photo by cappy hotchkiss
Julie Chibbaro is the award-winning author of three novels: Into the Dangerous World (Viking, 2015), about a girl artist on the NY streets in 1984, Deadly (Simon & Schuster 2011, Scholastic 2012), a medical mystery about the hunt for Typhoid Mary in 1906, and Redemption (Simon & Schuster 2004) historical fiction about a girl's unintended trip to the New World in 1524.
Into the Dangerous World was named a Junior Library Guild Selection, a 2016 Notable Social Studies Trade Book by the Children's Book Council, and was nominated for the North Carolina YA Book Award. Deadly won the 2011 National Jewish Book Award, and was Top 10 on the American Library Association's Amelia Bloomer Project list. It was named a Bank Street Best Book, and an Outstanding Science Trade Book by the National Science Teachers Association and is now part of many schools’ curriculum. Redemption was nominated for the Illinois HS Book Award, and won the American Book Award.
As a novelist, Julie has appeared on author panels throughout the country, has conducted many in-school author visits, and has taught at the Gotham Writers Workshop and The Highlights Foundation. She was a mentor for the PEN Prison Writing Program and through Poets & Writers grants. She is the founder of Get Lit Beacon (later Nightcap Newburgh), a reading series and literary salon. She currently works as the Managing Editor of Ethics & Human Research at the bioethics research institute The Hastings Center.
Julie has written for The Prague Post, The Montreal Gazette, The Poughkeepsie Journal, Hudson Valley Magazine, NY States of Mind, Books in Canada, SundanceTV, Tuttle Publishing, and many other venues. For the last few years, Julie has studied with master memoirist Beverly Donofrio. She studied writing at The New School, and with Sue Shapiro and Gordon Lish, among others. She received scholarships to study with Clark Blaise at the Prague Writers Workshop, and with Janet Fitch and Amy Tan at the Community of Writers. At the New York Writers Institute, she took a Master class with Marilynne Robinson and Ann Beattie. She is represented by the agent Jill Grinberg.
Into the Dangerous World was named a Junior Library Guild Selection, a 2016 Notable Social Studies Trade Book by the Children's Book Council, and was nominated for the North Carolina YA Book Award. Deadly won the 2011 National Jewish Book Award, and was Top 10 on the American Library Association's Amelia Bloomer Project list. It was named a Bank Street Best Book, and an Outstanding Science Trade Book by the National Science Teachers Association and is now part of many schools’ curriculum. Redemption was nominated for the Illinois HS Book Award, and won the American Book Award.
As a novelist, Julie has appeared on author panels throughout the country, has conducted many in-school author visits, and has taught at the Gotham Writers Workshop and The Highlights Foundation. She was a mentor for the PEN Prison Writing Program and through Poets & Writers grants. She is the founder of Get Lit Beacon (later Nightcap Newburgh), a reading series and literary salon. She currently works as the Managing Editor of Ethics & Human Research at the bioethics research institute The Hastings Center.
Julie has written for The Prague Post, The Montreal Gazette, The Poughkeepsie Journal, Hudson Valley Magazine, NY States of Mind, Books in Canada, SundanceTV, Tuttle Publishing, and many other venues. For the last few years, Julie has studied with master memoirist Beverly Donofrio. She studied writing at The New School, and with Sue Shapiro and Gordon Lish, among others. She received scholarships to study with Clark Blaise at the Prague Writers Workshop, and with Janet Fitch and Amy Tan at the Community of Writers. At the New York Writers Institute, she took a Master class with Marilynne Robinson and Ann Beattie. She is represented by the agent Jill Grinberg.
Our tiny house of steel is featured in my memoir Good Bones. Here's my husband Jean-Marc setting up the tiny house at an art exhibit.
Learn more about the tiny house on our blog.
Watch our tiny house videos here and here.
Interview with Julie:
* Did you always want to be a writer?
No. I wanted to be an actress (I went to the Fame school in NYC, Performing Arts, then to college for theater). I didn’t decide to become a writer till I was nearly 30. As a kid, I saw books as friends (okay, I didn’t have a whole lot of real friends, and books were rather nonjudgmental.) I read until late at night, when I’d fall asleep with the light on and get yelled at in the morning for wasting electricity (it was worth it). I got a job in high school to pay for the electric bill so I could keep reading. Later on, after my mother died when I was 27, I realized that writing and reading, two things I loved to share with her, were what came most easily and joyfully to me, and that's when I changed my focus.
* How much of your writing is based on your own experience?
In my fiction, I write about people from the past, sometimes the very deep past, which limits what I can use from my own experience. Still, everyone since the beginning of time has fallen in love, or hated, or been jealous, or has known extreme joy. So in that way, I use what I know in my work. The human element. Since my turn toward memoir, of course, all of my writing is based on my own experience, which is a very different feeling, a more vulnerable feeling, where I'm totally exposed in my truth. Somehow, that makes me feel even more centered in my writing, now that I've found the courage to tell my story.
* How does your spouse feel about your writing career?
My husband, the artist JM Superville Sovak, married me for my writing. But really, he’s my first reader and editor (and an artist for two of my books), and he doesn’t spare my feelings. I do the same for him in his artistic practice. We often fight about our work, but without him, I wouldn’t be much good, so I can't fight with him too much.
* What is your writing process like?
