of writing, reading, or being a writer in Canada. I’m more than open to suggestions. In addition to the speaking fee, conference organizers should be prepared to cover the cost of…
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Three Trees for Highway of Heroes
All across Canada, each school year, thousands of students read books that appear on “tree award” lists and, come spring, vote on their favourites. I’ve been lucky enough to have had several of my books nominated over the years: King of the Castle (Silver Birch) One Year Commencing (Red Cedar) Marie-Claire: Dark Spring (Diamond Willow)…
Read More...Book Lovers Day
What better excuse than Book Lovers Day – the first Saturday in November – to plug a few of the great books I’ve read since August 9, also Book Lovers Day according to some calendars. (If you’re like me, pretty much any date is a good one for setting aside to curl up and do…
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Have you met any other authors?
I sure have! Most of the people in the photo here are authors. A few are illustrators. How many can you identify? Can you find me in there? All but one of the authors lives in Canada. Can you find her? She’s really famous! Meeting and hanging out with other authors is one of the great…
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Ontario Library Week
Can you remember the first book you borrowed from a public library? Mine was Saturday Walk by Ethel Wright. I borrowed it on a library card that was green and bigger than my current library card. Why would I remember that!? The book or the size and colour of my card?! Because it was a…
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What kind of books did you like to read when you were growing up?
Stories about families, about real people, or at least people that felt real to me reading about them. I loved: the books about Beezus and Henry and Ramona by Beverly Cleary (those that had been written when I was young. I caught up with more Ramona books when my kids were young) the Little House…
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Do you speak to teachers on their professional development days?
Yes, and it’s always a pleasure. (I was an elementary school teacher myself, before I was a writer.) I can discuss how to motivate students to write, how to excite them about reading, or I can conduct a mini-writing workshop, as a model for how teachers might like to work with their students, at any…
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How can we arrange a visit to our school or library?
It’s easy. Just send Kathy an email! But before you do, it’s best to first read about audience sizes and the cost of hosting a visit. Also about the kinds of things I might do with your students and the impact our visit might have. Find answers to other FAQs here.
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Did you like to write when you were a kid?
Not especially. I wrote stories in school, but not after school or on weekends, like some kids do. And I certainly didn’t think about being a writer when I grew up. But I did love to read, and I think that all the books I was reading over many years were turning me into a writer,…
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How do you pick the illustrator for your picture books?
I don’t pick the illustrator for my books. The publisher does. They may ask for my opinion about the work of illustrators they’re considering, but the decision is ultimately up to them. What if you don’t like the pictures? I’ve been lucky to have illustrators who have brought wonderful visual ideas to the books, ideas that…
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"So You Want to Write a Children’s Book"
To me, he’s my sweetie Petey, my life partner of 26 years. He’s the dad of my stepdaughters, the stepdad of my own kids, and Grampa to our grandkids. To the community of writers of books for young people in Canada, Peter Carver is a writing teacher extraordinaire, an astute and caring editor, a trusted…
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A Star for Starfall
I’m doing as much editing as writing these days. One of the projects I’ve been working on as editor is a picture book collaboration between two newcomers to the world of children’s books, Diana Kolpak and Kathleen Finlay. Pretty satisfying to see a starred review (from galleys) for Starfall in the September issue of Q&Q!…
Read More...Do you write full-time now, or do you have another job, too?
I do my best to write full-time, but I don’t earn enough money from book sales to make a full income, so I do other things – related to writing – to make up what I need. I work as an editor. I lead writing workshops for adults and for children. I speak at conferences.…
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Congratulations Again, Cornelia!
To her long list of awards recognizing her achievements, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander can add the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award – the highest honor in her profession. The International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) presented the award to Cornelia in Zurich in June. Cornelia first set her sights on becoming a landscape architect when she was…
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Do you have any pets?
Updated April 2016. Yes! I had a wonderful dog named Keisha for almost ten years. She was a golden doodle. She’s practically famous because the illustrator of A Pocket Can Have A Treasure In It used Keisha as a model for the puppy in the story. Now I have another golden doodle. Her name is Georgia. Never heard…
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How old are you?
I turned 50 in 2002, so now I’m… Yikes! How did that happen? Find answers to other FAQs here.
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How old are your children now?
