First Draft Episode #256: Elizabeth Acevedo
JUNE 23, 2020
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Elizabeth Acevedo, New York Times bestselling author of The Poet X, winner of the 2018 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Fiction, the CILIP Carnegie Medal, and the Boston Globe-Hornbook Award. She is also the author of With the Fire on High and Clap When You Land, out now!
Sarah Enni: First Draft is brought to you by HIGHLAND 2 a writing software created by John August screenwriter and cohost of the Scriptnotes podcast. Also, a guest on this very podcast, his episode is fantastic. And after talking to John and listening to hundreds of episodes of Scriptnotes, I heard him talk about developing this writing software, and I decided to give it a try. I just finished writing a first draft entirely in Highland 2, and I'm obsessed with it.
And here's why I love Highland. It's so simple, but it's still really powerful. There's one navigation sidebar. And within that sidebar, you have tons of different tools at your disposal. You can drag bits of text in there that you might want to come back to later, or you can monitor your stats like word count and page count, or new words and new page count. The main screen where you write is this simple, endless scroll of plain text. But with just a few keystrokes, you can add notes to yourself in-line, without them showing up in the final, automatically formatted version of your book. And you can export into many formats, including as a Word doc.
Highland 2 is clean, beautiful and organized, which is to say it didn't distract me. It just let me get in there and focus and write. I highly encourage you to go check it out. You can find it @highland2.app. That's Highland and the number two dot app. Or you can also find the link in this episode's show notes. And if you do try Highland and enjoy it, let me know. I'm so interested. I was tracking my progress on my first draft in the Instagram story feed. You can go in there and see my struggle, but Highland was the number one thing that people asked me. Everyone wanted to know what the software was that I was using, and this is it. So go check it out.
Sarah Enni: Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Elizabeth Acevedo, New York Times bestselling author of The Poet X, winner of the 2018 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, and The Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Fiction and many more awards. She is also the author of With the Fire on High and her most recent novel, Clap When You Land, out now.
I loved talking to Elizabeth and I loved what she had to say about how being competitive made her a better poet. How helpful and painful creative writing programs have been for her, and the burden of assumed autobiography. Everything Elizabeth and I talk about on today's episode can be found in the show notes. Those are @firstdraftpod.com.
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If you'd like to donate to First Draft, either on a one-time or monthly basis, you can do that at paypal.me/FirstDraftpod.
Track Changes has been appearing in the First Draft feed for a minute now. Those are the episodes in the mini series about traditional publishing in the U.S. So far, we've talked about Publishing 101, Agents, Selling Your Book from the perspective of the author and agent, and from the editor and publisher's point of view. And we recently got into how authors get paid.
This week's episode is all about contracts. We're gonna give you what you need so you can read your contract and understand it and go into any future negotiations with a really good sense of what everybody's talking about. If you're looking to get even more in-depth about publishing, I've also created the Track Changes newsletter where every Thursday I share more of the information I gathered in researching for this project. You can sign up for a 30 day free trial of the newsletter and learn more about both Track Changes projects @FirstDraftPod.com/TrackChanges.
Okay, now please sit back, relax, and enjoy my conversation with Elizabeth Acevedo.
Sarah Enni: So hi, Elizabeth, how are you?
Elizabeth Acevedo: I'm doing well, Sarah, thanks so much for having me.
Sarah Enni: Oh, I'm so excited to talk. I have a zillion questions, so let's dive into it. I like to start my interviews at the very beginning, which is where were you born and raised?
Elizabeth Acevedo: I was born and raised in New York City, in Morningside Heights.
Sarah Enni: How was reading and writing a part of growing up for you?
Elizabeth Acevedo: I've been writing for awhile. And even before I knew how to write, I was always interested in storytelling, and come from a family that tells a lot of stories. My earliest memory of reading, I was probably around five-years-old and my mom had this collection of short stories for kids that she was working with me. She was like, "Okay, we're gonna read these together." It felt like a massive collection. I remember looking at that book and being like, "It has so many pages. I'll never be able to read that."
And I said that to her one day and she said, "We're gonna start this together and I promise that by the end, you'll be finishing this book by yourself." And that's exactly what happened. I ended up, whatever that last story was, was a story that I read out loud to her. So I have this really special relationship to reading through my mother's efforts of ensuring that I loved literature. I mean, she would take me to the library every weekend. We had a lot of independent bookstores in our neighborhood and she never made it seem like I shouldn't or couldn't access those spaces.
Sarah Enni: I love that. I heard that your grandpa memorized riddles?
Elizabeth Acevedo: He did! I mean, it was incredible. He could really spin a riddle for like twenty minutes. And it's traditional in a lot of Latin American countries and certainly in the Dominican Republic to memorize these stories and these play with words and jokes. And so there's this elaborate kind of storyselling that were these riddles. I just remember being a kid, they came to the U.S., both my grandparents, when I was five. And he would walk me to school. And so the riddle telling was a big part of our walking to and from school. And my like, "Okay, what is he gonna be able to tell me today?"
Sarah Enni: I love that. Actually that's also so interesting that that's, I love thinking of riddles as a form of storytelling. And I love that you have the connection between physical movement and that kind of storytelling. That feels kind of significant.
Elizabeth Acevedo: Yeah. I think the oral tradition was definitely one that was big and made me perhaps early on start identifying that storytelling could be a lot of different modes. Right? I don't think I differentiated at that age of, "Well, this is not a real story." Like to me, the way that they spoke about where they were from and these very popular characters and these folk tales and riddles that would come up, that was as much as a real story and a narrative as whatever we were reading in school. And I'm really thankful for that.
Sarah Enni: I love you talking about your mom really supporting literature for you, and incorporating a library in your life. I read an interview with you where you said that your mom wanted you to be famous.
Elizabeth Acevedo: Oh! It's so funny. I don't know where she got this from, but I just remember as a kid, she had me in modeling classes and acting classes, and wanted me to be a news anchor. There was this really famous Dominican news anchor who would be on one of the Spanish channels. And she was kind of my complexion. And I think my mom just loved the idea of my, I don't know, being at the forefront of communication. You know what I mean?
So much of what they understand of this country is based off of what they can see on the Spanish language news. That's how they understand and can conceptualize what happens when they don't have enough English to grasp what's going on. And so I think for her, it was like, "My daughter can be that bilingual entryway for so many of us." Clearly that did not happen, but I think she is equally as proud as if I had been an actor.
