Photo by Brandon A. Barnett
Send Email to Sara at: me@sararyan.com
Visit Sara's website at: www.sararyan.com
Authors Among Us - Children's Writers Who Are or Who Have Been Librarians
|
Photo by Brandon A. Barnett |
Sara Ryan
Send Email to Sara at: me@sararyan.com Visit Sara's website at: www.sararyan.com |
|
Authors Among Us - Children's Writers Who Are or Who Have Been Librarians
|
|
Featured Title by Oregon author Sara Ryan:
|
Empress of the World Viking, August 2001 ISBN: 0-670-89688-8 |
| Find out more about Sara Ryan's book on her website. Click above. | |
| What influenced you to become a librarian, or
to work in a library?
When I was finishing my undergrad degree, I was trying to decide between grad school for medieval studies and library school. I decided on library school because it was a two-year program that would (I thought) give me a nine to five job, leaving my evenings free for writing. It turned out to be more of a career commitment than that, but I think it's still easier to make time for writing as a librarian than it would be if I had gone on to be a professor. No papers to grade. :) Do you have a library/information science degree? Yup. University of Michigan. The last year that "library" was still in the name of the degree. What kinds of library positions have you held and where? I was one of the founders of the Internet Public Library (www.ipl.org) and worked on that project from 1995-97. In 1997 I moved to Portland, Oregon to become a School Corps (www.multcolib.org/schoolcorps) librarian at Multnomah County Library. (www.multcolib.org/) How long were you, or have you been, a librarian? Since 1995. Are you currently working as a librarian? Yup. Do you plan to continue in the profession? For a while, anyway. There are a lot of benefits that come from working as a librarian -- among them, contact with kids and young adults, contact with other librarians, and an obligation to keep current both in literature and in technology, as well as with issues around information access and intellectual freedom. Which came first in your life, your work or career as a librarian, or writing for children? Oh, definitely writing. Writing has been what I wanted to do for just about as long as I can remember. Did your library work have anything to do with becoming a children's writer? Hmm, I'd never thought about that before, but I think in a way it did. I got to know young adult literature when I started working on the Internet Public Library Teen Division, and was really impressed by the quality of some of the authors working in the field. That probably started me thinking about writing for young adults myself. Did your library work directly influence your work as an author? Well, I'm certainly a much better researcher than I would be without the training and experience I've gotten through being a librarian. I am also a lot more tech-savvy than I would have been if I hadn't become a librarian, and I think that makes some of my geekier characters more credible. ;) Did you respond to children's books in your library collection, or to the lack of books of certain kinds or on certain subjects, or to your interactions with young library patrons and their families? I'm definitely aware of subject areas where I think
there need to be more books, but I'm not necessarily convinced that I'm the
person who needs to write them in all cases. I want to write about characters
and situations that I care about. If the stories I want to tell happen to
be stories that involve the kind of characters whose lives have been underrepresented
in Did librarianship increase your knowledge of children's literature and influence the kinds of things you chose to write? It definitely increased my knowledge, although I spent most of library school convinced that I was going to be an academic reference librarian. I didn't really discover children's and YA literature (except for what I'd read as an actual child and young adult) until I took over the Internet Public Library Teen Division. But I also had a lot of friends who worked in bookstores who told me about stuff I ought to read. Did incidents from your library work ever make it into your books? Did you ever set any scenes in your books in the library? Not so far. What are the greatest benefits of being a librarian to you as a writer? Pretty much what I said above, about being a better researcher, and being more connected to young adults and other librarians . . . Are there any drawbacks to being a librarian and also a writer? The only drawback is that I have less time to write. If you write while working as as librarian, how do you manage the time-juggling act? By not watching television. Seriously. How does your employment impact on how much you write and when you do it? Well, obviously, I can't write at work, so there are forty hours a week when I'm not able to get any writing done. I have to write in the evenings and on the weekends, like I said. Other than that, there's not a real impact. Do you find any conflicts or job-related difficulties in being both a writer and a librarian? Not really. How do your library administration and colleagues view your authorship? Is it appreciated and encouraged? Are the library patrons aware of your writing? I've had nothing but support and encouragement from coworkers and managers. Patrons don't really know about it yet. |
Return to the Authors Among Us main page
Last Updated October 31, 2003