I’m going to let you figure that out. Matthew (inspiration for Big Or Little?) was born in 1975 and Kelly (inspiration for Red Is Best and “Babysitting Helen“) was born in 1978. This picture of my kids was taken at Matt’s wedding in 2001. I also have two stepdaughters born in 1967 and 1968 and…
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What did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was growing up in the 1960s, most girls were looking at pretty limited options: nurse, teacher, or secretary. I liked school, so I wanted to be a teacher. I taught elementary school in Etobicoke (as far west as you can go in Toronto before you hit Mississauga) for five years. I also wanted…
Read More...Can you help me get published?
I have no ins with any of the publishers I’ve worked with as a writer or as an editor, so beyond encouraging you to continue honing your craft (by writing lots and perhaps attending classes or workshops), there’s nothing else I can do to help you get published. However, there are lots of websites that offer…
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Reading Liberia – June 2011
June 2011 presented me with the opportunity to work for a third time with Liberian writers through workshops and one-on-one meetings – thanks to CODE (Canada) and to We Care (Liberia). The president of the country, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, expressed an interest in participating in the launch of the first Liberian-authored, Liberian-illustrated children’s books. She…
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Happy Birthday, Cornelia!
Renowned landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander is celebrating her 90th birthday this week, and is finally admitting to her true age. (Not quite true. She’s been far too busy this month for anything as trivial as a birthday, so the big party will not be held until August.) There can’t be many nonagenarians practising their professions…
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Endings & Beginnings
Last night, my husband, Peter Carver, marked the end of his 25-year career in teaching ‘Writing for Children’ by launching – at his retirement party – his first book, So You Want to Write a Children’s Book. Joining the students from across the years who gathered to honour him were: Peggy Needham, Peter’s much loved…
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“Baby Love”
Every writer knows the old saw about ‘killing your darlings’ – deleting favourite phrases, sentences, characters, scenes, etc., from a work as it evolves. I often reassure writers I work with that out-takes from one project can sometimes be used in another project down the road. I hadn’t yet killed the ‘Hannah as a teen…
Read More...Is my ship sinking?
Sometimes I wonder if there’s a comparison between writers writing in the early 21st century and the passengers in The Poseidon Adventure. Some passengers on the sinking Poseidon insisted on staying put, believing that someone would come and save them. Others insisted on taking matters into their own hands on what they knew was a…
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What do you like writing better? Picture books or novels?
I love the spareness of a picture book, paring down sentences to their bare essentials. It’s a bit like writing poetry. But I also like being involved with characters for long enough to get to know them really well, the way I do when writing a novel, and I like trying convey them through words…
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My Dad, Doug Powell
My dad’s birthday is this week. I wrote this post about him in response to a challenge to “blog about great parents”. My dad didn’t tell me how to live a life of courage and integrity. He showed me, in how he lived his. When I was nine, and my siblings four and fourteen, he…
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The Fallen Canadian Soldier Project
I’ve blogged before about different ways Canadians have honoured fallen soldiers. But this winter I learned of another, after a neighbour attending a woodworking show with her husband came upon a display of portraits of Canadian soldiers who have fallen in Afghanistan. Stephen Gaebel describes the first time his paintings were exhibited publicly – on Remembrance…
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"Lead with your heart"
It’s still just once a week that I login at Yoga Today for an hour of yoga practice – usually on Monday morning, before I get back into my work and think I’m too busy to fit it in. But there’s one instruction that the women leading the online classes offer that stays with me…
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A National Poetry Month Guessing Game
April is National Poetry Month and as it happens, the book I’m reading at the CNIB right now is a novel written in poems, and so is the book I’ll be reading next. The stories in both are told from the points of view of different characters, so it’s been fun trying to match my…
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More Books (and Almost Books) by Seaside Retreat/Workshop Alumni
Having described the development of Jan Coates’s A Hare in the Elephant’s Trunk in a previous post, I want to give a plug to three other writers whose work has benefited from participation in the seaside workshop/retreat that Peter Carver and I offer each summer. Anna Kerz brought the manuscript for The Mealworm Diaries to Nova Scotia…
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Why did you want to be a writer?
I’ve loved reading books for longer than I can remember. (That’s me in the picture, reading in my gramma’s backyard.) As an adult, I started to wonder if I would like writing them, too. I wondered if I could write something that people who didn’t know me would like reading. I was almost 30 when…
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Jan Coates, An Alumnus of the Seaside Writing Workshop
Jan Coates first came to our Seaside Writing Workshop/Retreat in 2008 to work on several picture book manuscripts she needed help with. Second Story Press had published Rainbows in the Dark in 2005, but since then, Jan had collected only rejection letters in response to her submissions. During sessions focused on her work, she got feedback from…
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Do you offer writing workshops?