Sarah Enni: I mean, it's so interesting to me and also it feels like such a gift. Everything you just listed, those are all skills that you are using now, I think.
Elizabeth Acevedo: I agree. And a lot of narratives of immigrants who come to this country is they want you to be a doctor or nurse or an engineer. And I kind of think it's special that my mom, to some capacity, was thinking of art in communication as just as important and potential career paths for me. But yeah, I am using a lot of the skills, maybe not the modeling as much, but all the other things are coming in quite handy.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And that leads me to, I just would love to hear, we're not gonna spend too long talking about slam necessarily, but I'm interested in how you got started learning about spoken word poetry and performing.
Elizabeth Acevedo: I started performing and writing long before I even knew what spoken word poetry was. And so for me, it was mostly just an extension of hip hop. I was writing rap songs, but not necessarily to beats, that I would memorize and say out loud. And so my earliest poems, were all rhymes and were all the appropriate amount of time that you would have for a three minutes song. Basically, that was my format like, " This could be a song one day."
And so that was the entry way. And when I went to high school, I joined the poetry club at the behest of a teacher. And I remember her asking me like, "Oh, you say that you write, you should join the club!" And I was like, "I am not a poet. I told you I'm a rapper." I thought it was this huge distinction. And like, "How dare she even try to bring me into her little poetry club?" But it ended up being one of the best things that could have happened. It was one of the first times that I got to really confront a lot of different kinds of styles and subject matters.
And every teacher knows that students learn so much from each other. There's just something about being in proximity to someone else who is also trying to grasp the information that you share with each other. And I think that that's what happened. I learned more from the other teen poets and what was possible, that I hadn't from any instructor I'd had until that moment. And so much of my early days of slam and of spoken word was really just watching other people and realizing, "Oh, there are no rules to how a poem could sound."
But it was through that club that I was encouraged to join the Urban Word Poetry Slam, which was a big teen slam in New York, still is a big teen slam in New York. And that kind of opened it up. I mean, I remember going to Nuyorican and getting on that stage and it was my first time competing and just becoming hooked with the energy of the room, with realizing that there were things other people said that made me want to cry. There were things I said that made people really emotional and just that connection of, "Oh, we are all here, and present, and receiving and offering work." I think that that for me was the beauty of a slam.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. It's super powerful and I'll link to, you have many videos on YouTube that people can watch you perform your poetry, and I'll link to a few of those. I'm interested in how speaking and performing poetry, I think a lot of writers read their words out loud, but not everybody performs it. And especially, I'm so fascinated by the idea of turning poetry into a competition, which I personally love. I love competing in all parts of life. But it sets a really different kind of edge to the work. I'm just interested in how you think your voice developed in that particular setting.
Elizabeth Acevedo: Yeah, I think it helps that I'm incredibly competitive. And so a lot of the early days of my participating in slam was a wanting to better my craft, was wanting to get tighter and clearer, and become a stronger performer and figure out the hills and valleys of my voice. I would study, and I think that the competitive aspect made me study. It made me try to realize, “What is it that people are connecting to? What is it they're not connecting to?”
And so it was kind of like a puzzle. "Can I figure out how to say the thing I'm trying to say in such a way that it elicits a response?" And that can be a catch 22, right? Because then you can train yourself to only be writing for that response. And I think that I had to wrestle with that, and it helps that I, in New York, once you make the teen team, you can't compete again to be a part of the teen team. Because there's so many young people competing that you only get the one chance once you've made it.
And so when I made it in my sophomore year of high school, I didn't compete again until I was an adult, ten years later. And so I had a lot of time where I could observe and watch and listen, but I wasn't in the limelight. And I think it helped me really break away from the idea of, "I have to delight audiences." Like, "I can challenge and I can make incredibly uncomfortable."
And it's not just about a really dope bar or a line. It is about, "I'm trying to create a cohesive piece." And so I think that the space gave me what I needed from it. And then my departure from that space also served me in many ways. And when I went back, I felt like I went back to slam on my own terms.
And so in 2004, I made the teen team in New York City. And in 2014, I made the adult team in Washington DC. But that ten year span taught me so much that by the time I went back to competition, I felt like I had been working towards refining my voice in a way that felt true. Does that make sense?
Sarah Enni: Yeah, it absolutely does.
Elizabeth Acevedo: I think it can be a really generative space, as long as you don't let the competition overtake the fact that you are trying to connect to other people. And I was lucky enough that my coaches and my teacher, the other people who supported me in competing, never let me lose sight of, "But say your thing in your way. Don't worry about a particular cadence. Don't worry about what you think an audience needs to do. Just worry about continuing finding your voice." And so I think if you enter with that way and that kind of guidance, it can be incredibly generative.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Wow. I really love that. That's so astute to note that like, if you were just focused on delighting audience, that changes subject matter, that changes attitude, that changes everything. Yeah. Oh, I love that. I also am very competitive. I do feel like there is, like you're saying, maybe it takes away some of the preciousness. Like a desire to improve means you sort of, if you see something's not working, you can maybe put it down a little bit easier if you're like, "I just really want to be better." Does that make sense?
Elizabeth Acevedo: It does make sense. I mean, I think that early on I would write a poem and I would think it was perfect and run out ready to perform it or ready to jump in site where, I would write a rap verse and I was ready, and there was something about the competition that made me realize like, "Oh, I have to revise. I have to sit with this over and over and over."
Because there is an expectation that an audience has when you get up on a stage of the quality of work. And I think it did remove some of the, "Oh, I don't want anyone to hear this." Once you decide to get on the stage and you grab the mic, there is a little bit of yourself that has to have ego and has to say, "Alright, well, if I'm here, I'm gonna take up space." And I needed that.
I kind of needed that push not to rush through my words and not to be too shy, to make eye contact. And just all of those kind of being comfortable in your own body practices that I had, I couldn't be precious with myself anymore. I kind of had to step up for the performance I knew I could give. And in many ways, almost that practice of confidence, that practice of, "I believe in these words," Made me be confident, made me believe in those words.
I remember feeling like there was a lot of integrity in getting on a stage and saying, "This is what I think." And then needing to live by that. Right? Like that was a really big thing when I was a teenager like, "If I say that these are the things I believe in front of audiences, then I have to walk the walk."
