Zetta Elliott's Blog, page 6

2023 Zena Sutherland Lecture

The Sutherland Lecture honors the late Zena Sutherland, Professor Emeritus and retired editor of the “Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books.” This special annual event is intended for teachers, educators, librarians and other interested adults and is co-sponsored by Chicago Public Library, the Zena Sutherland Lecture Committee and the University of Chicago. The 2023 Lecture, “I Am Myrtilla’s Daughter: Weaving Scotland, Slavery, and Siths into Historical Fantasies,” was presented by Zetta Elliott. Watch the recording on YouTube.

ready to launch

I’ve been out of sorts since I delivered the Sutherland lecture last week. At first, I was just tired and unprepared to tackle all the things I set aside in order to finish my *very* long paper. I woke with a migraine the morning after and took it easy for the weekend. I submitted a clean copy for the Horn Book and will share the YouTube link to the recording once I’ve got it. We had a very small crowd at the Harold Washington Library, which is about what I expected. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a paper for a whole hour…I worried that I was boring the audience, or that my tone wasn’t engaging…at least I had lots of slides so folks could focus on the photos if my narrative wasn’t riveting.

A friend who watched the talk on Zoom shared this screenshot; I’m glad my slides took up most of the screen! It felt good to piece my five Scotland trips (1991, 2018, 2022 x 2, & 2023) into a single narrative. I wore a new dress and my amethyst thistle brooch, and dug through my dusty albums to find lots of old photos. My cousin Carlene in Canada even sent me a photo I’d never seen before of her mother, my great-aunt Ellen, and “my Scottish granny” Nellie McKay. I’m in NYC right now for the PEN World Voices Festival and I was trying to explain to a friend earlier today that I feel like a rocket getting ready to launch. It’s strange being back in the city; my last visit here was in 2019, I think, a few months before the pandemic shut everything down. Yesterday in Chicago I thought about all my favorite places and I visited a few of them today…but it’s not the same. The bakery didn’t have my favorite cake, and the familiar, friendly guys weren’t behind the counter at the Indian restaurant I used to visit every week. We can’t recreate our former lives; the only way is forward. We outgrow relationships and routines and the only option is to replace them with new ones. I feel like I’ve been shedding a lot over the past few years; sometimes that makes me feel blue and other times I feel ready to let go of everything familiar and reach for something new. Not all rockets launch successfully but I feel the rumble building inside of me. I hope my launch doesn’t end disastrously like Elon Musk’s latest attempt to get to space! Though we do learn from every failure…

Fantastic Chicago! MG Authors of Color panel

Zetta Elliott, Rena Barron, Julian Randall, and Reese Eschmann join the Center for Teaching through Children’s Books for a deep discussion about the vital importance of writing–and reading– inclusive stories, especially in light of current book challenges and bans. Joined by moderators Kelly Campos and Duane Davis, these four amazing Chicago-based middle grade and YA fantasy authors share their personal experiences and challenges as Black authors, and their hopes for the future of inclusive fiction for young people. See the video here.

2023 Zena Sutherland Lecture

I was surprised and honored when the committee informed me last year that I had been selected to deliver the 2023 Zena Sutherland Lecture at the main branch of the Chicago Public Library. I’ll be talking about historical fantasy as a genre and my own research into Scotland’s involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. At our Midland Authors panel this past Tuesday, folks gave me a round of applause when our moderator announced my upcoming talk. Some folks weren’t quite able to hide their surprise that I was this year’s presenter. I suppose compared to Neil Gaiman and Yuyi Morales (last year’s speaker), I’m an unknown quantity. It reminds me of the reporter in VA who interviewed me over the phone and then asked, “Why aren’t you famous?” He subsequently decided not to write or run the interview so I guess my answer wasn’t adequate. I don’t think much about fame but apparently a lot of other people do. Fame has so little to do with talent sometimes…I know I haven’t invested in my social media profile so I don’t have thousands of followers, but I have definitely invested time and effort in my writing. I don’t expect a packed auditorium next month but then academics are used to presenting at conferences before an audience of three or four; my decade as a professor taught me that the content of your talk shouldn’t depend on the number of people who show up to hear it. Say what you want to say, present your findings, act as though your words matter—because they do.

