Alison McGhee, author of Telephone of the Tree
Middle Grade Literature Category, sponsored by Education Minnesota
Each week leading up to the 37th annual Minnesota Book Awards, we are featuring exclusive interviews with our finalists. You can also watch the authors in conversation with their fellow category finalists here.
What inspired you to write this book – or inspired you while writing it?
In 2016 I heard a story on NPR’s This American Life podcast about a disconnected pay phone that a man named Itaru Sasaki erected in his garden in northern Japan. His cousin, whom he adored, passed away in 2010, and Sasaki used the disconnected phone to talk to him through the wind. In 2011, after the massive tsunami and flooding that killed so many people in Japan, random people began coming to the pay phone to talk to their own loved ones. I was, and am, haunted (in a good way) by the idea of a telephone that can connect us to our beloveds who have passed on, and I knew that someday, I would try to write a book about it.
What is one detail you wanted to include in this book, but couldn’t find a place for?
I wanted to include a treehouse, like the kind a friend and I built in a giant maple tree when I was a kid, but somehow that treehouse just didn’t seem to fit into the story.
Tell us about someone (whose name isn’t on the cover!) who proved instrumental to the creation of this book.
My wonderful friend John Zdrazil, who passed on a few years ago, kept appearing in my mind as I worked on the story. He was a huge fan of my books, and I could see his smile and hear his voice and laughter as I wrote, as if he were cheering me on.
Please tell us something about yourself that is not widely known. (It doesn’t have to be about the book in question – or even about your writing at all!)
I practice Duolingo every morning and every evening and have kept my daily streak going for years! Nothing comes between me and my Duolingo, no matter what time zone I find myself in or what else I have going on in my life.
Share your thoughts about the role and value of libraries.
Libraries are the cornerstones of democracy. If that sounds like hyperbole, it’s not. Librarians and the books they guard, preserve, catalog and share have been instrumental in my life and the lives of so many children who grew up to love books. With everything we face now – book bans, censorship, suspicion and distrust – libraries are more important than ever as safe havens and places of imagination and freedom.
Alison McGhee is the award-winning author several picture books, and novels for adult and young readers, Rainlight, Shadow Baby, What I Leave Behind, Dear Brother, the Bink and Gollie and Julia Gillian series, and more. She is a four-time Minnesota Book Award winner.