Character Transformation and Writing

Posted on October 3, 2017 by katiequirkauthor

Last week I wrote about “windows” and “mirrors” in creative writing, and how travel–or really any experience with difference, even in own neighborhood–can challenge our expectations about the world and provide great fuel for writing.

This week I want to share an essay I recently published about climate change and how living in Costa Rica for a year helped to change and deepen my understanding of what we humans are doing to our planet.

Slate Climate Change.png

I hope you have a minute to read the full essay on Slate. For those of you practicing your own writing, you’ll see that this essay is one about personal transformation or how I was changed by an experience. Character transformation is another great framework for writing. Ask yourself: What experiences have I had (try to be as specific as possible) that have permanently changed me or my perspective on the world? Make a list and then choose one to start writing. You’ll likely find an engaging story well worth sharing.

Posted in Sari Swinging | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Writing and Travel

Posted on September 26, 2017 by katiequirkauthor

Folks talk about creative writing providing windows and mirrors: stories that allow us to feel and experience another’s context or perspective (windows) and tales that help us better understand ourselves (mirrors).

I tend to gravitate toward writing that offers me windows into unknown cultures, places, times or experiences. In the young adult/middle grade category I’ve loved books like The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, and Navigating Early. Recent adult creative-writing reads with engrossing windows have included Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Euphoria, and To Capture What We Cannot Keep. Part of what makes these “windows” books great is that they also provide complex characters and insights into the human experience. In short, they are replete with “mirrors,” as well.

Travel, of course, can have a similar and sometimes even more jarring effect by exposing us to differences and then challenging us to think about the world in new ways. That experience of having your expectations challenged is a great starting point for writing. In fact, it turned out to be the frame for a couple of the essays I published this year. One essay was about my youngest son’s experience of learning Spanish: what initially felt torturous, turned out to be quite comfortable, even fun.

WaPostBilingual Kid.png

The full essay is available here at The Washington Post. I hope you enjoy reading it, and for those writers out there, I hope that this post inspires you to write about experiences when your expectations were challenged. Just remember, you don’t have to leave the country or even your own neighborhood to have your expectations dashed, but experiences like these are generally rich for writing.

Next week, I’ll follow up with a post about how my understanding of the natural world and climate change was expanded after a year in Costa Rica.

 

 

Posted in Sari Swinging | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Our year in graphic novels

Posted on September 1, 2017 by katiequirkauthor

I recently published an essay in The Washington Post about my family’s year in graphic novels. Why graphic novels? For me, as a lover of libraries, one of the big limitations that comes with living in a less developed country for a spell is existing without access to the constant flow of books I enjoy at my local library. Anticipating this limitation for my kids, my parents generously offered to send them a couple of graphic novels each month for the year we were gone.

Screen Shot 2017-09-01 at 1.00.58 PM.png

The result: we devoured each of these books–over, and over, and over again–until we had them nearly memorized.

We also came to appreciate graphic novels even more than we already had. Now that we’re back, we’ve been special ordering graphic novels that weren’t part of our year’s care packages. One that I recently loved was Hilda and the Black Hound. Another hit in our house this week has been Roller Girl. I was reading it with my kids last night and I realized one of the wonders of a good graphic novel is that it can make emotions really salient.

I remember when my kids were toddlers and they went through their versions of the terrible twos. I didn’t know how to handle their tantrums until I read a parenting book that suggested mimicking their behavior–stomping around, making sad faces and repeating whatever they were screaming about in a loud voice. This worked! My tantrum mimicking got them listening. They felt heard, and then were able to hear me.

As I watched how Roller Girl captivated my kids last night, I realized it was doing just that: bringing not just words, but grand images and movements and facial expressions to mirror feelings they’ve had. When the main character, Astrid, got angry and transformed into her larger-than-life Roller Girl persona, she reminded of the character Cece in another favorite graphic novel of ours, who becomes the superheroic El Deafo whenever her emotions are running wild.

If you have a minute, read my essay in The Washington Post. It’s full of titles we loved from this year. If you aren’t hooked on graphic novels yet, it may just tip you over the edge.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Learning Spanish in Guatemala

Posted on July 31, 2017 by katiequirkauthor

As many of you know, my family just spent the last year in Central America. Living abroad has always been a boon for my writing, exposing me to new potential settings for books (imagine staring down into a volcanic caldera glowing with red molten lava, like we did in Nicaragua ), interesting characters ripe for re-imagination (our Mayan host family in Guatemala who spoke to each other in the Mayan language Tzutujil, as well as Spanish), and histories and stories I wouldn’t encounter in the U.S. (Costa Ricans, for example, celebrate the day they abolished their military as a national holiday, and some of my neighbors in Costa Rica moved to Central America after they refused to register with Selective Service in the United States).

Our first stop in our year abroad was a month of intensive Spanish lessons in Guatemala. I loved so much about that month–our host family, living at the base of a verdant volcano, the cobblestone streets of San Pedro, long conversations with my Spanish teacher, and lots of tropical fruit smoothies, of course. If you’d like a taste of the experience, I wrote this article in The Los Angeles Times:

Screen Shot 2017-07-31 at 2.16.42 PM.png

I hope you’ll find it inspiring. Teen readers, don’t be deterred. Language school abroad is a great opportunity for whole families, of if you’re an older teen, it might even be something you could do on your own.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Soccer, the Central American Way

Posted on May 3, 2017 by katiequirkauthor

Traveling or living abroad often provides great fodder for writing. New cultural contexts, languages and even natural settings provide us with fresh eyes on the world and on assumptions we make about how things ought to be done. A Girl Called Problem was born from my fascination with African socialism after living in Tanzania for two years. My memoir-in-progress, Sari Swinging, is about the fresh perspective I gained on parenting norms when I moved to India with my newborn son. This year, my family is living in Costa Rica and I’ve been inspired to write several articles and essays about our experience, as well as a regular blog.

