Jaimee Wriston Colbert
Author of Shark Girls (Livingston Press, 978-1-60489-043-3).
When did you start reading, and what did you like to read as a kid?
I was a voracious reader as a kid, in a house filled with books. My father read to me every night, and one poignant memory is being sick for half of kindergarten with the measles, and every night he'd come home with a new Wizard of Oz book which he read to me in a darkened room—I wasn't allowed to have lights on—some sort of correlation between measles and blindness.
When did you think about becoming a writer? Was there someone who got you interested in writing?
I was always a lopsided student, with high verbal abilities and practically an idiot savant when it came to math, as in I barely got by when numbers were involved. A high school creative writing teacher first suggested I become a writer, but mostly I was a poet in those early days.
How do you write?
Because of my teaching responsibilities (I'm a creative writing professor at SUNY, Binghamton University and I also teach for the Pacific University low-residency MFA Program) I'm unable to write for nine months of the year, then make up for lost time during the summer, writing daily and for as many hours of the day as my body can withstand. It's a crazy schedule but it's what I've got to do, and it must work OK as Shark Girls is my fourth published book. Still, I fantasize about how it would be if I could write full-time—but I suspect that's a dream many harried writers share!
Do you have any particular story to tell concerning the writing of this book?
Shark Girls was inspired by a real shark attack that happened when I was growing up in Hawaii.
What is some good advice that you've received concerning writing?
The best advice I've received and would also offer came on a postcard from the author Madison Smartt Bell. I had written to him about how discouraged I was feeling and he wrote back on a postcard: Never Give Up. I've kept that card hanging up above my desk for all these years.
How did you find the publisher for this book?
An interesting story! Originally I had an agent for this book who tried to sell it to the Trades, and several almost took it; then the marketing teams decided they wouldn't make the bottom-line profit they needed. The agent became so fed up she quit the business and went to Medical School! I told this story to Joe Taylor (Shark Girl's editor and publisher) at the AWP Conference a couple of years ago, commenting about how much I liked his (Livingston's) books, then asked if I could send him my novel manuscript during their reading period. The rest is, as they say, history.
I've had really positive experiences with Livingston Press, and before them BkMk, who published my linked stories, Dream Lives of Butterflies, and before that Helicon Nine Editions, who published my first novel in stories, Climbing the God Tree. I have no intentions of trying to find another agent and the Trades for a future book, as I believe the independent publishers are publishing the more risky, quality literary books that the Trades too often turn down for fears of not making their bottom-line, enforced by the giant conglomerates that own them.
What are you working on at the moment?
I had been working on a new collection of stories, but it's the teaching time of the year for me which means my own writing is on hold.
What are you reading?
Books for my classes! Fortunately, I only ever assign the very best so it's never a chore for me to read my own syllabi.