My Store Explorer column is now up in Chicago Magazine—my first feature in a local publication. I hate shopping but appreciate being asked to shine a light on some great local businesses. I’ve been discovering new places in my neighborhood this past week as I try to fill the hours while my contractors are hard at work. I miss working at home but at least the weather has been nice and I’ve mostly managed to meet my thousand-words-a-day quota. Hoped to finish up by the end of this month but next week I’ll be in TX for TLA and then I fly to Toronto for GritLit Fest in Hamilton. I’ll be leading a workshop on the 22nd and chatting with Ainara Alleyne the next day—if you’re in the area, join us!

Art & Abolition

Diverse Verse is a collective of poets of color who write for young readers, and this month we’re taking turns writing “love letters” to poetry. My essay went up today: “Art & Abolition.” Here’s an excerpt:

I am still surprised (and somewhat ashamed) of the way my imagination simply shut down at the possibility of a world without prisons. I have spent most of my life writing poetry, plays, novels, and picture books for young readers; I earn a living writing fantasy fiction precisely because I have the ability to dream up alternate realities. And yet instead of embracing abolition as an opportunity to create a more just world, I dismissed the idea outright. My imagination wasn’t “limitless,” as I had believed. Instead I had internalized ideas about criminality and policing that diminished my capacity to understand, envision, and experience true liberation. This was a sobering realization.

It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) so I’m writing a poem a day, and I actually wrote this essay while I was still in Scotland. I’ve been back for just over two weeks but my time in Glasgow feels like it happened ages ago. I’m making good progress on The Ship in the Garden and hope to finish that by the end of this month. This is my year to finish all the incomplete novels that I’ve neglected for far too long. If I stand my ground and keep saying NO to fall gigs, then I should have enough time to travel some more and finish the three novels. My friend Edi suggested Samoa, but New Zealand has been on my list for a long while…and I just got an invitation from a new friend in Porto, Portugal. She lives there half the year so I’d need to go before she leaves in August. We talked for three hours this morning and then I went for a run; came home and wrote this haiku:

a cloudless blue sky

a day without urgency

time to dream and scheme

And write!