And so it kinda made me a better person because I would say these things out loud, I felt super accountable for my beliefs and my pushback. I mean, this was at the height of the Bush era. And so there was so much politically that I believed and thought that I was formulating, and then had to kind of, "Okay, well, I'm gonna read up on, and research, and be able to defend those points if ever someone questions that poem." So I became engaged in many ways because of, like you were saying, kind of stripping the preciousness away.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I want to lead into college and what you studied and kind of how your writing was progressing as you grew into adulthood there. Do you mind talking about, I heard that you created your own degree in undergrad.
Elizabeth Acevedo: I did. Yeah. And that was where I was going to start. And so it helps to know that I had already kind of moved away from slam a little bit, partly because of the opportunities that were available for me as a teen in New York at the time. But also because I was having some of these questions about competition and whether or not that still served my writing.
And so when I went to college, I wasn't interested necessarily in competing anymore, which is why I didn't get involved with the DC slam community here until much later. But I did want to keep performing. And I knew that I loved delivering my poems. I knew that I loved the writing that I was making and what felt like it was really representative of where I was from. And with what I assumed was a unique point of view, right? But I didn't know what I wanted to study.
And I learned that you can create your own major at the school that I was at, and some different universities have that program. And I remember I went to meet with the theater, the head of the theater department, and was like, "I'm thinking of transferring because I don't know if there's anything in this school that leans in the artistic direction I want to go in." And she's like, "Well, why don't we just make it up?" Like, "It sounds like you want to perform, which would be in the theater department. You want to write your own work, let's do something with English."
And so I pulled from the entire curriculum book. I found all the classes I would want to take. I basically made up my entire four year plan based off of, one day wanting to do a one woman show. Which I did for my honors thesis. But it was really my kind of... and a lot of my university experience was, "What is it here that I need in order to make?" And so I started a poetry club on campus. I participated in a couple of the plays and brought poetry into the regular theater productions, but figured out a way to finagle my way in. And so it was a lot of, "I know the creative pursuits I want to do. I'm going to figure out how to transform this space so that I can do them."
Sarah Enni: Ooh, I love that. And I love that you had another adult in the room helping to make sure your education could, you know, like in high school, having someone introduce you to the poetry club and having someone in college introduce you to creating your own major. Like those moments are so huge.
Elizabeth Acevedo: Yeah. I mean, I feel like I've had a couple of experiences that have been really challenging and made me question whether or not I felt like I should be in a space, but also had experiences with amazing mentors. And so Leslie Jacobson, who was the head of the theater department really kind of championing me was incredible. And kind of helped counter the moments in creative writing class, where I was being told, "This book is too urban, or these poems are too inner city." There was that balance of, "Well, here is another voice in academia who is actually saying, "No, what you are saying, and how you are saying it, is something worth working on." Just kind of stay the course.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I love that. And I do want to ask about, so at this time you kind of are able to craft a major where you can work toward a one woman show, but you're also still writing. What was your writing like at that time? And what were you exploring?
Elizabeth Acevedo: I was writing mostly poetry. And so I took every poetry course that one could take at my college. And so the one woman show I imagined would be through poems. I had studied Anna Deavere Smith, and Sarah Jones who both have one woman shows that use monologues and poetry. And so for me, that was the direction I thought I could see myself going in, but I was also taking fiction.
And actually the only formal fiction course I've ever taken was at college. So a lot of what I know, my foundations of at least writing fiction, were during that same time period. So I was exploring different forms, but very much also focused on poetry.
Sarah Enni: And yeah, I heard at that time, I read an interview where you said at that time you were getting pushback, as you just said, on your style or questioning whether to introduce Spanish. Can you talk a little bit about what it was like to encounter these like resistance to your work?
Elizabeth Acevedo: Yeah. And I mean, I think it happened both in my undergrad and in my grad school degree, in the pursuit of my grad school degree, where I think very well-meaning classmates and professors had a very particular notion of what poetry had to be and sound like. And so, you know, "This sounds way too much like slam. This sounds too inner city. This is really urban. Why does this Spanish word appear?"
Questions that one would ask in a workshop perhaps, but it wasn't like, "Oh, I wonder how this word being in Spanish is advancing the poem?" As much as it was, "Oh, I wonder why this word in Spanish was put here if the writer knew I would stumble." You know what I'm saying? Like the way that it was approached often felt like it was less about, "What is the project the writer is trying to do?" Versus, "What is the comfort of me as a reader that I need."
And when you are the only person of color in a room, when you're the only Afro decendent in the room, where you're the only Latina in the room, which was my experience both in undergrad and in grad school creative writing courses, "Yeah. Your comfort as a reader, actually, isn't my project. I have no idea what would make you comfortable because I am not you."
And so I am writing in a very particular direction and I felt like, you know, that came up often. And even in the most basic of levels like when you're doing your intros. And people are like, "Who's your favorite poet?" And everyone is naming folks that they read in high school. You know, I love Whitman, but like, "That's not your favorite poet, I'm sorry."
And it gets to me and, you know, I'm thinking of Nikki Giovanni and I'm thinking of Tupac. And I'm thinking of like, "Okay, who helped me formulate my writing? Lucille Clifton." And it felt like the writers I named weren't known, weren't considered as literary as the other folks mentioned. There were just these subtle moments that made me often feel, in those spaces, like, "I'm learning a lot here, but also it hurts to learn here." You know?
Which is a really strange thing, I think, to carry like, "I know this is serving me in one capacity because I am expanding what is creatively possible. I am crafting in new ways. I am reading a ton, but also I'm not sure it's supposed to be this painful."
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Do you think that you, I mean, because it seems like you were really resilient in the face of people like questioning? I like how you put it. It's really more of like their perspective is off. They weren't asking why you were making these intentional choices. They were sort of interrogating like, "Why is this not like what I'm used to seeing?"
But you seem to have come through that with a lot of resiliency. I just wonder if having the background in slam and performance and knowing that there was a community out there that connected with your work already, helped you get through that.
Elizabeth Acevedo: Yes Sarah. I think that's exactly what I was gonna say. I think you hit the nail on the head, right? I feel like having had so much affirmation as a young person, and being told what you have to say matters and visually knowing that I could move rooms, right? For whatever reason, I think it did help bolster a lot of my confidence, even at my lowest point, there was that little voice that, "But there are people who would find this work important." Like, "There are readers, there is an audience." And the thing is, you can forget that, right? We're talking about ten years later.
