I first met Laurel at Bread Loaf several years ago, when she’d won a waiter scholarship there. I saw her again a few years after that at the AWP conference. It was three months after her first son was born, and she looked FANTASTIC. Seriously–she looked so gorgeous and put-together and well-spoken, I thought, wow, maybe this motherhood thing isn’t so hard after all! (I’d yet to become a mother at that point.) Fastforward in time, to three months after my daughter was born….and I looked like I’d been run over by a lawnmower. My hair resembled Bon Jovi’s and I could barely remember how to spell or pronounce the word “the.” So I’ve since been convinced Laurel is superhuman. When she told me she was doing a blog tour for her first middle-grade novel, Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains, I was happy to be a part of it.

Laurel is also a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Michener-Engle fellow, and her books also include two collections of poetry, “The Myth of the Simple Machines” (No Tell Books) and “Daphne & Jim: a choose-your-own-adventure-biography-in-verse” (Burnside Review Press), as well as a picture book, “inside the Slidy Diner” (Tricycle), and an anthology of essays, “Half/Life” (Soft Skull Press). Her children include Lewis and Mose.

So keep reading to find out more about balancing motherhood, looking fab, writing books, and, most importantly, who are the sexiest poets and YA and children’s authors today.

What inspired Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains? What was the writing process like?

Ha! It was inspired by having too much time on my hands. I was on a poetry fellowship and I discovered that writing poetry all day every day will make a girl NUTS! One night I began to tell my husband (then boyfriend) a bedtime story, and it just refused to stop. But I should also add that I was very frustrated with the academic community at that time, and I’d found a lot of inspiration (not to mention comfort) in re-reading books I’d loved as a kid, fiction as well as poetry. I was spending increasing amounts of time in the children’s library in Iowa City, so it wasn’t a shock when this began.

The process was painfully slow. It took almost a year to write 70 pages, head down, working a few hours every few days. And then it took another 2 years to revise that draft. And then it took six years of edits and drafts and disappointing mailboxes to get to this point. But I should say that when I began I knew NOTHING about writing long prose. Nothing! So this book functioned, in a lot of ways, as an exercise for me– it taught me POV and arc and all that silly stuff poets don’t need to know.

I loved your blog pieces about the snobbery among adult authors towards children’s books. Any particular instances of encountering the stigma that you’d like to discuss?

You know, I’ve ranted a lot about this topic, and I think it isn’t that people are critical so much as condescending. They say things like, “Oh, fun!” I wonder how often people say “Oh, fun!” to adult writers. The assumption is that writing for adults is serious, and writing for kids is a breeze. Often I get the question, “So, are you going to write a novel someday?” People don’t understand that the craft lessons are mostly the same. It’s true that some children’s books are short, but some are long. Some are heavy. Some are really really complex. Mine isn’t especially, and maybe I’m a bad advocate for that reason. But what it really makes me want to do is write a HARD book for kids, not a grownup novel.

How do you balance motherhood, writing, and emailing/blogging?

I don’t do it very well. I’m kind of a cyclical person. I go through phases of being really motivated to write, or nest, or promote. And I tend to listen to those instincts. So like, right now I’m not working on a book because I’m really into fingerpainting. Next month I’ll get a sitter for 4 days a week and write like a demon. I also do a lot of multitasking– writing in the car when the kids knock out in their carseats. I email, blog and twitter during naptime. Most of all I try really hard not to get mad at myself for what I don’t do. There was a month this spring where I stopped cooking and we ate sandwiches for dinner every night. Being a mom is important to me, but being a housekeeper is not.

We saw each other at AWP three months after your first son was born and you looked fantastic. Any secrets to share about how to look gorgeous, speak well, and be a cool functional person with a newborn?

Well, let me say I was a MESS that weekend. I really regretted leaving so soon, but I had sworn to myself before the baby came that I’d still do AWP, and I think I was trying to prove something to myself. I had been pumping so I could be gone so long, and left behind 100 ounces of milk or something. But because of that I was overproducing, and so I leaked all through the conference.

Oh, and I was only skinny because I’d had gestational diabetes. I actually got onto a really healthy diet during that pregnancy, and I keep saying I’m going to go back on it. But we’ll call this a lesson in appearances being deceiving. I was a leaking miserable diabetic, and you saw a confident functional person. We’re all too hard on ourselves.

Since it’s in the news: Palin. Discuss!

She’s vile. She’s a creationist Barbie doll who ditches her kid to run for office but won’t allow women (who don’t have the resources to birth 5 kids and still run for veep) the choices that will let them pursue careers of their own. With all her talk about Trig and special needs– did you know she cut special-needs spending 62%? I don’t need tabloid garbage about her. The truth is far more horrible. I used to have some respect for McCain, but no longer. She’s hugely ambitious and clearly has no ethical compas. Luckily, God tells her just when to fake it.

http://womenagainstpalin.com/

What’s your favorite tv show?

I was obsessed with The Wire, but now that it’s gone I’m going to go with Rock of Love. That Bret Michaels is a stitch. If I can’t have good TV I want really BAD TV.

Who are the five sexiest children’s/YA authors writing today?

Oh, lordy… I haven’t met very many of them yet. Madonna is sexy of course, and one can argue that she “wrote” a “book”. And a bunch of the new ones are like 19, and 19 is always sexy, right?

The five sexiest poets?

Much easier. Cate Marvin and Sabrina Mark are the sexiest girls. And then Amaud Johnson and Mark Conway are the sexiest boys. Since I get five I’ll add Bruce Springsteen, because he is all things to all people.

If you could have a secret imaginary boyfriend/girlfriend, who would he or she be?

Dan Zanes. Is that awful? God, it IS awful. I just think he’d be so much fun to hang out with– we’d just be wearing our colorful suits, singing wherever we went. I’d like to go on a romantic weekend to Budapest with Dan Zanes. I’d like to eat noodles with him. (swoon)

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Thanks, Laurel! I’d also like to eat noodles with Dan Zanes. Or ice cream.

On the subject of the sexiest poets and secret imaginary boyfriends, Amaud Johnson was a fellow at Bread Loaf with me, and I just finished his book, Red Summer, and I fell head over heels in love with it. I’m going to post more about it next week.

I did notice, sadly, that Laurel’s list of the Sexiest Children’s and YA authors is a little lacking. So here’s my list:

FIVE SEXIEST CHILDREN’S AND YA AUTHORS

1. Judy Blume. I’m convinced that she is the center of all existence.

2. Sherman Alexie. I’ve met him in person so I can officially confirm this.

3. Neil Gaiman. Have not met him in person but that leather jacket? Yes yes yes.

4. Matt de la Pena. Have not met him in person yet but he’s coming to Austin Monday so I will confirm and report back. I think he and Sherman Alexie should start their own YA basketball team.

5. Alice Munro. She’s not a children’s or YA author at all, but I’m putting her on this list because (a) I feel like it (b) I love her (c) since I’m all about the transparent line between adult and YA, her stories about teens, like “Jessie and Maribeth,” “Half a Grapefruit,” “How I Met My Husband,” and “Royal Beatings” are the best I’ve ever read.

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