 |
|||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
Back to Featured Interviews >> MEET SONIA LEVITIN
|
|||||||||||||||||
 |
| Sonia Levitin |
Having immigrated from Germany during a very rough time – just before World War II, my family was very poor and we children had few toys. Learning to read offered me a whole new world, and I began taking books from the library, ten at a time, when I was only six years old.
When you were a child did you ever have moments when you decided that you were going to be a writer when you grew up?
I decided at a young age that the best possible career in the world would be to write books. I began to read everything I could get my hands on—all of Lousia May Alcott, The Little House books, Mark Twain—you name it. I’d begin with an author and read everything they wrote. When I was eleven, I wrote a letter to Laura Ingalls Wilder and told her of my ambition to become a writer. She replied, “I’m sure your books will be very interesting.” I was elated.
If you didn’t write as a child, then when did you start writing and what inspired you to start?
Years later, after I graduated from a university with a teaching credential and a husband, I began to study with Walter Val Tilburg Clark at San Francisco State University in the Directed Writing Program. It gave me the start I needed, as I was already sending short stories to magazines. At the same time, I was writing articles and two columns for our local newspaper, The Sun of Contra Costa County. This was my apprenticeship, along with working on JOURNEY TO AMERICA, a fictionalized account of my family’s escape from Nazi Germany. It took me five years to write, while at the same time I read every book I could get my hands on about the craft of writing.
Was your first book accepted immediately? or did you experience a number of rejections?
After about a dozen rejections, the JOURNEY TO AMERICA was accepted by Jean Karl, legendary editor at Atheneum, and it was actually proposed for the Newbury medal! Of course, I knew none of the “tricks of the trade,” but just kept on writing about things that interested me, that aroused my passion for people and places and ideas.
Have any of your books earned special recognition?
Fortunately, many of my books have received recognition, the National Jewish Book Award, the PEN award, Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, Western Writers of America Award, and the Edgar for best mystery. Right now I’m working on a musical of my book THE RETURN, along with William Kevin Anderson, a wonderful composer. We’ve just gotten past the stage of Backers Auditions. I wrote the script and the lyrics.
What are you working on now?
My latest book THE GOODNESS GENE was my second venture into science fiction, which I love. Before that I wrote THE CURE, part historical, part science fiction. That novel is one of my personal favorites. As I wrote, I find myself being very involved in social issues, and often they stay with me from then on, cementing many new friendships and opportunities. In writing THE RETURN, for instance, I became very close to the issue of the longing of Ethiopian Jews to “return” to their ancestral home in Israel, and I’ve supported that cause. More recently, DREAM FREEDOM, a novel about the crisis in Sudan, has led me to become active in helping to avert the genocide that has been in progress there for many years.
Where do you get your ideas?
Everywhere—from the news, from people I have known, from my own reactions to events, and from history, which I realize does repeat itself. Drama and literature show us where we are in the universal scheme and show us how, if we are wise, we can help to mold the destiny of the human race.