the world and wands

I had my third tarot reading yesterday and “The World” was the first card pulled. I love that tarot isn’t predictive—I don’t go to Owen at Nonna Terra so he can peer into his crystal ball and tell me what to do or what will happen next week. For me, tarot provides clarity, it’s a reminder of your power and potential and a 90-minute reading with Owen leaves me with lots to reflect upon. Reading a tarot card each morning is a way of incorporating affirmation into my routine; I have The Gentle Tarot but tried a new deck designed by two Black witches and might order that one, too. Routine was actually something that came up for me in relation to “The World”—in the four corners are fixed signs reminding us not to lose sight of what is unchanging as we grapple with forces that seem beyond us. Taking some of my Chicago routine to Scotland was a way of feeling anchored amidst a whole lot of change and newness. I crave beginnings and struggle with commitment so it was challenging to come back to Chicago last week and have several unpleasant encounters with folks in the real and virtual world. My mail is being tampered with—checks are disappearing—and there doesn’t seem to be a way to stop it. I get informed delivery so my mail is scanned before it’s delivered, which is how I’m able to spot and report missing checks. One check I reported as stolen was delivered to a neighbor, who left it at my door while I was away. But two other checks have just vanished and I’m expecting another one today. My magazine subscription also hasn’t been delivered so I filed an online complaint about that. One of the missing checks is from a NYC bank and it had already taken me two months to close that account. Now the process is dragging on because the bank won’t fill out its own affidavit but expects me to get it notarized; not surprisingly, the notaries here in IL won’t comply. I’m having problems at my local bank, too…everything I left unresolved at the start of March was simply waiting for me when I got back. Which was sobering and upsetting but my tarot reading reminded me to “zoom out”—not obsess over small things that can leave me feeling powerless and victimized. I’m not a victim; I have agency and I know how to respond to the various challenges that come up. Perimenopause makes everything seem worse than it actually is, I think, and hostility from strangers brings up some childhood trauma that I clearly need to address…another card, “The 7 of Wands,” was a reminder that not everything that rises up in confrontation is a threat. Sometimes it’s an opportunity to sit with doubt, or to remember our strengths and capacity to create change. If we look at our lives, we have abundant evidence of our abilities but it’s easy to get triggered and forget that we’re adults on the path to healing rather than a frightened child. There are lots of things on my To Do list but I have time to do it all. My contractors won’t arrive till next week so I have my space to myself and I went for a run this morning and just ordered some groceries so I don’t have to go back out. Yesterday I went to the airport to give my friends some baked goods and chocolate; she lost her father while here in Chicago sitting shiva for her partner’s mother. Folks in MS are recovering from devastating tornadoes and there’s a report on the radio right now about the ongoing need for food banks in this country. When I zoom out, even just a little, my problems can be seen in proper perspective. Humza Yousaf won the election back in Scotland (yay!) and will lead the country toward independence. I miss Glasgow but I’m going to dive into this novel and see if I can recreate the world I discovered just a few weeks ago. I’m rebuilding my Chicago routine: buying myself flowers, lifting weights after my run, cooking what’s in the fridge instead of ordering in. It’s much colder here but the sun is shining so my office is bright and warm. I’m ready to get to work!

fairy overload