And so to some extent you can't rest on your laurels of what you did as a kid. But on the other end, there was that little bit of hope in me that, "Okay, if my writing could do that then, and my writing has grown and changed so much, it might still be able to do so now."
And I know of a lot of people who struggled through MFA programs, or who want to write, but really don't feel like they have something to offer. And I think it's like that budding confidence, how that was nurtured sometimes can be the impediment. And for me, thankfully, it was nurtured pretty well. And so even in the face of what felt like really difficult audiences and groups, I just kind of held onto, "I know..." Or rather, "I don't know, but I believe there is a reader who is going to connect with this work."
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I love that you had that. That's so important. And we both write for young people, and there's so much to be said for when, even one voice as a young person, you lift a young person up, they remember that. That leaves an impact.
Elizabeth Acevedo: And they might not even remember it was you. Right? Like, there are so many things that I believe are true about me, because someone said they were true about me. And this is super random and you don't even have to include it. But like someone once told me when I was shopping for a birthday dress with my mom like, "Oh, this Navy color is your color." And for like twenty years I thought like, "Navy is my color", because this person said it, this person in a clothing store.
So I think I really try to carry like, "What the weight of what we say to young people can do. Whether or not they remember it's us." And it's why I try to be so careful in my books of not presenting too many messages or what I fear is like my agenda. But when I do present a message, like, "Is this message rooted in love? Is this message one that if this young person carries for twenty years, I feel good about that."
Sarah Enni: Yes. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I very much relate to that. Offhand comments that you realize you've been accepting as truth way later in life, it's very real. I'm interested in having you guide me through this time of your life, because, you know, leading up to The Poet X, but I know that you were writing ferociously for many years before your debut book deal. So do you mind leading me to how you started writing books?
Elizabeth Acevedo: Yeah, so we jumped a little bit. So I did undergrad. I do a one woman show for my honors thesis. But I don't know what I'm doing next. And so everyone is applying to jobs, this is 2010, so we are kind of over the bump of the recession. But the jobs on the market were still, I mean, slim pickings for someone with basically an arts degree, right? And an untraditional one at that. Performing arts wasn't in high demand at the time.
And so I applied for Teach for America. I knew I loved young people. I had been mentoring, and doing teaching artists work. And so I felt like I could bring that familiarity and that experience and my love of reading and writing into a classroom. And I was placed in a school in Prince George's County, Maryland, which had a population of 78% LatinX, almost 20% Black.
They had never had a Latina teacher teaching a course subject. They had never had an Afro-Latina teacher teaching there at all. And so I'm in this space where my students reflect so much of my background growing up, but also of myself and my first gen experience, and my city experience, and they were struggling readers. They were not on reading level.
And there was this one student who one day looked at me, I asked her like, "You don't like reading any of these books. What kind of book can I get you?" She's like, "Where are the books about us?" Like, "Where are the books that look and sound like us?" And so the day this student asks me that, I kind of had to sit with... I had known that there was a lack of representation in the books that were coming out at the time. It never felt like there was enough, even when I was a reader.
And that's not to say there weren't books. Thankfully Jacqueline Woodson (author of Brown Girl Dreaming, I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This, and Red At the Bone), Walter Dean Myers (author of Monster, Scorpions, and dozens more books), Julia Alverez (author of Before We Were Free, Return to Sender, and more), and Sandra Cisneros (author of The House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek and many more), have been writing and kind of holding it down for years.
But it also felt like there hadn't been new voices in awhile. And not new voices that had been catapulted, right? Where we would know. Unless you were searching for it diligently, it wasn't the kind of thing where everyone is talking about the same kinds of books. Or books that my students knew about, or that I knew about.
And so I'm sitting with that and I get a call from a former teacher and mentor of mine named Phil Bildner (author of High Five For Glenn Burke, and Marvelous Cornelius: Hurricane Katrina and the Spirit of New Orleans) who writes middle-grade books. He just came up with an incredible novel called High Five for Glenn Burke.
And so he calls me, this is maybe 2012, so my second year of teaching. I have had this conversation with Katherine. I've kind of thought about my classroom. I did this whole drive to get more books into my classroom so the students felt like they had a high interest level reading. And he's like, "You know, Liz, I was wondering if you've ever thought about writing a novel?" Like, "There's a lot of demand right now for lyrical text."
And I had never even heard of like a lyrical novel. I had read some verse novels, but hadn't been moved by them the way that I wanted to. But all of a sudden it felt like from two different aspects of my life, I was sitting with this. Here's this student who's saying, "We need more books about us." Here's this mentor teacher who's saying, "I think you can write more books and that your voice has a place."
And so The Poet X, the early pages of that, was kind of my trying to find my place between these two pulls of folks telling me there was a need. And my trying to confront the fact that I didn't think I could write an actual novel. And I couldn't, is the truth. I got to 40 pages of The Poet X and had no idea where to go next, and had finished the book and realized, "Okay, I don't know how to do this."
And I started writing a fantasy novel in prose. Wrote 450 pages, finished that. It was terrible. I did National Novel Writing Month, the next year, and wrote With the Fire On High, a very, very early version of it. Again through prose. And then I went back to The Poet X. And so I was trying to teach myself how to write the book. I was trying to, "Okay, well, let me actually learn plot. Let me learn narrative. Let me learn what it means to conclude a project." And then I'm gonna return to this thing that I think might be really special.
And so while I'm doing this kind of experiment, I decided to apply to grad school. I'm also in a poetry program where I'm working on a thesis that ended up being my first collection of poetry. But I'm struggling. I'm struggling with feeling like I don't belong in this space. And so the YA, the young adult writing and the fiction which was not the program I was in, became almost like this respite.
And so on the Metro or late at night or in the mornings right before grading, I would work on fiction. Because it felt like, "This is not a thing that's gonna be workshoped. This is not a thing that's for anybody to judge. This is a thing that I am experimenting with to see if I can offer that former student, and that mentor, something that I think I can make." Right?
And so with my throwing everything at the wall. So I had, by the time I graduated, the Chapbook was done. I had that fantasy novel that nothing will ever happen with cause it's awful. But I also had a first draft of With The Fire On High. I had a first draft of The Poet X. I had the initial playing around with Clap When You Land. And so I used that time, where no one was checking for me, to teach myself how to write.
Sarah Enni: Oh, I love that. Okay, there's a little bit I want to dig into now.
