Join Margi on WTIP 90.7 Grand Marais Interview with Lin Salisbury Nov. 26 at 7 p.m. and Nov. 28 at 6 a.m.
Interview with Write On! Radio: Tuesday, Nov. 24
Tuesday, Nov. 24, 7 – 8 p.m. Annie Harvieux of Write On! Radio will interview Margi about her latests books, meeting Joe Biden, and much more.
Write On! Radio interviews local, national and international authors as well as editors, playwrights, poets and more. They’re interested in all things literary, from spoken word performances to readings by writers to just plain well-written works of art.
Write On! Radio airs every Tuesday, 7 – 8 p.m. Central Time on KFAI 90.3 FM Minneapolis and live on the web at www.kfai.org. Shows are archived for two weeks on line. Shows are also available via our podcasting site: www.writeonradio.libsyn.com
Librettists in Conversation: Friday, Nov. 20
Friday, November 20th 6PM EST
Join Margi, November 20th, 6pm EST, for the DOC Happy Hour: Librettists in Conversation - streaming LIVE on the Decameron Opera Coalition Facebook page and DOC YouTube channel!
Margi is proud to be one of the wordsmiths behind the ten World Premiere operas that make up the unprecedented streaming event, "Tales from a Safe Distance" sponsored by the Decameron Oper Coalition. Together they'll discuss the process, challenges, and discoveries that went into making an operatic film adaptation of Boccaccio's Decameron.
More about Margi’s creative contribution to "Tales from a Safe Distance" :
Inspired by The Decameron Day 4, Story 5 “Filomena’s Story”
Where is Basil, Rosemary’s boyfriend? He made like a tree and leaved. He made like a banana and peeled. He made like a bush and burned. He made like a pandemic committee meeting and Zoomed. Rosemary is worried their love has gone dormant (was it the lack of spice in their relationship?) but she’s staying planted in her tiny apartment. Her roommates, on the other hand, think Rosemary doesn’t need to cultivate that kind of baggage. Basil was deadwood! Everything Comes to a Head gives us some sage advice: if the roots of love are deep enough, it doesn’t matter if you’re in mint condition.
"Tales" is streaming on-demand until through Dec. 31st at decameronoperacoalition.org
All Writing is Political. Or is it?
There’s an argument to be made for that statement, but I’m not going to make it.
Especially since my realm is writing for young readers, I’m not going to opine about whether Creepy Pair of Underwear, in which Jasper Rabbit deals with a glowing pair of underwear that won’t go away, is politically motivated. Even if it is, (is that glow radioactive?) what a joy-sucking situation it would be if all literature for young people was politically motivated. And yet, a quick look at the NYT bestseller list for YA turns up, for instance, The Hate U Give, Stamped, and Dear Justyce.
It was George Orwell who stirred up the “all writing is political” conversation in the first place with his statement that “no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is in itself a political attitude.” This reason for writing—one of four, according to Orwell—stems, as he says, from “a desire to push the world in a certain direction.”
Rather than argue the point, I’m just going to skirt the whole question by saying I don’t know about anybody else, but my writing is political, in the sense that I do have a desire to push the world in a certain direction.
That said, I don’t set out to write about issues. I set out to tell a story.
But in stories, as in life, issues arise. As a writer (and as a human being) I can choose to ignore those issues, try to tackle them, or at least acknowledge that they exist.
In some of my books the issues take center stage: Village of Scoundrels (Amulet Books, 2020) is about a bunch of teenagers standing up to fascism in WWII France. Shadow on the Mountain (Amulet Books, 2012) has similar themes but is set in Norway. Sometimes issues aren’t at the center of the story, but still raise their ugly little heads. Even the very light-hearted The Littlest Voyageur (Holiday House, 2020) acknowledges that because of the fur trade (in which the voyageurs were engaged) beavers were driven to within a hairsbreadth of extinction.
The Silver Box—and the other two books of the Enchantment Lake mystery series, Enchantment Lake and The Clue in the Trees—take place in northern Minnesota, a wild place, full of lakes and forests. It is a resource-rich area, and consequently suffers from its share of issues: copper-nickel mining, pipelines, lakeshore overdevelopment, corporate potato farming (think water pollution from herbicides, pesticides and chemical fertilizers the next time you order fries at MacDonald’s), plant theft from public lands, climate change, and probably some other issues I’m not remembering at the moment.
These stories are not about these issues. Rather, the issues are an inherent part of the stories, because of the setting, but also because of me. Because I have a desire to push the world in a certain direction, and that direction is to take better care of our planet and each other.
Author’s note: This post was first published on www.ladyunemployed.com.
The Silver Box: Questions vs. Answers in Stories for Young Readers
Questions are often the inspiration for writing stories. At least they are for me. And questions always arise as you are writing, too. We write to find out, right? We write to try to understand something, and, really, I think, if the question is a really good one, it probably doesn’t have an answer.
My favorite kinds of questions are those that make us ponder, and mull, and maybe talk about with others.
These are the kind of questions I like to pose to the reader: why do some people triumph over adversity while others are crushed by it? What makes some people willing to risk their lives to help others? These are also questions that have inspired some of my historical fiction, including the recent Village of Scoundrels (Feb. 2020). Sometimes my characters ask the questions I myself wonder about:. What is our responsibility when terrible wrongs are being committed? Are we contributing to the problem if we don’t speak up?
Even though The Silver Box, as a mystery, is a little more light-hearted than some of my historical fiction, it still contains unanswerable questions. What if, my protagonist Francie wonders, her mother may not be who Francie hoped she would be? What if her mother is a criminal, and if so, is she, Francie, doomed to follow in her footsteps? How much are we shaped by our family and how much responsibility do we bear to our friends and family? Is it fair to involve her friends in what may be a dangerous adventure? Francie both longs to include them, yet doesn’t want to endanger them—what is the right thing to do?
I don’t attempt to “answer” questions like these, or to deliver a moral, or try to tie things up.
Life rarely, if ever, ties up neatly, and I usually try to leave the story showing the character moving forward with life, probably still with lots of questions, but also with hope! I guess I want my reader to know that life is full of questions, some of which will never be fully answered, and that’s okay. (The mystery, of course, is solved by the end of the story. That is nonnegotiable!)
Studies show that readers of fiction are more comfortable with ambiguity and with disorder and uncertainty—"attitudes that allow for both sophisticated thinking and greater creativity.” So I feel fine about posing questions that probably won’t be answered in the course of the story (at least not by me!) and leaving my young readers with questions of their own!
Author’s note: This blog post was first published on www.cksorens.com.