I’ve been off with the fairies this past week on the Isle of Skye and now I’m finishing up Season 2 of Carnival Row. In Portree I bought three more books on fairies only to then buy a bestiary that has me rethinking the mythical creature in my novel. I’ve basically decided to let myself be a sponge for as long as I can. I was worn out after that three-day tour but I’m glad I went. The fairy pools (left) were impressive despite the rain and the fairy glen was mystical. It’s a fairly desolate landscape—“Iceland without the ice,” as our guide explained—but I’m glad I spent some more time in the Highlands. We had snow the first day, rain the second day, and sunshine on the third. Now I’ve got just four days left and I’m trying not to pack too much in. I went for a run in the rain this morning and then saw the name of a primary school on a banner at an anti-racist rally in George Square. I’d seen on Twitter that their students had self-published books to create their own mirrors so came home, cleaned up, and went back over with a bag of my dragon books. Found them easily and the head teacher invited me to stop by on Monday! My other contact has arranged a secondary school visit for Tuesday afternoon and then it will be time to pack. I’ve easily managed to write at least one poem a day this month but the novel is mostly unfolding in my head rather than on the page. Hopefully I’ll have time when I get back to put all those ideas into words. For now, I’m going to grant myself a bit more dream time, returning to Pollok House for my last visit tomorrow afternoon. I keep wanting a retreat, to get farther away “from the madding crowd,” but I haven’t effectively designed my life that way. I joke about living in a cave somewhere but I don’t want to be totally cut off. While in Skye I realized that my inbox keeps overflowing because I haven’t set the right boundaries. I want this transnational life and I appreciate the freedom of being able to write anywhere, but I’m not fully IN Scotland when I’m still booking gigs back in the US. Technology was a blessing during the pandemic but now it has become a sort of tether. You’re never fully free because folks expect to be able to reach you no matter where you are. I thought about making a yearly “booking box”—I’ll do school visits and conferences within a three-month period but after that, I’m done for the year. So whether I then return to Scotland or stay in the US, I’ll live a life outside of the kid lit arena. But when a new book comes out, you have to promote it and if you’re lucky enough to have a publisher who’ll send you to conferences, you can’t say, “I’ll only do the ones that fall between January and March.” Can you? Isn’t that like sabotaging your own book? We had some ugly drama last week; the illustrator of A Song for Juneteenth has been arrested for abusing his foster daughter 17 years ago, which means we won’t be going forward with his illustrations. So the May pub date is scrapped and I won’t be presenting at the picture book breakfast at the ALA annual convention in June. When I first heard the news, I just felt ill. I hardly dare to hope that the criminal justice system will help this survivor, but I pray that confronting her abuser will lead to healing in some way. My editor listened to my concerns when drafting an official statement to release about the book, and we’re going to discuss alternate illustrators when I get back. If something like this came up outside of my 3-month “box,” I couldn’t very well choose to ignore it. So maybe three consecutive months won’t work…maybe I have to pick the months when there are festivals or conferences and work “full time” then. NCTE is in November, ALA is in June, TLA is next month…my publisher is still sending me to TX for that conference since I have other poetry books I can promote. I agreed to do a small festival in Hamilton at the end of April and can visit family while I’m near Toronto. I’ve got a festival in NYC in May, then my week in Alaska at the start of June. I think that’s it for trips. Will I come back to Scotland for the fall? It’s a nice idea. IF I can sublet my apartment, and IF I can find a more affordable place to stay here in Glasgow, and IF I can cut the cord so that it doesn’t feel like America’s calling me every single day…

