How do you see The Goose Girl and Enna Burning_fitting into the fantasy genre?
I think the fantasy genre (like most genre labeling) is a slippery snake—you can’t hold it still to look at the whole thing. I like that about it. I don’t think I could define "fantasy" to my own satisfaction; there are so many subgenres and slipstreams and contradictions. I think genres can be as useful as they are harmful. I’ve read that a genre is a contract with the reader, saying, “This is the kind of story you can expect.” That’s helpful. But then again, when I ask people what they imagine when they think of fantasy, they say, “Fairies, elves, sorcerers, barbarian swordsmen, ogres, dragons...” Well, my books don’t have any of those things. The Goose Girl is certainly fairy tale fantasy, but is Enna Burning since it wasn’t based on a fairy tale? I think of my books as stories that take place long ago in a place that feels familiar, where things that you may not see every day are possible. That’s not a very helpful answer, is it? Maybe I should have pursued that PhD in genre theory.
You consider yourself a religious and spiritual person. Do you see a relationship between your faith and your subject matter, storylines, and/or how your characters behave and how they resolve their problems?
I think everything I believe, whether religious, intellectual, emotional, social, etc., must come through my writing in some way. I would be a dishonest person if it didn’t. However, my characters don’t necessarily believe the same things I do. I love them for that. I think my beliefs probably influence my writing in ways that I don’t see, but I know certain beliefs definitely weigh what I write—I believe everyone is free to make choices, bad and good; I believe everyone is noble and full of potential; I believe in hope and the possibilities for happy endings.
Female power is a running theme throughout your novels. Did this organically evolve out of the stories you set out to tell, or was it intended because you have a desire to convey strong female characters?
I did not set out to write stories of girl power, though I’m happy to have them read that way. I’m very lucky to be writing after decades of writers have already fought for their genuine, interesting, and varied heroines. I don’t have the burden of writing on offense, trying to prove that girls can be main characters, strong and individual. It’s a luxury to get to write what I think is true, not make a statement.
As a reader, I’m bored by books that convey girls as weak and mindless or simply absent. That’s not the world that I know. Girls are powerful and always have been. It’s frankly mystifying to me that we would be portrayed in any other way.
You’re married and have a child. Do the events in Isi’s life—her falling in love with Geric in The Goose Girl and having a child in Enna Burning—mirror what was happening in your life as you were writing her story?
It is easy for me to write about romantic love because it’s very real in my own life. I did meet my soul mate, was his best friend for many years, fell in love, and married him just after starting to write The Goose Girl. I found out I was pregnant a year after I had first written about Isi’s own joyous event, but I have no doubt that my life does influence what I think my characters would want in their happily ever after. It was serendipity that both Isi and I had baby boys. I’m so happy for her. Boys are awesome.
Do you see yourself, or anyone you know, in any of your characters?
I’m certain that bits of me and everyone I know make their way into my characters, though I have never consciously based a character on a real person. (Real people are so complex and very difficult to stuff into a page without their seeming erratic.) I based Isi and Enna’s friendship on my friendship with my best friend of fifteen years, and I repurposed elements of my relationship with my husband for both Ani and Geric’s and Enna and Finn’s relationships. Miri in Princess Academy is burdened with more of my younger self than anyone I’ve ever written.
Do your friends and family try to find themselves in your characters?
My husband sees much of himself in darling Finn, and after I found that out I had to change some of Finn’s physical characteristics to match. If you ask any of my sistets, my mother, or my close friends, they will all claim to be the real goose girl—and I won’t argue. You’d have to be insane to argue with those gals.
Your first three novels revolve around females. Any plans to have a male lead in an upcoming book?
Yes! I never thought I’d write a male main character because I know girls better (and I was always annoyed by those nineteenth-century male writers who wrote female characters and thoroughly botched the job). Then I met Razo. I know him and feel very confident writing his story. I believe his book will be titled City of Rivers.
All your heroines have a romantic counterpart, but your stories aren’t typical romances. What role do you see the young men playing in your stories?
Probably because of my own life history, I see the boys as being good friends first and romantic interests second. I like to see the boys get involved in the action right alongside the girls, and if there’s an attraction, and if people fall in love—ah! Another reason to get the heart pumping. I’ve never read straight romance novels, but I love a book peppered with a good romance. It’s real and it’s fun.
Have you noticed a change in books written today for teen and tween readers as compared to books you read as a girl?
I see more books written specifically for young adults. In fifth grade, I began to move from children’s books to the adult books that had made their way to my school library shelves, but now there are so many books targeted just to older children and teens.
I think there is an increase in how much racy material is acceptable. The Goose Girl was actually turned down by one publisher who said the market was moving more toward "edgy" books.
I also see more female main characters (at last!). It is often a sad truth that girls will read boys but boys won’t read girls, and so the majority of books for kids were about boys. When I was younger, there were no kids’ TV shows or cartoons with a main girl character, and some shows had absolutely no girl characters at all! In television, this trend is changing (I love the Powerpuff Girls!) and that attitude appears to be spreading. I do see more boys accepting girls as viable heroes and it will get better, but I doubt Harry Potter would have done as well had it been Harriet Potter.