Today, I want to share an essay I wrote about my kids’ experience joining a soccer (or fútbol) team in Costa Rica. At first it seemed like torture–Costa Rican kids are soccer whizzes–but it turned out to be a great lesson in grit and in what Costa Ricans calls ganas, which roughly translates to mean deep desire.

Screen Shot 2017-03-28 at 11.53.24 AM.png

I hope you enjoy reading the full essay, which can be found here at The Washington Post.

Posted in A Girl Called Problem | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

From a Tanzanian Village to Mumbai

Posted on March 2, 2017 by katiequirkauthor
modestagraduatesindia

Modesta at her international school in India.

Readers of A Girl Called Problem often ask me about my friend Modesta, the woman I dedicated the novel to and whom I introduce at the end of the book in my author’s note. Modesta was one of many village kids I met in Tanzania. We first got acquainted because she sold fruit door to door to earn money to help out her mom. Modesta and I eventually became great friends–she taught me most of my Swahili and how to get by in general in Tanzania–and when I later moved to India to teach at an international school, Modesta ended up joining me there.

But before she moved to India, Modesta had never visited a big city, let alone stepped on an airplane. As you can imagine, deciding to leave her rural village took an immense amount of courage. I flew to Tanzania to accompany Modesta on that first journey, but even with my help, Modesta just barely made it out of East Africa.

Fifteen years later, Modesta lives in Tanzania’s largest city, Dar es Salaam. She’s also flown on many international flights. But we still laugh about our first nail-biting trip out of East Africa together. The Christian Science Monitor recently published my essay describing the journey.

Screen Shot 2017-03-02 at 11.12.05 AM.png

I hope you enjoy reading our story!

Posted in A Girl Called Problem | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Two great author visits

Posted on February 9, 2017 by katiequirkauthor
nordanglia2

Students at La Côte International School in Switzerland have been reading A Girl Called Problem in preparation for a visit to Tanzania. 

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of Skype chatting with students on two different continents about A Girl Called Problem. Students at La Côte International School in Switzerland and at Nord Anglia International School in Hong Kong have been reading the novel in preparation for their upcoming visit to Tanzania. They asked some fabulous questions about important topics ranging from what it’s like to write from the perspective of a Tanzanian girl, to what obstacles I ran into in the revision process, to what I enjoyed most about living in Tanzania.

While I was chatting with the students in Switzerland, a colorful toucanet was perched outside my window (I’m currently in Costa Rica)–so we ended up chatting a bit about birds, too. These insightful students are going to have so much fun in East Africa!

Nord Anglia1.JPG

Here I am Skype chatting with the students in Switzerland. Photo credit: Helen Baker.

Thanks so much to teachers Helen Baker and David Robinson for making these visits happen, and safari njema (have a good trip) to everyone headed to Tanzania!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Let Girls Learn!

Posted on January 24, 2017 by katiequirkauthor
Screen Shot 2017-01-24 at 2.51.54 PM.png

Photo credit: CNN.

Today I’m celebrating the great work of the Obamas in their Let Girls Learn initiative, a project that readers of A Girl Called Problem will appreciate. As Shida would tell us, if you invest in a girl, you invest in all the people she will help over the course of her life. Some of you will remember the Liberian proverb at the beginning of chapter 21: “If you educate a woman, you educate a nation.”

Michelle Obama explains her interest in working to ensure access to education for the tens of millions of girls around the globe who are not in school:

“For me, education has never been simply a policy issue — it’s personal.

Neither of my parents and hardly anyone in the neighborhood where I grew up went to college. But thanks to a lot of hard work and plenty of financial aid, I had the opportunity to attend some of the finest universities in this country. That education opened so many doors and gave me the confidence to pursue my ambitions and have a voice in the world.”
Readers of A Girl Called Problem who are inspired to take action can learn more about Let Girls Learn here and also about how to contribute. Watch the video We Will Rise about Michelle’s visit to Liberia and Morocco, where she learned more about girls’ struggles to access education. In the meantime, one of the best things young people can do to help promote access to education for all girls and boys around the world is to spread awareness. Did any of you march at one of the Women’s Marches around the world last Saturday? I did up in the cloud forest of Costa Rica with this sign:
IMG_8802.JPG
I made a mistake and attributed the proverb to Nigeria, but folks seemed to understand.
Posted in A Girl Called Problem | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Stories from Central America

Posted on November 26, 2016 by katiequirkauthor

This academic year, my family and I are living in Central America. I’m busy working on a young adult novel set in South India, but I’ve also recently started a blog about life south of the U.S. border. Warmer Than Canada is a website designed to inspire other families to explore living abroad (not permanently, of course, but for a spell). I’ll be posting regularly about Central American politics, culture, nature, and travel.

Warmer Than Canada.png

For avid readers, there’s a link at the bottom right side of Warmer Than Canada where you can sign up to receive email alerts when I post new stories. If you have friends who are infected with wanderlust or who simply might enjoy some armchair Central American travel, please send them to Warmer Than Canada. I’d also be delighted to see your comments on my stories there. Thanks so much for your interest!

IMG_8884.jpg

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Happy International Day of the Girl

Posted on October 11, 2016 by katiequirkauthor

A few years ago, I wrote the following article for the wonderful website A Mighty Girl about the real-life stories that inspired me to write  A Girl Called Problem and how they relate directly to the International Day of the Girl. I hope you enjoy the article and that it inspires you to pick up a copy of A Girl Called Problem or another book that celebrates strong girls. Enjoy!

Screen Shot 2013-10-11 at 1.27.54 PM

Posted in A Girl Called Problem | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment