Marching On

Saying goodbye to Dial Books for Young Readers

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the publication of A Catalog of Burnt Objects. There is much for me to celebrate in completing this book and seeing reaching readers.

February ended with two incredible visits to high schools in Bakersfield, where the librarians and students rolled out the red carpet, and I got to do one of my very favorite parts of this job; talk to people about writing and reading.

Incredible Visits at North and Centennial High Schools: Students made me those earrings!

At AWP, I connected with friends old and new—presented, and ate very good food.

Then spring break sent me back home to California in time for the poppies and lots of hiking with my family, and one with a dear friend who I met at California State Summer School for the Arts when I was 15 years old, and who is still out in the world making things.

Hiking in California

And when I got home, a new term started.

And when I got home, I also learned that my press, Dial Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Penguin Random House was folding.

I took a deep breath. I took fifteen minutes of deep breaths. I knew that this was not the end of writing for me. But I was rattled. Dial had been my dream imprint. I loved the people and the books they published. And I had to keep it together, I was in the middle of a long workday. And, I had a speech to deliver that night to inductees of the English Honors Society on the campus where I teach.

And it turned out that being there with them that day reminded me of why I do this, and why I have been doing this since I was a teenager. And why, I will always do this. Through all of the changes that will come.

Here’s what I said:

It is an honor to be here tonight to celebrate your scholastic achievements as you join Sigma Tau Delta. Your being is here is one way that you show your commitment to a lifetime of personal growth through scholarship and creative work that is grounded in stories.

My college did not have a Sigma Tau Delta chapter, so I was never a member. But like many colleges we did, or so the story goes, have ghosts.

One of the ghosts, it was said, frequented the library where engraved above the fireplace were the words, “Literacy: let me sit and hold high converse with the mighty dead.” Which according to my research for this talk, is a line from a poem by someone named James Thomson from sometime in the 1700s, though the poem instead of Literacy reads, “There studious let me sit and hold high converse with the mighty dead.”

I approve of the engraver’s revision.

I remember running my fingers over the engraving and thinking about the rumor of the ghost, but also how reading is just that—an ongoing conversation with great thinkers who have left us.

The idea is enough to haunt you. And perhaps it was that spirit alive in the little library where there was also a hidden stairwell to the additional haunted rooms. You could see the edge of the panel. You could hear the hollowness behind the door when you tapped. Once we even found evidence of hinges.

But I could never get it open. And none of my friends did either. Perhaps the ghosts were holding it closed.

Or perhaps it was the energy of all the books that lined the walls—old volumes of the great thinkers, hard-bound and faded with time, that were rising up and keeping it shut as if to say—you don’t need to enter the haunted passage way—you only need to open a book.

I could see Plato getting a kick out of keeping me out of a secret passage, and Dante was probably in on that too. Dickinson took no part, she was likely sitting in the corner, juggling the lemons I’d pluck from the courtyard bushes.

What the ghosts and spirits really did, I’ll never know. But I remember the library. The smell of the books. The quote on the wall. And the conversations, oh the conversations I’ve had over the years with the mighty dead.

They have been good. They have given my life meaning.

They will do the same for you. They already are.

You all know the importance of stories. You are here because you care. Because you have worked hard, thought hard about what it means to use words thoughtfully. You know that a well-crafted piece of writing has the power to not only raise the hairs on your arm, but to motivate people to act, cause them to reflect, and invite them to consider what a kinder, more gentle world might be like--

Stories also invite us to consider what a worse world would look like. Those of us who have spent our lives in stories are often the buzzkill at the party who responds to a Pollyanna who says something like “Things can only get better,” with, “oh dear, they might, but they could also get much, much worse.”

Erin Entrada Kelly’s Newbery Award Winning middle grade novel First State of Being tells the story of a boy who meets the first time traveler, a teenager who playing around with his mom’s space-time machine, blips himself back to 1999. In it, the characters talk of the The Conklin Principle which suggests that we must always, always imagine the best possible outcome for any situation.

There are many possibilities for your life, for our world. You can imagine the bad and the good. Stories, at their best can help us through both, but I believe one of the most important things about stories is how they move us toward the good—how even stories of worlds far worse than ours invite us to see beauty and connection, and all of the things that make life worth living.

Stories are what living is all about. Devoting your life to the study of them and to the sharing of them is no guarantee of riches, but it is a fine place to build a soul.