Elizabeth Acevedo: That was a lot, I'm sorry [laughs].
Sarah Enni: Oh, I love it!
Elizabeth Acevedo: That story kind of meanders a bit, but I think it is really important because some folks think I write fast. And that is not true. I write diligently and have since 2012. And so, I think sometimes people feel like they have to move at a really quick pace. I was just able to do so, because I had a lot of projects under my belt.
And I like to reiterate that for the writers who are taking their time, right? Art doesn't need to be sped up for the market. If it happens, that's great. But I know I'm at a point now where I don't have any drafts under my belt and it's gonna take time. And I'm okay with slowing down, despite feeling like people are telling me like, "Speed up." Because the work takes time. This is eight years for those three books to come to fruition.
Sarah Enni: Yes. And I really appreciate you speaking to that because I definitely, it's so funny, I was living in DC and starting to write. The book that I'm writing right now, that I hope to go on sub with in a few months. I started writing in 2012 on the Metro in little windows of time. And like you said, I wrote a bunch of books, and then my first one came out and I was like, "Whew! Well, I got like four or five back here that are in varying degrees of shambles."
Elizabeth Acevedo: Right! Right, right!
Sarah Enni: So I appreciate you kind of illustrating that. And I love what you're saying. Diligent. That's such an important word for writers.
Elizabeth Acevedo: Right. Because not all of it became a thing. Like there were hundreds of thousands of words that will never see the light of day, but I think that that's part of that diligence. I'm not actually sure what I'm going after, but I know that I need to, to see what I'm capable of. I think sometimes people want the goal of like, "The book is gonna do this big thing." But for me it was more of like, "I just need to know I can see projects through, and can figure out what this is later." And that was the diligence of like, "I'm gonna just do my word count every day, and see what happens."
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I love that you started with a fantasy novel. That is so amazing.
Elizabeth Acevedo: [Laughs] Me too, until I finished it, and I realized, "Oh, this is whacked!"
[Both laugh].
Sarah Enni: So it's really interesting to me that a light kind of came on and thinking, "I'll tackle a novel." That you leapt into prose. I mean, not only are you talking about writing a novel, but a fantasy. I mean, you really gave yourself a 401 level challenge, right out of the gate.
Elizabeth Acevedo: Yeah. And for someone who doesn't plot, it was like, "You have to plot a fantasy novel." I mean, unless you're like, you know, Jordan Martin, right? You have to kind of think through the world building. I think completing something that at points felt like an impossible task was probably the best way to get my feet wet. Because everything after that feels a little bit easier.
And a novel in verse is a hard thing to hold in your head. Because it's so many pieces of poetry, that there were times that I really couldn't remember like, "Where in the plot is the character? Physically, where is the character?" Right? Because I've been in her head, but there hasn't been action. So trying to hold all of those pieces of metaphor and figurative language, and, "Have I said this metaphor already?" It can be a really kind of scattered brain project.
But I think having to have dealt with magic and a larger cast in a world that I was making up, made that task feel manageable in a way that might've been different if I only pursued that one type of writing from the beginning.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. That's amazing. And the other thing I would love to hear you speak to is, poetry is, I mean, it can be totally unrestrained and break a lot of rules, but it does have rules and structure. And there's a lot of constraint within the form in some ways. I wonder, did you feel like it was freeing to go into prose a little bit? Or, were you trying to find restraints there? Or what was that like?
Elizabeth Acevedo: No, I felt prose was a lot harder. I'm a lot more insecure about my prose and partly, I think it's just experience. I've just been writing poetry for a lot longer and have a lot more confidence since a kid, that I could do that. I feel like with prose, I always felt like I don't know enough grammar. I don't know enough sentence structure.
Which is funny, but also like, this kind of a chip on my shoulder of like, "I never learned the rules. My schools didn't teach me the rules. And I can't do this unless I know the rules." So I think partly what stopped me from feeling like I could write a book was, even as an English teacher, feeling like, "I just don't have enough of a grasp of the formalities of writing." Right?
And so I think partly jumping into prose was my saying, "Well, if this is the thing you are most afraid of, let's figure it out." And it's probably why those first two books I completed were in prose was just my saying, "You can do this in any form, including the one you want to do. But this one that feels incredibly difficult too." And once I kind of figured out, "Good writing is good writing, and you can teach yourself anything. But voice is really difficult to teach." And that I had.
I felt a little bit more comfortable. But yeah, I think it was the challenge of the sentence that I was moved by. The poetry then felt like the easier thing. "Okay. Now that I've figured out how to do what I consider a traditional book, a traditional novel, let me go do that really kind of off the wall thing that I was attempting from the beginning."
Sarah Enni: Oooh, I love that. And that's so funny because to me, poetry seems so intimidating.
Elizabeth Acevedo: Me too! [Laughs]
Sarah Enni: It's so pared down.
Elizabeth Acevedo: Yeah, for sure.
Sarah Enni: But amazing. So I think, so Beastgirl and Other Origin Myths, you said that was your thesis project, is that right?
Elizabeth Acevedo: Yes. Although that was also my fantasy novel. So the fantasy now that did not pan out, that I thought was awful, ended up becoming all of these different poems. And so Beastgirl came from the thesis that came from the failed fantasy novel.
Sarah Enni: Oh, I love that kind of reusing and sticking with some elements of those stories. That's really beautiful. And I apologize for not really understanding this, but that was a Chapbook that was released by an indie press. Is that right?
Elizabeth Acevedo: Yes. So I'm sorry. Yeah. So Chapbook, for folks who don't know, is kind of like the mixed tape within poetry. And so it's only twelve poems as opposed to a full collection. And it's usually closely aligned to like one theme. So it's like a sampling of like, "We don't need a whole collection for this, but here's just a handful of poems touching on a subject."
And so I submitted to a couple of contests and it got selected by YesYes Press as one of their finalists and they agreed to publish it. So it not considered a full length, which is why a lot of people don't know about it. It's not pushed in the same way, but it is the only collection of poetry I have, is just that little slim volume.
Sarah Enni: Do you mind telling me how The Poet X, you mentioned it was an ongoing project, do you mind telling me how you went back to it and actually got it to be published to be your debut novel?
