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MEET JILL WOLFSON
by Bonnie O'Brian

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Jill Wolfson

I wanted to be so many different things. A dancer. A director. A teacher. The weather anchor on TV. A spy. A photographer. I couldn’t make up my mind. Strangely enough, I entered college as a math and physics major. (I was really good at puzzles), then graduated four years later with a degree in English and documentary film. Underneath it all, I feel that I was destined to be some kind of artist or writer.

Did you write stories when you were growing up?

I used to hold camps for the younger kids on my block. I didn’t charge much – a nickel an hour – so all the parents loved it and were happy to enroll their kids. It was the cheapest babysitting ever. Truthfully, it was mostly an opportunity for me to have a cast to perform the shows that I wrote and directed. I loved being the big producer. The show I remember most was a musical version of “The Little Mermaid” with my younger sister in the title role. It was awful, but everyone applauded anyway.

What was your first job?

My very first job was babysitting for a large family that lived a few doors down from our row-house. There were four daughters and the household was completely out of control, but I loved the chaos since my own family was so orderly (and boring in my eyes). As someone who grew up Jewish, I was especially taken with how the family celebrated Easter. Each year, the parents bought a bunch of live ducklings and chicks that were dyed the bright blue, hot pink and purple of Easter eggs. Holy moly! Where was the Humane Society? When I think back on the spectacle of babysitting four kids and all those cruelly-dyed baby animals running amuck, I shiver. I also laugh.

Do you do other types of writing?

My life is words. What really taught me how to write and research was working as a journalist for newspapers and magazines. I still do that.

Inspiration for your writing?

When you’re writing, your story is everywhere. Who wrote that? Someone famous, I think. For me, that’s the way it works. When I’m in the process of creating a story, I find material everywhere – in the way a stranger in a restaurant eats, an overheard snippet of conversation. Most directly, my inspiration comes from two sources: my own kids and my memory of my own teenage self.

What gave you the idea for your newest book, COLD HANDS, WARM HEART? Was it difficult to write because of the subject matter (organ donation)?

Difficult and challenging, yes, but also a joy and thrill to create characters who grapple head-on with the deepest questions we human beings face. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had an obsession with death. I mean, how can anyone not think about death all the time? As a kid, I would lay in bed, imagining my parents in their coffins, my sister wasting away with some exotic disease, my friends burned in fiery crashes. I would really get into planning my own funeral. All the juicy details. What songs would be played? What would people be wearing? Who would break down and beg my forgiveness for not being a good enough friend? And in my bed, I would inevitably wind up sobbing – about the death of everyone I loved and cared about, including me. Especially me. How can you possibly go on with living when you know you are going to die one day? How do you laugh and fall in love and bother doing homework? I feel that my whole life has been a process of coming to terms with that. And so I created the most dramatic situation I could imagine and populated the landscape with characters who can’t look away from the pressing reality of death.

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

My novels have a strong basis in fact and I hope that students take away information about worlds that they might not be familiar with. COLD HANDS, WARM HEART explores organ donation and the transplant experience. WHAT I CALL LIFE opens a door into the life of children living in foster care. HOME, AND OTHER BIG, FAT LIES explores ecological/environmental issues and controversies. I also love sharing my own process of writing – where fiction comes from, the role of imagination, how I draw on my own childhood, parenting and my long career as a journalist. My hope is to inspire young authors to believe in themselves, to find their own voice and to see the wealth of stories in their own seemingly ordinary experiences.