For historical fiction, when I’m looking for ideas, I will read voraciously, mulling over stories that I think might work for me (I need to really adore an idea before I’ll commit to it). Once I have an idea, I’ll read voraciously (again) to get a sense of the time period. While reading, I try to allow characters to surface, letting different voices in. When a voice, or main character, becomes clear to me, and I have an idea of their story, I’ll start writing. This process has changed dramatically since I started writing memoir, where the subject and the time period she lived in is me. That process is more like an internal opening, or many internal openings, until I understand what happened with a holistic perspective, and that's where I write from.
* What brings a character to life for you?
In fiction, mostly, it's when I can see both sides of a person – their strengths and weaknesses. They are alive for me when I can understand why they made certain choices. In Redemption, I understood Lily from the very beginning – how the pain of losing her father drove her to ask her mother to go to the New World, a very dangerous and frightening trip in 1524. In Deadly, it took me a little longer to get Prudence. The book was rewritten a number of times – first in a boy’s voice with an added story, then pared down, until I found Prudence. I understood her the moment I realized she helped her mother deliver babies in 1906 in crummy apartments in New York City’s Lower East Side. For Into the Dangerous World, I had been living with Aurora, in conjunction with another main character, for many years. It wasn't until my editor suggested I focus the book on her that it took its current shape. For Good Bones, the question was more about how to bring the past alive, and how to stay connected to the truth of that past, no matter how ugly or shameful that truth was.
* Do you have any advice for beginning writers?
Read books as a writer. Study what you’re reading to try to understand what works and why. Type out your favorite passages from books to see what it feels like to write well. Try stuff out, be willing to throw a lot of it away. Read your work aloud, either to yourself or to someone who won’t laugh at you. Find people who will tell you the truth about your writing, in a way that can help you improve without crushing your ego.
* What is the one book no writer should be without?
Roget’s Thesaurus. Writers tend to have ten favorite words they use over and over and Roget can help us out of that cycle.
No. I wanted to be an actress (I went to the Fame school in NYC, Performing Arts, then to college for theater). I didn’t decide to become a writer till I was nearly 30. As a kid, I saw books as friends (okay, I didn’t have a whole lot of real friends, and books were rather nonjudgmental.) I read until late at night, when I’d fall asleep with the light on and get yelled at in the morning for wasting electricity (it was worth it). I got a job in high school to pay for the electric bill so I could keep reading. Later on, after my mother died when I was 27, I realized that writing and reading, two things I loved to share with her, were what came most easily and joyfully to me, and that's when I changed my focus.
* How much of your writing is based on your own experience?
In my fiction, I write about people from the past, sometimes the very deep past, which limits what I can use from my own experience. Still, everyone since the beginning of time has fallen in love, or hated, or been jealous, or has known extreme joy. So in that way, I use what I know in my work. The human element. Since my turn toward memoir, of course, all of my writing is based on my own experience, which is a very different feeling, a more vulnerable feeling, where I'm totally exposed in my truth. Somehow, that makes me feel even more centered in my writing, now that I've found the courage to tell my story.
* How does your spouse feel about your writing career?
My husband, the artist JM Superville Sovak, married me for my writing. But really, he’s my first reader and editor (and an artist for two of my books), and he doesn’t spare my feelings. I do the same for him in his artistic practice. We often fight about our work, but without him, I wouldn’t be much good, so I can't fight with him too much.
* What is your writing process like?
For historical fiction, when I’m looking for ideas, I will read voraciously, mulling over stories that I think might work for me (I need to really adore an idea before I’ll commit to it). Once I have an idea, I’ll read voraciously (again) to get a sense of the time period. While reading, I try to allow characters to surface, letting different voices in. When a voice, or main character, becomes clear to me, and I have an idea of their story, I’ll start writing. This process has changed dramatically since I started writing memoir, where the subject and the time period she lived in is me. That process is more like an internal opening, or many internal openings, until I understand what happened with a holistic perspective, and that's where I write from.
* What brings a character to life for you?
In fiction, mostly, it's when I can see both sides of a person – their strengths and weaknesses. They are alive for me when I can understand why they made certain choices. In Redemption, I understood Lily from the very beginning – how the pain of losing her father drove her to ask her mother to go to the New World, a very dangerous and frightening trip in 1524. In Deadly, it took me a little longer to get Prudence. The book was rewritten a number of times – first in a boy’s voice with an added story, then pared down, until I found Prudence. I understood her the moment I realized she helped her mother deliver babies in 1906 in crummy apartments in New York City’s Lower East Side. For Into the Dangerous World, I had been living with Aurora, in conjunction with another main character, for many years. It wasn't until my editor suggested I focus the book on her that it took its current shape. For Good Bones, the question was more about how to bring the past alive, and how to stay connected to the truth of that past, no matter how ugly or shameful that truth was.
* Do you have any advice for beginning writers?
Read books as a writer. Study what you’re reading to try to understand what works and why. Type out your favorite passages from books to see what it feels like to write well. Try stuff out, be willing to throw a lot of it away. Read your work aloud, either to yourself or to someone who won’t laugh at you. Find people who will tell you the truth about your writing, in a way that can help you improve without crushing your ego.
* What is the one book no writer should be without?
Roget’s Thesaurus. Writers tend to have ten favorite words they use over and over and Roget can help us out of that cycle.