I offer a number of workshop options – for children, teens, and adults; single sessions or a series of sessions; and in a variety of settings including libraries, bookstores, schools, and private homes. I’ve even conducted workshops in Liberia. (If you want me to travel that far to do a workshop, somebody (besides me) has to…
Read More...What's your favourite book that you've written?
Hm. With that question I feel a little as if you’re asking me to say which of my children or grandchildren is my favourite, and of course there are different things that I like about each of them. Books I haven’t yet begun to write are somehow always more perfect than all the others. Of course,…
Read More...Where do you get your ideas?
Ideas are everywhere and anyone can catch them if they practice watching and listening to what’s going on around them. Sometimes ideas come to me from my own experiences, sometimes from other people’s. Sometimes they come to me when I’m reading a book someone else has written, sometimes when I’m in the middle of writing…
Read More...The Joy of Cutting Words
The last thing that a poet learns is how to throw away, And how to make you thrill and creep with what he doesn’t say. — J.R. Lowell Every writer, including me, knows the thrill of seeing words accumulate on the page. But a morning cutting 1000 words from a project can be just as satisfying as…
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March Break Fun
So, with the kids home for March Break, what are you going to do to help keep them entertained? (Besides reading lots of Kathy Stinson books, of course!) Why not take inspiration from the open-face sandwiches pictured here? (Get it open face sandwiches?) These faces were created by various members of my extended family at the…
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A Volunteer-Reader’s Anniversary
Seven years ago this week, I began volunteering at the CNIB Recording Studio in Toronto – reading books and teching for others who are reading. In addition to magazine articles and chunks of various textbooks, (and the foreword to a book being read by a male narrator), I have read a wide range of books – for kids,…
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Word from Liberia
Exciting news! The first page in the history of Liberian children’s literature has now been written! Yes, the first books written and illustrated by Liberian authors and illustrators as part of the Reading Liberia program have now arrived in Monrovia! Yvonne, one of the founders of the program, wrote: Hello Kathy, Guess what! We have…
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Writing Communities
At this month’s CANSCAIP meeting, a former participant at the Seaside Writing Workshop/Retreat that my partner and I offer in Nova Scotia each summer announced that we are now accepting applications for this years workshop/retreat. Since it involves living and working with five other participants (plus Peter and me), a lovely sense of community tends to…
Read More...Writing Tip – How to Not Engage a Reader
An ongoing problem with the novel I’m working on has been a tone that feels detached, almost reporter-like, which makes it hard for a reader to engage with what one of the point-of-view characters especially is feeling. Much as I enjoy the revision process, I sometimes shy away from dealing with global problems like tone and voice.…
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Writing Workshops
This winter I’ve been rediscovering the fun of working with people who are just beginning to explore their interest in writing for children. The night of the first class (which I’m teaching through the Con Ed department of the Upper Grand District School Board), I wondered how I’d do with the fact that it runs…
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International Year of the Volunteer
According to Volunteer Canada, there are 12.5 million volunteers in this country, working to make a difference in their communities. The United Nations has declared 2011 the 10th International Year of the Volunteer. To help celebrate the impact volunteers make, the Toronto Association for Volunteer Administration has set an interesting goal: to collect 2011 images…
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A Well Earned Honour for an Outstanding Canadian
Patsy Aldana has been appointed a Member of the Order of Canada, recognizing “her contributions to children’s publishing in Canada and around the world.” Perhaps best known as publisher of Groundwood Books (which she founded in 1978), Patsy Aldana has also served as president of IBBY International, played leadership roles in publishing associations and school library coalitions,…
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Reading at the CNIB
For close to seven years now, following a successful audition, I have been a volunteer reader at the CNIB. Pictured with me in the booth at the Recording Studio in Toronto is Alex MacDonald, who has been reading for roughly twice as long. Ordinarily during a recording session, there is one narrator, seated, reading a book aloud inside…
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The First "Reading Liberia" Books
The first books for Liberian children by Liberian authors will soon be out. Imagine how exciting that will be for both the children who will hold those books that reflect their lives and for the writers and illustrators who created them! I first became involved in “Reading Liberia” two years ago, and I’m proud to…
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