Week One

I promised myself I wouldn’t measure my productivity while I’m away. Yesterday I pulled the hermit card and I’m pushing back on the guilt I often feel when I’m traveling—“Don’t stay in! Make the most of the time you have! Do something worth photographing so you can share it on Instagram!” But if I really do want an ordinary life, then I need to be who I am, which is an introvert and homebody. I watched a ten-part Australian drama yesterday, taking two short breaks to venture out into the world. I’m still wearing my pedometer and counting my daily 10K steps, but I have no scale to weigh myself on and just set my jeans aside when they felt too snug. The goal is to write a poem a day; so far they’re mostly haikus, which still counts as far as I’m concerned. Haikus are like kernels, nuggets of truth and small observations that can be mined more fully later on. I went back to Pollok House on Tuesday and wrote in the cafe for a while before heading to the garden; a park employee helped me track down the carpenter Neil who built the ship in the garden (the working title of my novel). It wasn’t his idea but he designed and built it; the unusual planter is meant to acknowledge the Maxwells’ involvement in trans-Atlantic trade. I didn’t tell him that it made me think of a slave ship. If people are open and willing to share their knowledge with me, then I give the bare minimum in exchange: I’m doing research for a book for young readers. I realized last night that if I want to include more graphic content about the experiences of the enslaved, I’ll have to age my characters up; that likely means changing the format of the novel. This morning on BBC Scotland the radio host interviewed someone about reluctant readers and how many teenage boys see reading as a form of punishment. The two books I’ve seen on slavery and Scotland are both graphic novels—a good strategy to reach kids who might otherwise be uninterested in the topic. I wonder if a verse novel might appeal to teens more than traditional prose—or a play (for stage or radio). I met a couple of men on my last two trips to Scotland; they both focus on Scotland’s buried history and both have been really generous with their resources. Through Nelson (whose mother is from St. Kitt’s) I’ve lined up a school visit here in Glasgow, and Stephen has kindly offered to share his source documents on Frederick. I’m thankful for you readers, too, who reached out with suggestions and offers of help. After last week’s blog post, my cousin Beverley in Toronto let me know that there is a former plantation in Nevis called Colhouns—a little digging online revealed that it was owned by Fanny’s brother. It was her dowry and inheritance that added to Sir James Maxwell’s wealth and the Scottish National Trust’s report suggests that money was used to improve Pollok House and the surrounding grounds. I’ve found conflicting accounts—were they married in St. Kitts or in Glasgow? Was she living there or here when they met?—but those details aren’t essential to my projects. Yet. Working on three books at once is a little confusing but ultimately, I just trust that everything I discover can be used somewhere, somehow. My historian friend Stephen confirmed that this listing I found online is probably the manor house in which young Frederick was meant to serve as a page boy. It’s way up in the Highlands, northeast of Inverness. I searched for Lady Spynie of Brodie House and didn’t find much but Stephen found more information by researching her husband (of course), a member of parliament. I think White women are central to the stories I want to tell…it’s their whims and wishes that often destroy or at least shape the lives of Black people in the 18th and 19th centuries. And their wealth keeps the British Empire expanding as second sons who will never inherit estates in the UK go abroad to find their fortune. I caught the tail end of Who Do You Think You Are, the UK version of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates; the guest was actor Olivia Coleman and she was in India after discovering that her ancestor worked for the East India Company around 1800 and had a child with a local woman before he passed away there. The child was sent for by her English grandmother, inherited a large sum from her great-aunt, and then returned to India as a wealthy young mixed-race woman and married twice (British officers, I believe). Another book on slavery and the Highlands highlights the number of mixed-race children that were sent from the Caribbean or India to be educated in the UK; they also married White men and assimilated into Scottish society. I still remember being struck by Thackeray’s racist remarks in Vanity Fair about “woolly-headed mulattresses” upending London society with their wealth and scandalous origins (his own half-sister was born to an Indian mother). Yesterday was International Women’s Day and so after my run I went over to the Glasgow Women’s Library. I got a warm welcome and was invited to join an art workshop upstairs; I was given a tour and got to see Scottish Black feminist poet Jackie Kay’s beautiful words on the archive walls (listen to her read those commissioned poems here). Today I’m going to see a matinee from the Glasgow Film Festival. On Saturday I head over to Amsterdam to hang out with my Chicago friend Elisa and then next Wednesday I’m doing a three-day trip up to the Isle of Skye. They’ve had cold temps and lots of snow up north so I probably need to do a little shopping before I go. The school visit will take place right before I leave on the 22nd so I’ll head home with plenty of material, I think. My inbox has been pretty full the past week…not looking forward to going back to “the grind,” though May won’t be as busy as April and I’m trying to keep the fall open. My one woman friend here came down with COVID so I won’t get to see her tomorrow. Think I might go back to the Women’s Library and write for a while, take some of the books I brought since their entire collection is sustained through donations. Or I could find another series and spend hours watching TV. Or I could do both—or neither. It’s nice to have options…