Elizabeth Acevedo: Yeah, so I started it in 2012, and then did a bunch of other things. And in 2016 is kind of when I felt like, "Okay, I think I'm the writer I needed to be when I first started this. I think I can go after it." And I have a friend, and I am part of a couple of different writing collectives and groups, but my friend, Clint Smith, we were kind of talking about like, "What is the wildest thing you could do this year?" It was the beginning of 2016. Like, "What are the big ass moves we're gonna do?" And so everybody's kinda going around the circle, like "We're gonna do..." And I just remember being like, "I'm gonna finish this fucking novel. And I'm not just gonna work on it, I'm gonna finish it."
So this is probably like January 6th of 2016. I pretty much lived with that novel. I remember I was touring and I would take the printed out manuscript with me and sit in the green room and edit before going on stage. And then get off stage and while I was waiting for however I was gonna go back to the hotel, like, "Just keep editing." You know, it was just, "This is the thing I am breathing and eating and sleeping and living with. And I'm going to teach myself how to do this."
By March I had given it to beta readers, so this was like two-and-a-half months later. By April, or by middle of March, really, I had submitted it to an agent that I had been in contact with for awhile. And the book went to auction in mid May.
Sarah Enni: Whoa!
Elizabeth Acevedo: So once it was fast, it was really fast. But I had also had the premise. I'd been sitting with the character for years at that point. And it was a little bit of a Cinderella story. The agent who I sent it to, the very first and only agent I sent the manuscript to, accepted it. And then eight out of, I think the ten editors she sent it to, participated in the auction. I mean, by June 6th I was with Harper. And so it was very quickly, very much a Cinderella story, but also a lot of timing that went into it.
Sarah Enni: Right. Those ten year overnight success stories [laughs].
Elizabeth Acevedo: Right! Right, right, right.
Sarah Enni: Before we talk in more detail about The Poet X, do you mind pitching that book for us?
Elizabeth Acevedo: Oh goodness. I think The Poet X is one of the hardest books for me to pitch. Like the other two have very clear plot dynamics. I mean, The Poet X is a story of a young, Dominican American growing up in New York City who is a secret poet, Xiomara Batista. And she has a fraught relationship with her mother and with religion. And is kind of trying to figure out how she can take up space in the world, and how she can grapple with her own kind of womanhood, the kind of woman she wants to be.
But it's a hard pitch, right? Cause plot-wise, it's like, "It's a girl with a lot of feelings, and a little boo, and a mom who's wild." I wouldn't say a lot happens, but I think you get to sit with interiority of a young Black woman who is of the Caribbean and of the Latin American diaspora. And I think it was both a window and a mirror for a lot of folks.
Sarah Enni: Yes, yes, absolutely. I mean, it's stunning. I want to ask about, I read that you said you self plagiarized, you looked at your own high school diaries.
Elizabeth Acevedo: I did. I totally did. I keep all of my journals. And so I went back in when I was writing, and part of it was calibration. I think partly when I left with my MFA and had been working on my Chapbook, a part of me wondered if the voice felt like... almost to learned, right? Like if I'm writing from a fifteen-year-old, like there are going to be ways that she writes and words that she uses and metaphors that are gonna be different than my own.
So I had to put aside my ego of like, "I just want to flex on the page." And like, "I just want to make sure I'm barring up." Because that's not the point. The point is her poems from the beginning to the end do change. She does evolve. She does learn more.
And so I needed to show that progression. And so the journal entries kind of helped me look at, "Oh, how was I writing as a fifteen-year-old? And does that fit in? Does some of that language fit in?" And I edited it, of course, in order to buff it up, to make it feel a little tighter. But I'll say there are a handful of poems that I kind of just lifted directly and used as that way to ensure I'm not talking down. And I'm also not talking over any young people.
Sarah Enni: Yes. And I loved hearing that you were able to use your young voice in that way. Because it sort of is a great way of getting at the difference between writing as a teen versus writing for teens. And that's sometimes lost, I think, even when we're talking to young adult writers, you know?
Elizabeth Acevedo: Yeah. I mean, I think if you're writing YA, it helps to speak with young people. And so I try my best to like, keep my ear very to the ground. And then try to really listen when teens are talking. And what are they listening to? And I'm not on TikTok, but like, "What's the latest trend." I think it's just important to actually engage with actual kids. I don't know how you write for a population that you don't attempt to keep up with.
Sarah Enni: Right. Or are like scared of, or intimidated by.
Elizabeth Acevedo: Or don't like! The number of authors that I've met that I'm like, "I'm not entirely sure you even like young people." And so I just try to keep love at the forefront. And also, I think there's so much creativity in how young people talk. There's so much turn of phrases and the way that language evolves. I think it evolves at light-speed when you're a teenager. I mean, you are just making up verbiage with your friends. You are making up your own internal language in a way that happens in any relationship, it happens when you're older.
But there is, I think, something about just how much information you're receiving in those teen years and then how you are trying to formulate language around it, that I think is super creative. So just at that level, like, I'll hear a piece of slang or a new term that young people are using, I'm like, "There's so much texture there." So I'm also just, at the level of the line and of language, I'm really fascinated by listening to young people.
Sarah Enni: Oh yeah, no, I love that too. And I love that in writing for young adults, we get to do... I think we were maybe the first category to be like, "No, you need to learn how to format a text message in this book." Like, "We need to start putting all caps, and text messages, and DM's and everything." And like, "You gotta figure out how to put this on the page, cause this is how we're communicating."
So, you know, we're talking about you incorporating a lot of your younger self and younger perspective, but I want to ask about how... about the burden of assumed autobiography.
Elizabeth Acevedo: Yes, let's talk about it.
Sarah Enni: I mean, I would love to hear what you think about it. Cause I know women, in particular, are always asked about whether they're books are them in a way that men are not. And then writers of color, I think face this double, you know, exponential. So how has that been a factor for you with this book?
Elizabeth Acevedo: Yeah, I mean The Poet X, it's like the number one question I get both in interviews and at events like, "Is this you?" And I've tried to be thoughtful. Partly what I think it is, is that people really feel for Xiomara and and hurt for her. And so they want to know like, "Is what I felt for her... should be extended to you." Right?
I think sometimes, particularly when it's young people, it's that there might be something shared in some of the trauma that Xiomara faces. And so I think they want to know like, "Are you someone who has also faced this thing that potentially I'm facing?" I think sometimes it's just like wanting that affirmation. But I think sometimes it's just a blind curiosity of the titillation of what happens in the book, and wanting to map it on to me.