Tonight, I want each one of you to think about how your story is part of a larger story, one that has power. One that is worth telling. Someone helped you get here tonight—probably many people did. Probably someone held you on their lap when you were a child and read to you, and someone else struggled with you as you sounded out words, someone gave you their favorite book, and you read it, and it changed you. Thank them. Someone taught you study skills, or cheered you up when you did worse than you’d hoped on an assignment. Someone believed in you, and now you are here.

That’s amazing. Now give it back. Wherever you go and whatever you do, seek out the people who are supporting storytelling, reading, and literacy. Help them out. Join an organization or start your own. You can volunteer or seek work that supports these goals.

Or you can go it on your own. Start a publication, or a nonprofit—especially if you have some friends to help you. It’s not actually that hard. I have once started a magazine and twice been on the founding boards of nonprofits devoted to literacy. That work has been some of the most rewarding of my career because my writing won’t matter if I don’t have readers, and spreading the love of stories to others? Well there is nothing better.

There are many people in the world today who might suggest that writing and reading are no longer necessary. We have tools that can do this for us. We need only the basic skills and the robots will do the rest. Why should we labor at our writing? Why should we, like TS Eliot apparently did, add a comma to his poem in the morning only to remove it in the afternoon? What is the point? How is that productive? How is that worth anything?

I don’t know. I guess. But I do know “everyday the people come and going talking of Michelangelo.”

And I know that every time I read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock I get chills.

You and I know that there was a time in history when most people could not read. We call these the dark ages, and we must never let them come again.

Reading opens the world to people who might not otherwise be able to see it.

Writing is thinking. It is how we slow the mind down and process. The scholarship of literature allows us into the minds of people from different times, and upon whose thought worlds were built. What luck to have access to such magic.

What magic to be haunted in this way, by the ghosts of old thinkers. By stories written long before our birth.

The study of writing allows us to slow down and think really hard about just a few words, and then we zoom out and consider those words in conversation with other words. Eventually, we see the whole story for what it is, but then we zoom out again and see that story in conversation with the world and its history.

And we begin to see how stories are connected.

How we are never alone in a room with a book.

How every college library, actually every library everywhere, is haunted with stories. With voices for another age.

Entrada Kelly’s contemporary novel teaches young readers about the vast scope of time while also imparting the lesson that all we live in the present. It is the first state of being. Our actions here and now have consequences, and the duty of the moment is to be aware of that fact.

It is through study of great books, and crafting our own stories that we consider the possibilities of the future and learn to act in a way that might move us toward a better outcome.

As I tell my writing students, on a blank page, anything is possible, once you start writing, though the story begins to have its own rules.

Your lives are not one story, and your scholarship will not be one story, but you can commit your life to sharing stories, to preaching the power of words, thoughtfully crafted and by a human who cares.

You have been given a great gift: the time to study and the dedication to do it well. I can’t wait to see what you will do and how you will share in this conversation with the mighty dead and preserve this tradition for the yet to be born.

Literacy: let me sit and hold high converse with the mighty dead.

As Prufrock tells us, there is time to ask, “Do I dare disturb the universe?”

May you find yourself haunted. Thank you and congratulations.

Me at Falls Creek Falls, Lake Catherine State Park, Arkansas

Come See Me in April

April 16th, The University of Maine, Farmington Visiting Writers Series 7pm, The Landing

April 20th, The Missouri School Librarian’s Association Annual Conference: 4:45 pm-615 Author Mix and Mingle and Book Signing

Remember, We Play A Typo Game Here

If you catch a typo in my post, please call attention to it in the comments. The first person to catch a real typo (not an intentional grammatical choice) will win a prize. This month the prize will be an envelope of various flat swag from my books and a personal note from me to you, arriving in your mail at some point after you win.

If you don’t see a typo, drop a note hello in the comments, and if there somehow isn’t a typo, or if no one catches one, you will be entered into a drawing to win.

Fine print:

You must be a subscriber to win, and you must share your mailing address with me so that I can send you the prize. US addresses only. You have until the next newsletter comes out to find a typo, but only the first person who finds one wins, even if I’ve made five typos. Thanks for playing!

Also:

I am booking school visits and speaking engagements now for the 2026-2027 school year. Please reach out if you think I am a fit for your school, library, or community organization.

I am working on my plan to include interviews on creative life, resilience, struggle, and failure. I just need to be home two weekends in a row to get organized about it—that should happen soon! Perhaps the April issue will launch this—or maybe it won’t, because this is the busiest time of my work life. Looks like you have to keep reading to find out! But get ready—the prizes will be fun!