Gary D. Schmidt is the author of more than fifteen books for children and young adults, including The Wednesday Wars, a 2008 Newbery Honor Award winner, and Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, which won a Newbery Honor award and a Michael L. Printz Honor award in 2005. His newest novel, Trouble, came out is spring 2008. In God’s Hands, a picture book co-authored with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, was a runner-up for the 2005 National Jewish Book Award. In addition to multiple “Best Book” lists, his work has been given a Horn Book Honor award and a Blue Ribbon award by the Bulletin for the Center of Children’s Books. He has also authored or co-authored numerous textbooks, scholarly and academic books (including biographies of Katherine Paterson and Robert McCloskey), articles, and book reviews. In 1985 he received his Ph.D. in medieval languages and literature from the University of Illinois. He is a professor in the English department at Calvin College and lives on a farm in Alto, Michigan, with his wife and six children. Gary is currently working on a companion to The Wednesday Wars.
More about Gary:
He just turned past the half-century mark, so he’s suffering all sorts of crises of which he isn’t even aware. He began writing seriously about twenty years or so ago, and has tried to have two streams of work: one, novels and some slight non-fiction for young readers, and two, academic books about children’s literature and the historical literature of early New England. He teaches at Calvin College as well as Hamline University, and at the former he holds forth on children’s literature, medieval literature, and creative writing. He lives on an 1830’s farm in Alto, Michigan—a town you won’t find on many maps—and writes in an outbuilding there.
Gary as a faculty advisor:
I Am Happy to Work with Students in the Following Genres/Areas:
Fiction of Contemporary Realism; Historical Fiction; Non-fiction
Other Things to Know About Me as an Advisor:
I tend to over-edit, and I think this puts some folks into shock. But most of these are "things to think about," and not demands.
I’m not fast, but I am thorough.
I tend to focus on the smaller pieces that make up the whole, since that is where I think the story really can blossom. Thus I am very concerned with voice, and with narratorial choices, and with the use of seemingly slight detail that can make the difference between a flat character and a fascinating character, and with setting that contributes rather than setting as a mere stage.
On critical work, I want to see engagement. Criticism by itself isn’t very interesting, but taken as part of a larger critical and analytical discussion, it can be fantastically important. So I want to push folks into seeing their critical work as an entry into a conversation that is already going on.
I tend to want to take things electronically—which is generally against all of my principles, but there it is. I’ll print it off on my end, and send you back a letter and the edited MS.
Books of Mine I Recommend That You Read:
I suppose Trouble or The Wednesday Wars or First Boy or something along those lines. The diehards might want to try A Passionate Usefulness: the Life and Literary Labors of Hannah Adams--but you really have to be a diehard.