Like now this person I'm seeing like, "I want to know the secrets of your life. And I know the secrets of this book. And so this unlocks that." And that's where I kind of just feel like I don't know the why of the question, you know what I mean? Like I think what I'm getting at in this answer is that the why of it being asked matters to me. And yet I don't get that when that question is asked.
So I just have to make assumptions about where the curiosity stems from. And some I'm more inclined to care about. And some, I just... that's just reading. Like that's just reading. You empathize with a person who does not exist. And for me, it's hard, right? Because it feels like I'm having to defend a lot.
I'm having to say, "No, that's not my mom. No, that's not my exact experience. No, that's not how I was treated." In a way that feels like it does a complete disservice to... you can be creative and make up characters that are related to, or in conversation with, or inspired by things that have happened in your past, without that being an autobiography. And in fact, I would argue all fiction, at some point, has to borrow from people you know, and language you've used, and scenarios you've been in. Whether it feels like your own life or not, you are borrowing to make.
You know, your aunt will end up in an interesting character. This one quirk your best friend has ends up in this teacher figure. Like you just give things to your books. But it is this strange moment of, I gave a lot to Xiomara that was of myself, but no that story is not me. And how can I say that in a way that doesn't feel disingenuous? You know, like people definitely think I'm lying like, "Oh no, it's autobiography-lite." And I'm like, "All right, well then don't ask!"
Sarah Enni: And I think that's such an important distinction you're making between people who ask that kind of question from an empathetic point of view, or a connection point of view. That looking for maybe someone who is a safe place to connect with in that way. Versus it seems to me like a laziness, like if someone is able to say, "Oh, this is just a book about Elizabeth." Then they don't have to do the critical reading or the critical analysis. It prevents them from looking at it as literature in this way.
Elizabeth Acevedo: Right, right. Like there were very deliberate choices that had to be made. And I think I get that question less when I actually talk about the process. Like when I say, the middle of the book, there's a moment where she is comparing herself to an aunt, and she's kneeling on rice was actually what I had perceived as the ending of the book. And I wrote that whole section in a separate workshop thinking it was gonna be a different book.
I was given the word hagiophobia as a prompt. Everybody had to pick a phobia out of a hat and I happened to pick hagiophobia, which is a fear of saints and relics. And so much of what The Poet X relies upon, which is this questioning of religion, was completely pulled out of a hat... literally. You know what I mean? And so when I think I describe the process of the happy surprises of building the book, and people realize like, "Oh, there were deliberate choices, but there's also just happenstance." Like, "This was constructed." You know, it's not just like I penned what happened to me. This was a construct. Then I think that complicates how folks approach the question of autobiography.
Sarah Enni: Okay. I want to ask about, so The Poet X comes out and it won the Printz Award and the National Book Award, and many, many other awards. I want to ask about what that experience was like for you. Because it's, of course, amazing, and it's an incredibly gorgeous book and all those awards are so well deserved. But I know that winning awards and being caught in a whirlwind of that, I would imagine that could also be very overwhelming.
Elizabeth Acevedo: It was. I mean, I think it's one of those things that, it's kind of difficult to talk about candidly, because on the one hand I recognize what every award did for the book, and did for my career. I recognize that in some instances like the Carnegie Medal in the UK, I'm the first person of color to ever win that award.
That the Printz Award I won exactly eighteen years, or something, after Angela Johnson won for The First Part Last, which was dedicated to me. And so it felt like there was a lot of meaning behind every single award and every single list. And like I was granted a space in literature, and in young adult literature, that felt like it's a difficult one for a lot of folks from my background to get, right?
While at the same time trying to hold at the forefront, that the awards do not matter to me. So I'm juggling, well they matter. They matter to the world. And they matter in terms of the doors they open, but also what does it mean that I might feel like I have to write differently now because of the awards. Or like the expectations of me are different now. Or like my audience has different desires.
But also that like, "Am I more of a real writer because of these stickers?" You know? And I don't think that's true and if it hadn't won anything, I would still be proud of this book. And so I have to toggle, right. That, like, it means a lot to the industry. And I know as a kid who used to run into stores and would see the stickers on things and feel like, "Oh, that is an indication that that is a good book."
Like I know what it does, but as the creator, I've had to kind of remove myself from just thinking about it. And I'll be very honest, I won the National Book Award November 15th, I think. And November 17th, I was at a book festival where they released the ARC for With the Fire on High. And it was one of the most overwhelming experiences of my life to be celebrating one book and also about to push a second book into the world and realize, "Oh, the comparisons begin today." Like not even a day after this massive celebration.
And it's scary, right? It's scary to think people want something from me. And I'm not going to give you that again. Like I refuse to write the same book over and over. And so what could that mean for my career if I kind of figured out, "This is the formula." Or, "This might be the thing." And I'm also rejecting that at the next turn of like, "Well, I didn't write for the formula, so we'll just see what happens." If I kind of just keep following the voice inside of me that's like, "Okay, now the next thing. Now let's keep experimenting. Now let's keep playing out what else is possible?"
Sarah Enni: Yes. And it's that's exactly where I'm kind of coming from with the question is like, as a creative person, there's so much that happens with the door closed by yourself, you know? And then once you open the door and air comes in, it's beautiful and wonderful, but some of the magic is gone. And you were thrust into a spotlight, the brightest hottest spotlight, right away with your first book. And that's just really remarkable, you know?
Elizabeth Acevedo: Yeah. And it's that, I think if nothing else, that it is a multitude of feelings, right? I am grateful and I am skeptical. It is a lot of things. But the one that I've been trying to protect most is my not creating comparisons between my own work and my not letting the shine of one book make me feel like, "Well, I'm never gonna be able to do that again. And so why even go for it." Which with a debut that did what The Poet X did, there were moments that's kind of like, "Nothing I ever write is going to compare to whatever it is that's happening, that people are responding to this book in this way." And so like, "What does it mean to keep putting out work anyways, if what you think is your brightest thing is already behind you?"
And I feel like that was a really important kind of journey. And I'll say I'm maybe still on that journey of, "I refuse to lower my voice, or to say that the stories don't have merit, because I am attempting different things." Right? Like I'm gonna trust that my readers need different things from all of these books. And that I don't even know what I might make and how it might resonate. And so why shoot myself in the foot, when anything is still possible?
And if I could tie it back into slam, I know I've been talking a lot.
Sarah Enni: Oh, please, please!