an ordinary life

This is my third day in Glasgow and I’ve had more sunshine on this visit than either of last year’s trips, I think. Got up late and went for a run in the Necropolis this morning; came home, cleaned up, and went grocery shopping. Passed GOMA along the way and thought about popping in to see the new exhibit but I spent yesterday at Pollok House and need a break today. I’m about to set a research agenda so I make the most of my three weeks but really, what I want is to live an ordinary life here. I lived in NYC for two decades and people always assume New Yorkers live exciting lives, but most of the time we’re doing laundry and commuting to work. For tourists it’s completely different—they pack in as much as they can and feel pressured to have fun every minute they’re in town. I don’t live like that when I’m at home and I don’t aspire to that when I’m on vacation. This isn’t a holiday; it’s a research trip but it’s also a way to test myself in the city. Can I build a routine like the one I have in Chicago? So far, the answer is YES. But should that be the goal? Escape to the Country just ended; all the UK shows I follow back home are airing in real time here in Glasgow. I just turned off the TV but now I’m catching up on yesterday’s episode of PBS Newshour. Maybe I should let go instead of trying to have a hybrid life and try being fully present.

I’m almost ready to write. Yesterday’s trip to Pollok House was more productive than expected. The website said the tours were fully booked but when I arrived just before noon, a tour was about to begin and I was the only one. My docent, Angus, was very helpful and the volunteer I met in the library pointed out the only work of fiction in the 7500-book collection—a collection of ghost stories! So that’s going in the book and the fairy garden was more of a hobbit village (Smaug included!) but on the way there I came across a ship…it’s a planter made from a bathtub, I think, but made me think of a slave ship so that’s going in the novel, too. I think I’ve got my plot worked out. I just need to develop my main character and to do that, I need to meet some local kids. Emailed an elementary school before I left Chicago; the headmistress hasn’t replied but I might just drop some of my books off on Monday. I saw a group of Black boys getting off the train yesterday but didn’t think it was appropriate to interrogate them. When I visited Edinburgh back in 2018, I presented at St. Augustine middle school and remember one boy from Ghana who proudly showed off his cowrie-shell bracelet. I’m basing my main character on that kid. There was a diverse group of students on a class trip yesterday—that’s the premise for my novel. Pollok House itself was fairly small and there was extensive water damage to the first-floor walls, which was strangely satisfying. I’m looking for ugliness, in a way. There’s a kind of glamour over these stately homes but I can’t fall under that spell. So many Black bodies were sacrificed for the paintings and vases and antiques that fill these mansions. Wrote about that last night; trying to write at least one poem per day. Daily poems are like my Instagram posts—they mostly document my days. I won’t necessarily remember how I’m thinking or feeling now by the time I get back to Chicago. This donation box was disturbing. I think the school kids focus on what it was like “below stairs” and they get to see the butler’s and housekeeper’s quarters in the basement. But choosing your own servant? And voting by donating spare change? Odd, to say the least…but these are the kind of contradictions that need to be exposed. My kid is being bullied by Gavin, a racist loner who gets sent back in time to one of the plantations owned by the Maxwell family. There was one plaque in the house that mentioned the wealth derived from plantations in Jamaica but no mention of St. Kitts-Nevis. So I need to probe that further; it could be that Maxwell got his SKN plantations (and compensation after Emancipation) through marriage to Miss Colhoun. Her father, a Scot, was a notorious slave trader and that particular Maxwell was working as an overseer so they got quite a surprise when 3 heirs died in a short span of time, turning that overseer into a very wealthy baronet. All the histories are about men but I think women will be central to my story. Dig, dig, dig…I’ve got work to do! But right now it’s time for a nap…

Reading Rock Stars

I did my first in-person school visit since Covid began! The Texas Book Festival is in the fall but they do events throughout the year to keep kids excited about books. Over the holidays I signed 250 book plates and this past week I got to meet the third- and fourth-grade kids who received a copy of THE WITCH’S APPRENTICE (now out in paperback!) through the Reading Rock Stars program. Harris Academy has a spirit team and they warmed the group up with a pro-literacy cheer…then we got started and when I wrapped up an hour later, one of the sorors who volunteer at the school came up to give me a hug (she was Canadian!) The librarian, Ms. Hutchins, had a table covered in treats and I managed to get a direct flight back to Chicago after a two-hour delay. I worked in the hotel the night before and met my deadline for Chicago Magazine. I missed my puppetry class but turns out I wasn’t the only one…our instructor gave us an extension and my friend Tanya gave me some great tips when we zoomed on Friday. Then I went for an outdoor run for the first time in almost a month and this morning I went to the farmers market in my neighborhood—something I haven’t done since last summer. Sometimes I think my home is too cozy because it’s a bit too easy to hibernate…but the sun’s been out all week and the earth is spongy, which makes me feel like spring will be here soon. I self-published PERENNIAL yesterday and I’m offering a bundle of my 4 poetry books over on Instagram and Facebook; just leave a comment before the end of Valentine’s Day.

The link to sign up for my newsletter is broken—sorry about that! updating my website is near the top of my To Do list—but a new one went out today. You can read it here. With just one school visit and one panel this week, I should have plenty of time to focus on my puppetry project. I think I’m going to try making a book with detachable 2D paper puppets…the operative word being “try.” Lol. Our final performance got pushed back a week, which means I’ll be in Scotland. Scotland! So ready to leave the rat race behind, though I’ve only got myself to blame for all these BHM events. I took a couple of social media apps off my phone yesterday and will try to unplug while I’m away. My phone doesn’t work over there so it shouldn’t be too hard…