There is a definite Shannon Hale style and tone to your three novels. Do you think of yourself as having a signature style? How would you describe it? Do you plan to, or want to, try other styles?
I spent eighteen years writing unpublishable stuff, and I now realize it was all in pursuit of my voice. I found the kind of story that I love to read and the type of narrator I feel I can do well. I’m in love with the "close third person" narrator, a narrator that knows only as much as the main character and yet can step back just a tad and tell the story in a slightly different voice. This allows me freedom of language I wouldn’t have in a first person narrator but lets me keep close to one character and follow her through the entire story. I do like to try other styles. I never want my writing to get dull and dry. I have a book in first person outlined, which might come out after the Razo book. I also compose things on the side that are very different just to keep myself fresh.
Your descriptions of landscapes are very detailed and visual. Are they based on any place you’ve been, or are they purely imagined?
They are a mixture of places I know and my imagination. Most of the places I write about have a similar climate to my home region. I spent twenty years in a house in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and the hours of my childhood spent tramping around the hills behind my house worked their way into the setting of Princess Academy. Having lived places where it’s summer all year and others where it’s winter half the year, I realize now that not everyone has such a strong attachment to the seasons as those of us who live with a distinct spring, summer, fall, and winter. The four seasons are very much a part of my consciousness and the way I relate to time passing, both in life an
d in my storytelling.
You have a theatrical background. Do you think this experience has played a role in how you create your characters or set a scene? Do you see your characters as actors in a play you’re directing?
Yes to all, to some extent. Actors and directors are storytellers. In writing a book, I’m doing an actor’s character creation and a director’s orchestration of all the elements. I did improvisational comedy for a time, and I think those skills also help me to create as I write.
If I do my job right, then I supply enough material to turn the readers into the story’s director, and they can determine whom to cast for each role, the right mood for each scene, the dramas going on off screen, and so on. That’s where books have it all over cinema—a movie forces you to hear and see the story just the way the director wants you to, but a book allows you to add your experiences and preferences and make the story your own.
What do you consider your strengths as a storyteller? Your weaknesses?
Ooh, why are these questions so hard? I feel as though I’m at girls’ camp, sitting in a circle with one flashlight, about to reveal my secret crush. Okay, but just remember, what’s said at camp stays at camp.
I think I can write books that both kids and adults enjoy. I’ve been told my style of narrative moves the story along and makes it easy to keep reading. I love trying to find just the right words, just the right way to say something. Endings are very important to me, and I hope I make satisfying ones.
I’m so impressed with writers who grip the reader from the very beginning, but I can’t seem to do it. I’m cursed to have to build a story slowly, it seems. And I can’t do a book in two or three drafts as some do, but a minimum of a dozen full rewrites. I also wish I could use more humor. I find it much easier when writing contemporary fiction. Humor is difficult to get across on the page because expression and delivery are so much a part of it. As a writer, you have to commit to it fully and have a frivolous, funny book; you have to resign yourself to puns; or you have to tell the reader, “and then all the characters laughed,” even if the reader feels no inclination to join in. Miri in Princess Academy has allowed me to play around a bit more because she’s a droll little girl, and Razo, as always, insists on having a good laugh, so City of Rivers might allow for some fun.
What’s been your most embarrassing moment as a writer?
Oh, my, I’ve had so many! Here’s one. In a Q&A session at a bookstore, someone asked, “Did you have any teachers who encouraged you?” Immediately my mind interpreted that as meaning, “Did you have writing teachers who pushed you to be a writer?” And so my fateful answer was, “No, not really.” I explained that in all the writing classes and workshops I’d been in, I was never the star, and in graduate school I was the dud. I wanted my point to be that I’m no one special; I’m just some schmo who was stubborn and kept at it because it’s what I wanted to do. If anyone in the crowd wanted to be a writer or do anything hard and had been discouraged, I wanted to say, “Your fate isn’t sealed!" But as I blathered on, I saw my sister pointing emphatically at someone in the audience—it was Kathryn Romney, one of my former high school English teachers. Yikes! I tried to explain what I had meant, but surely it seemed I was back-pedaling after seeing her there. And as I was slipping and sliding, I saw for the first time Paula Fowler, another of my high school English teachers. What are the odds? (Seriously, if you’re a statistician, I’d love to know.) If they had been substandard or even decent teachers, the incident would have ended up just an awkward faux pas that I would retell at parties. But they were GREAT teachers. They deserved to have a former student stand up and proclaim her gratitude. I’m still mortified.
Since the publication of The Goose Girl, you’ve spent a lot of time on the road talking to readers, as well as chatting with them online through your Web site. What have you learned about yourself and your books from these exchanges?