Elizabeth Acevedo: I will say that I think the practice of getting up on a stage and getting a standing ovation or getting a perfect ten, and then getting up on a stage and getting an eight, and then getting up on a stage and getting a nine, or getting a ten again, like I think the process of making and putting out into the world and receiving feedback right away, kind of made me really resilient in the face of what was really big success. Of like, "Well, the next book might be an eight or a ten, or whatever." But I know that whenever I've thought, "This is the best poem I could have ever written." That wasn't true.
Even if it was the most popular poem, I know why I'm making and putting work into the world and what the making does for me. And so I think it helped to be able to have that to fall back on. That like, "I know what my process is and if I had stopped with my first really good poem, I never would have written a book."
Sarah Enni: Right, right. Oh, I love that. I think that's such a good comparison to say, having the experience of getting up on stage, like anyone who's even been in a play knows some nights you have it and you just can't do anything but spit fire, and other nights,you're like, "What was that?"
Elizabeth Acevedo: And it's the audience. And it's timing. There's so many factors that sometimes aren't even a poem. And then there's the poem that does well, regardless, that you realize, "Okay, there was something I said here that was truthful. And so it will work in any space." And that's what I'm going after. I want to write the thing that is so honest and so truthful that in any time period, in any moment, it still sings. And so like, "Let's do that."
Sarah Enni: So actually, do you mind just doing the real quick lead up to, bring us to, Clap When You Land.
Elizabeth Acevedo: All right. So With The Fire on High, came out a year and two months after The Poet X, and it was in prose, very short prose. And it's the book of a teen mother who wants to be a chef. And my exploration there was like, "Can I write a different country? Can I write Spain? And can I write a different city?" Right? So it's based in Philadelphia.
And so still kind of trying to reinvent and trying to push what I thought I could do. And then Clap When You Land was the book that initially had been slotted to be the second novel, but it wasn't ready. And I knew it wasn't ready. And partly it was because when I finished the book, I only had it from the point of view of one character. And I remember talking with Ibi Zoboi this must've been maybe 2017.
And I'm telling her, "I just finished this manuscript. And I don't know, something is missing, like the heart of it. Like I'm not moved by it, but I know the premise is dope." And she was just so quick and was like, "Yeah, you need the other character." Like, "We need the sister, we need the sibling." Like, "Why doesn't that sibling speak?" And it just opened up the doorway for that book.
And when I started writing Camino's perspective, it changed the whole story. And in case folks don't know, Clap When You Land is based on true events. A plane crash that happened in 2001, two months after the planes that were flown into the World Trade Center. So November 12th, a plane full of Dominican's, crashes in New York City, about three minutes after taking off, and killed over 280 people. And it rocked my community.
And I remember I had friends who had a father on that plane. My father's friend from the barbershop was on that flight. And all throughout New York, people were responding to the fact that it seemed like everyone knew someone who was on that plane. So I've sat with that kind of moment in history for years knowing I wanted to commemorate. And I wanted to think through what it means to have really public tragedy and also intensely personal loss.
And so the story, Clap When You Land, is about these two sisters who lose their father in a plane crash. One lives in the Dominican Republic, one lives in New York. And neither one of them knows that their father basically had a secret family, right? That he had them both, but they don't know about each other. And so Clap When You Land is a story that's almost been twenty years in the making, but also several years of just trying to get it right.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And it is very ambitious. And I know we have to wrap up, but I'm glad you brought up the two points of view because that was what struck me just totally over the head while reading, was like, "This is absolutely incredible with verse to create such distinctive points of view and voice." What was that like?
Elizabeth Acevedo: It was really hard. It was really hard. And probably because it was written in Yahaira's point of view the whole way through. And so I had to then go back in and refine her voice. "Okay. She's from New York. So she's gonna talk a little more clipped, a little more staccato." Like, "Her sentences are gonna be shorter." I have her written in couplets, I want to say. And so visually, how do I make her distinct? So all of her work was kind of like The Poet X, right? There was no particular form.
So I had to go back in and create very clear containers. So one of them is random couplets, the other one is random tercets. But Camino, you'll notice has a lot more long sentences, more run-on imagery, less punctuation throughout, a lot more random idioms. And so it was also partly, "How do I capture this more Island cadence and particularly this part of the coast, how it talks. And then their metaphors, right?
I gave them very distinct kind of buckets they could pull from. So Camino wants to be a swimmer. She also wants to be a doctor or, she is a swimmer and she wants to be a doctor. So for me, her metaphors came from place, the Dominican Republic, but also healing and the ocean. Yahaira wants to be, or was a chess player, and doesn't know what she wants to be, but she's deeply in love with her girlfriend who is also her next door neighbor. She's also someone who is paying attention to what's happening in New York. So her metaphors come from chess and come from love. And what does loving look like? What does it mean to paint someone's nails? What does it mean to braid someone's hair?
So a lot of intimate touching and smaller moments that are particular to her. And then also very much like Central Park and buildings and scaffolding and the language of a city. And using that to fuel the figurative language that I use to build her voice. So I had to be really intentional. And I'll say that it's probably the one thing that stopped me from, or that I kept wanting to go back to. My editor had to pull the book from my hands cause the number one question was like, "I just don't know if I've gotten them distinct and right."
Sarah Enni: Oh, well. I did feel like it was really successful. So at least from my perspective, I think you really nailed it.
Elizabeth Acevedo: Oh, thank you. I do appreciate that. And I appreciate just how much we talked about craft. I feel like it's so often something I'm not asked about, and yet I have so many thoughts.
Sarah Enni: So much to say, yeah. Oh my gosh.
Elizabeth Acevedo: I've worked so hard at these little things. So thanks for getting really granular.
Sarah Enni: Oh my gosh. No, my absolute joy and thank you for all your time today. I really appreciate being able to speak with you.
Sarah Enni: Thank you so much to Elizabeth. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @Acevedowrites. And follow me on both @SarahEnni (Twitter and Instagram) and the show @FirstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram). This show is brought to you by HIGHLAND 2 the writing software by writers for writers.
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Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jason Reynolds; Creator of Sex and the City Candace Bushnell; YouTube empresario and author Hank Green; Actors, comedians and screenwriters Jessica St. Clair and Lennon Parham; author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast Linda Holmes; Bestselling authors and co-hosts of the Call Your Girlfriend podcast, Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow; Michael Dante DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish and co-host of the Sciptnotes podcast; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.
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