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MEET VALERIE HOBBS
by Bonnie O'Brian

What did you most like to do when you were a child?

Valerie Hobbs

I loved being outdoors, building forts, ice skating in the winter, in the summer digging pools that wouldn’t hold water.

What books influenced you most when you were growing up?

Alfred Payson Terhune’s dog books, Nancy Drew, LITTLE WOMEN

What audience did you have in mind for your career as a writer - adult or children?

Until I discovered what the young adult market really was, I intended to write for adults. I’m so glad things went this way, rather than that!

When you went to college, were you already pursuing a writing career? (or a career in illustrating? or just art in general?)

 I wasn’t pursuing a career in college. I just loved to read fiction, especially those huge 19 th Century British novels. Careers for women in those days were really limited, so I became a teacher (happily) by default.

If you didn’t write as a child, then when did you start writing and what inspired you to start?

 I wrote my first short story when I was eighteen, after the death of a close friend. I loved my story, rewrote it many years later and eventually turned it into my first novel. I was inspired by sorrow.

What was your first job when you graduated from college?

 I got a job teaching English at Kailua, High School in Oahu, Hawaii.

Was your first book accepted immediately? or did you experience a number of rejections?

I got about half a dozen rejections from publishers of adult fiction but the novel sold immediately as a YA to Richard Jackson, who was then at Orchard Publishing.

 What are the topics are some of your books?

Homelessness, cancer, alienation from parents, love, friendship, etc.

Do you focus on fiction or nonfiction? Which do you prefer? Do you find one easier than the other?

 I only write fiction. Non-fiction (and especially research) puts me to sleep, though I had to do a lot of non-fiction academic research writing and taught it for many years.

 Have any of your books earned special recognition?

DEFIANCE recently won the 2005 award for distinguished children’s fiction. It’s on the best books of the year for SLJ and Kirkus. Also, DEFIANCE was in the 2006,2007 Middle School California Collections; LETTING GO OF BOBBY JAMES, OR HOW I GOT MY SELF OF STEAM in the 2006 High School California Collection; HOW FAR WOULD YOU HAVE GOTTEN, IF I HADN’T CALLED YOU BACK? WAS IN THE 1998, 1999, 2000 High School California Collections; and SONNY’S WAR is in the 2007 High School Collection.

 Have any of your fiction stories been about real people or events?

 Most of my stories come out of my life and experience in some way, large or small.

 If some of your fiction stories are factual, do you write about people that you have been interested in for a long time, perhaps since childhood?

 None of my characters come from people I know, except for some traits of my parents.

 Do you write every day and do you have set hours that you work? I don’t write everyday.

 I write only when I have something I really want to work on. And I write only in the morning, until noon.

 When is your next book going to be in book stores?

 ANYTHING BUT ORDINARY will be in bookstores in April 2007.

 What do you most want the students to get out of your school visits?

 I want them to know that they, too, are writers if they choose to be; that everybody has an important story to tell, and that only they can tell it.