About my books, I learn who they’re for and if they succeed. Until I started to get feedback from readers, I had no idea who The Goose Girl would reach or what the reaction would be. After I dragged myself through the final proofing pass and read it dozens of times, I’d started to hate it. It was such a relief to hear that it had found its audience! I find this happens with each book. At the moment, Princess Academy is in the final editing stage and I have NO idea what people will think. I do my best to tell the story that I have, but the readers decide if it’s a success.
About me, I’ve learned that I don’t personalize the (extremely minor) celebrity. The idea that someone would want my signature on anything but a bank check seems ridiculous to me. Honors and fan letters are for the books, not for me. I try to enjoy the attention sometimes just for the sake of my ten-year-old self, who would get such a kick out of it.
What’s the worst thing anyone has said to you about your books or your writing?
In one of the rejection letters I got for The Goose Girl, the editor said she found my writing "stiff, self-conscious, and cliche.” Those words rang in my head for weeks. One reader, intending to be complimentary, told me she read The Goose Girl in an hour and a half. That book consumed two years of my life, I agonized over every word, and she burned through its 383 pages in 90 minutes. Ouch!
What’s the best?
A girl wrote me that she didn’t like to read until she read The Goose Girl and now has been reading books ever since. There’s no greater compliment than that something I did made someone love to read.
You’ve been writing stories since you were ten years old. What kind of stories were you writing then? How has your writing and storytelling evolved?
My early writings are very derivative, as they should be. I believe imitation is the only way to start any creative art. I wrote stories similar to whatever I was reading at the time. The books I started when I was ten and eleven were The Gift of the Sea (a fantasy with three red-headed heroines who discover they have magical powers, and the fact that I’m a redhead was just happenstance, I swear); The Cave of Blackwood Falls (pure coincidence that I had recently read the Nancy Drew The Ghost of Blackwood Hall, I assure you); and My Mother the Queen (two cousins discover they’re really princesses, and it’s an unrelated fact that I very much wanted to discover that I was really a princess, too).
In high school, my writing was semipoetic—all style, no substance. Into college and graduate school, I rediscovered how much I love story. I’ve tried to merge those two periods, to mature into a writing style that first, tells a story and second, tells it well.
Who encouraged you most to continue writing?
My mom was a dream for supporting my wild ideas and ambitions, and I had great teachers in elementary school, high school, and college who allowed me to explore and express my creativity, lest I go mad. I never had a mentor or someone who, you know, nudged my shoulder and said, “You’re going to make it, kid. You got what it takes!" I longed for that, but I guess I didn’t need it. Maybe I kept going in part just to spite the naysayers.
What is your favorite kind of pie?
Pumpkin with real whipped cream! And anything homemade and yummy.
What’s next?
I’m excited about City of Rivers, a book that features that irrepressible Razo. He wormed his way into Enna Burning despite not appearing in my original outline, and now he gets his own book, the lucky rascal. I also have another fairy tale retelling outlined, a possible sequel for Princess Academy, and several other Bayern book ideas. And I plan to do them all during my baby’s nap time.
Reading Group Guide for The Goose Girl
by Iracie vausnn dimmer
1. The queen tells Ani that "a crown princess, like a queen, can succeed only by staying apart. Separation, elevation, delegation" (p. 25). Describe these three terms in your own words, and then discuss whether you agree with the queen’s view. What do you think it would be like to live under these expectations? How do you think this would affect Ani’s ability to make true friends and keep them?
2. Ani is st
ripped of her rightful crown by her mother, and forced into poverty and virtual slave labor by those who are hired to protect and care for her. While these life changes are traumatic and dramatic, in the end they prove to be good for Ani; she becomes a stronger, more insightful person and meets people whom she might not have otherwise. How so? What does she learn about herself? What does she learn from those who befriend her along her journey? How would things have been different between Geric and Ani had she not gone through these trials?
3. Discuss Ani’s relationship with her mother. Do you think the queen truly loves her daughter if she is able to deny her daughter’s birthright? Do you believe her mother’s actions are a betrayal? A political move? A move to protect her daughter? A selfish act? What makes you believe this? How would you feel if your mother denied you something you felt entitled to?
4. Ani’s aunt and mother are very different from one another. How do you think these differences play a role in Ani’s development?
5. Characters’ intentions can be revealed by a number of means: their words, their actions, their treatment of others, how others treat them. How are the intentions of Selia, Ungolad, Talone, Geric, and Enna shown through each of these methods? Are there hints about Selia’s unhappiness even before the journey begins?
6. Compare the Kildenreans to the Bayern. How are they similar? How are they different? For example, what do the Bayern do with their prisoners that upsets Ani, a Kildenrean? When Yulan and Ishta treat Ani harshly during their attempt to abduct her, it creates anger among the Bayern men "as hot as walking out of a summer shade" (p. 231). Do you think the author is making a point about cultural differences between all people? What can we learn from Ani’s experience and apply to our own lives?
7. Discuss how appearance and prejudice help and hinder Ani in her quest for justice and her title. For example, what does Gilsa know about Ani by her appearance alone? What does Geric assume? Do the assumptions based on appearances turn out to be correct or incorrect? Why do you think people make assumptions based on appearance alone?