FEATURE
Lisa Graff
It wasn’t until Graff was a senior at UCLA, majoring in linguistics, that she started seriously contemplating what kind of career she would pursue. “I liked studying linguistics, but I had no idea what I was going to do with it,” she says. “I started thinking about my favorite things to do and writing was the first thing that popped into my head.” Following that lead, Graff began looking into graduate schools where she could study writing for the first time. “I had never taken any creative writing courses,” she says. “I thought if I could get into grad school, maybe it meant that I did have what it takes to be a writer. Maybe I could learn more about this thing which I already had such a passion for.”
“I’m really excited about this book. I think it’s got a suspenseful plot that really keeps you on your toes. You don’t know where it’s going to go next.”
Graff was accepted at the New School in New York City where she earned an MFA in Creative Writing for Children. “It was a good thing I got in because I had absolutely no backup plan,” she says. During grad school, Graff began working as an associate editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux Books for Young Readers. Five years later, she left that job in order to write full time. Her first book, The Thing About Georgie, was published in 2006.
write in a genre that requires more effort on her part. “It went pretty well,” she says modestly of the book which went on to become a 2013 National Book Award nominee. “It’s a very twisty-turny story,” she says. “There are multiple plot lines that intersect and readers have to keep track of all of these varied threads. I think that’s the aspect people particularly enjoyed.” A sequel, Clatter of Jars, followed in 2016.
In the years and many books that have followed, including Absolutely Almost which was named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2014 and Lost in the Sun, named an ALA Notable Children’s Book in 2016, Graff has watched her writing evolve and mature. “It’s become much more personal,” she says. “I feel like I also take more risks on things that I’m not as comfortable with.” For example, Graff wrote A Tangle of Knots, her first fantasy novel, to intentionally challenge herself to
Graff says she challenged herself when writing Far Away, too. “That’s why it took so long for me to sort it out. It relies very heavily on plot, which doesn’t always come naturally to me. I think my strength lies more in realistic character development.” In Far Away, Graff deftly utilizes both aspects of storytelling as C.J. seeks out the source of the mysterious, anonymous messages she starts receiving on her 12th birthday. “She has to find out where they’re coming from,” says
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Story Monsters Ink | March 2019 | StoryMonsters.com
