Each day leading up to the 30th annual Minnesota Book Awards Ceremony, we’ll be featuring an exclusive interview with one of our 36 finalists. Learn more about these incredible local writers and gear up to see the winners announced live in person April 21.
Interview with Tom Rademacher, author of
It Won’t Be Easy: An Exceedingly Honest (and Slightly Unprofessional) Love Letter to Teaching
Category: Memoir & Creative Nonfiction, sponsored by Faegre Baker Daniels
I’m beyond excited. I have all these writer heroes in the state, Sun Yung Shin, Bao Phi, Michael Dennis Browne, Marlon James, and so many more. They are people of enormous talent who we are lucky enough to share a state with. Minnesota has this unbelievable literary community, an unbelievably rich literary history. So, to be named as a finalist feels like being included in that community in some way. It’s an incredible honor for my weird little book.
What does writing mean to you?
I’ve always written, from a very young age. I remember in middle school writing down this weird collection of ideas and feelings, and feeling like I had invented this powerful, important thing. I didn’t have the words for what a poem was then, but I soon learned and devoted a good portion of the next two decades of my life to writing them. They were, I suppose, aggressively mediocre things, but meant everything to me. When my father died, I lost whatever muscle I used to write them. Now, I write mainly about teaching, and writing gives me a way to reflect and focus on all the messy humanity of my work.
Why are stories important for our communities?
I think stories are massively important in two different ways. For one, it is crucial for people to feel heard, to feel a part of something. When we see ourselves in stories, we see that we are not alone in how we feel, what we’ve experienced. Stories can validate and enrich the experience of being whoever we are. The other thing stories do, sort of the opposite, is they give us a window in the lives and humanity of people not like us. They teach us empathy, something our world desperately needs.
Tell us something people might not know about you.
I have this dream that some day I will leave teaching and go live in a cabin somewhere and write increasingly bizarre short stories that no one will like but me. It sounds like heaven. That said, I spend my days surrounded by 8th graders, and they are a collection of brilliant and funny and wildly frustrating people. When I was in middle school, I couldn’t wait to leave, and have never once stepped foot inside of the school I went to, but now that I’ve been teaching for over a decade, I can’t imagine really leaving.
What do you love about libraries?
They’re like Narwhals. If they didn’t exist, if we didn’t know they were a real thing, then seeing one in real life would feel like proof that magic exists. That we as a society have decided that we will dedicate space and money and devote some of our very best people to the science of running them is a beautiful reminder of how important we know books are.
More about Tom Rademacher:
Tom Rademacher is an English teacher in Minneapolis. His writing has appeared in EdPost, MinnPost, and on his blog, Mr. Rad’s Neighborhood, and he speaks about teaching at universities, conferences, and TEDx events. In 2014 he was honored as Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year.
See the winners announced live at the 30th annual Minnesota Book Awards Ceremony!
