Local Author: Anne Ursu

Article by Becky Fillinger

Our local Minneapolis author and educator Anne Ursu has been nominated for the prestigious literary Kirkus Prize. We talked to her about the award, teaching adult writers to find the magic in their craft, the causes she supports and her feline support system.

Anne UrsuQ:  You’ve been selected as a finalist for the 2022 literary Kirkus Prize for The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy. Our collective fingers are crossed that you win this month at the Austin TX awards ceremony! Did you feel like a ‘troubled girl’ growing up, like Marya your main character, who is sent away to conform and learn to accept secondary, obedient roles in society?

A:  Thank you so much. I tried very hard to please people when I was a kid, and I definitely felt off—like I was somehow too weird, too much. It felt like just being in the world was a troubled girl’s school. Marya is very much based on the way I felt and still feel. I am very glad to see her resonating with readers.

Q:  What will winning the Kirkus award mean to you?

A:  I am just so excited to be nominated. This book means a lot to me. It really is designed to help girls see their value in the world, and to have every kid examine what the stories power tells about itself and about them. It was an incredibly difficult book to write - with both an intricate world and a mystery plot line and it took a lot of drafts to get it right.

Q:  I love the fact that you took criticism of your work – you were called an "Obscure children's book author with three cats and a murderous rage.” by a Toronto Star reporter, and made that phrase part of your Twitter bio. Do you counsel your students to face criticism head on – learn from it – but don’t let it make you cower?

A:  I confess I would probably dismiss any book reviewer that described a book of mine having a murderous rage! That feels like the sort of comment that’s more about them than the book. This particular line was actually in reference to a joke I tweeted about a new Jonathan Franzen book that I found particularly sexist, and a book reviewer wrote a column about my comment and other such criticism that I found to be hilarious, especially as there was no murderous rage in my tweet. I don’t think book reviews themselves are really for the author; they can tell me what one person thinks of a book I wrote (for better or for worse), but that doesn’t help me with the next book. The way I get better as a writer is by reading a lot and by doing the hands-on work of revision, guided by my brilliant editor and readers, and this is what I counsel my students to do. That is the work that makes us grow as writers. 

Q:  I’ve read that you have three cats, an ‘ever-growing number of cats,’ and copious numbers of cats. How many felines make their home with you?

A:  It’s actually been holding steady at four for almost ten years. The e’er-growing part came when it went from three to four (one died and we ended up getting a bonded pair) but I like to keep the door open in case more find us! (Perhaps literally.)

Q:  You’ve been teaching at Hamline University's low-residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults program since 2008 and have probably inspired countless other nonstudents as well. You’ve been quoted as saying, “Magic allows us to live in the land of metaphor. There are so many more stories you can tell if you use magic.” Do you help your students learn to find their own form of magic in their storytelling?

A:  One of the wonderful things about teaching is students tend to come in with magic; you just have to help them harness it. I’ve worked with such incredible writers over the years and they’ve taught me so much about what fantasy can do. I highly recommend my former student and fellow Minneapolis resident Brita Sandstrom’s brilliant debut middle grade Hollow Chest as an example.

Q:  I admire you for creating a survey in 2018 that allowed professionals in the children’s literature industry to report on sexual harassment. You didn’t do it to expose individuals, but rather to allow a spotlight to shine on unspoken truths in the industry. Have you noticed that changes have happened – for the better – since you published your survey results? 

A:  A lot of conferences changed their codes of conduct and instituted other reforms. I was quite glad to see it. The conversation around sexual harassment also seemed to center on the perpetrators, but I really wanted to put the focus on the consequences to the people who were getting harassed. There were so many writers and artists who simply stopped creating and suffered severe mental health consequences; I wanted to focus the conversation on them in hope that would create some structural change.

Q:  Will you ever revive your popular sports blog about the Minnesota Twins called bat-girl.com?

A:  Unfortunately, no. It’s hard to maintain a baseball blog and be a mom! It was a wonderful experience though and I’m still friends with some of the people I met.

Q:  Do you have any book events scheduled – signings or readings – in our area? How may we follow your news?

A:  My website is anneursu.com. Watch for updates next year on my new book, which should be out in early 2024.

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For all the cat lovers out there, Anne has shared photos of her current feline family:

Hazel

Hex

Petra

Bartleby