Hawes, Louise

views updated

HAWES, Louise

(Carolyn Carlisle, a house pseudonym, Jamie Suzanne, a house pseudonym)

PERSONAL: Born in Boulder, CO; daughter of Maurice (a foreign service officer) and Isabel (a teacher and painter); children: two. Education: Swarthmore College, B.A.; Vermont College, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—Pittsboro, NC. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Houghton Mifflin Children's Books, 222 Berkeley St., 8th Fl., Boston, MA 02116-3764. E-mail—mail@louisehawes.com.

CAREER: Author and educator. Vermont College, founding faculty member of Writing for Children and Young Adults M.F.A. program. Writer-in-residence at University of New Mexico; teacher and lecturer at College of Staten Island, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Meredith College, Duke University, and University of South Florida. Visiting author, University of Mississippi, 2005.

MEMBER: Authors Guild, Authors League, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Writers, and Illustrators of North Carolina.

AWARDS, HONORS: Best Books of 2000 selection, Children's Book Council, and Young Adult Library Association Popular Paperback designation, 2002, both for Rosey in the Present Tense; Best Book for the Teen Age, New York Public Library, and Top-Ten Books of Summer selection, Girls' Life magazine, both 2003, both for Waiting for Christopher; Bank Street College Pick, and Independent Booksellers' 2004–05 Booksense Pick, both for The Vanishing Point: A Story of Lavinia Fontana; New Jersey Author's Award; two New Jersey writing fellowships.

WRITINGS:

MIDDLE-GRADE BOOKS

Nelson Malone Meets the Man from Mush-Nut, illustrated by Bert Dodson, Lodestar Books (New York, NY), 1986.

Nelson Malone Saves Flight 942, illustrated by Jacqueline Rogers, Lodestar Books (New York, NY), 1988.

Tales from the Cafeteria No. 1: Spaghetti and Spooks, Avon Books (New York, NY), 1995.

Tales from the Cafeteria No. 2: Things That Go Bump in Your Soup, Avon Books (New York, NY), 1995.

William de Kooning: The Life of an Artist (nonfiction), Enslow (Berkeley Heights NJ), 2002.

Muti's Necklace: The Oldest Story in the World, illustrated by Rebecca Guay-Mitchell, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2006.

YOUNG-ADULT NOVELS

Rosey in the Present Tense, Walker (New York, NY), 1999.

Waiting for Christopher. Candlewick Press (Cambridge, MA), 2002.

The Vanishing Point: A Story of Lavinia Fontana, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2004.

OTHER

Anteaters Don't Dream (adult short stories), University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), in press.

Also contributor of books, under house pseudonym Carolyn Carlisle, to "Mercy Hospital" series, Avon Books (New York, NY); and contributor under house pseudonym Jamie Suzanne, to "Sweet Valley Twins" series, Bantam Books (New York, NY). Short fiction has appeared in The Reader Writes the Story Canadian and World Short Fiction, Prentice Hall-Canada, 1992; Other Voices, #22, University of Illinois, 1995; Love and Sex: Ten Stories of Truth, edited by Michael Cart, Simon & Schuster, 2001; and Good Girls, Volume 6, Random House (New York, NY) 2006.

SIDELIGHTS: Louise Hawes is the author of numerous books for young adults and middle graders, and earlier in her career she wrote under the pseudonyms Carolyn Carlisle and Jamie Suzanne. Her teen novel Rosey in the Present Tense tells the story of Franklin, whose Asian-American girlfriend, Rosey Mishimi, has died in a car accident. Franklin's longing for her ultimately results in Rosey appearing to him as a ghost. Although Franklin is initially ecstatic, he soon comes to discover that his memories of his lost love should not keep him or the spirit of Rosey from moving on.

Waiting for Christopher features fourteen-year-old Feena, who has recently moved to Florida with her mother. One day, while at a local amusement park, she sees a woman hitting her small toddler and overhears the woman call the boy Christopher. Sensitive and lonely, Feena feels sorry for the child, partly because he has the same name as her brother, who died from Sudden Infant Death syndrome several years earlier. Feena ends up kidnapping the toddler and trying to care for him, enlisting the help of her idolized friend, the popular Raylene, along the way. Eventually, Feena learns that Christopher's mother, who has suffered abuse within her own family, is trying to make a new start, and the two girls now debate whether or not they should return the child to his mother.

The Vanishing Point: A Story of Lavinia Fontana is a novel based on the life of Italian artist Lavinia Fontana, who lived in Italy in the sixteenth century. The fourteen-year-old "Vini" wants to be a painter, just like her father, Prosper Fontana, who ignores Vini's wishes and talent largely because she is not the son he always wanted. The girl is determined to earn a place in her father's studio as an apprentice, starts to study art in secret with her father's untalented apprentice Paolo, a young man who is in love with her. In addition to her fictional account of Vini's life, Hawes includes a short biography of the real-life Lavinia Fontana in an afterword.

Hawes told CA: "I think I was earmarked for writing from the start—I used to play library, while other girls played dolls! I loved Rudyard Kipling then, and L. Frank Baum and Albert Payson Terhune. As I grew older, I loved the windy, wordy novels of the nineteenth-century British novelists, and now I read everything I can put my hands on. Like Annie Dillard, I take a 'lapidary' approach to writing: After free writing with a character and getting to know them, I begin my draft. That's when I polish every word and sentence before I move on. I wish I could work otherwise. (I advise all my writing students NOT to do as I do.) It's slow and painful, but it's the only way I seem to function.

"Every time you crawl inside someone else's skin to tell their story, you learn empathy. Writers are blessed to feel 'bigger' than themselves with each book. As to my favorite book, I answer that question the same way I'm sure most authors do: my favorite is the one I'm working on!

"They say you only live once. That is a LIE, where hungry readers are concerned. I'm privileged to be able to help my readers live over and over, and to grow and grow with each life they 'try on.' What a wonderful way to earn my keep! What more could I ask?"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 1, 1999, Shelle Rosenfeld, review of Rosey in the Present Tense, p. 1398; July, 2002, Hazel Rochman, review of Waiting for Christopher, p. 1838; November 1, 2004, Jennifer Mattson, review of The Vanishing Point: A Story of Lavinia Fontana, p. 496.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, September, 2002, Janice M. Del Negro, review of Waiting for Christopher, p. 18.

Horn Book, September-October, 2002, Kitty Flynn, review of Waiting for Christopher, p. 573.

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, March, 2003, Pamela Osback, review of Waiting for Christopher, p. 527.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2002, review of Waiting for Christopher, p. 655; September 1, 2004, review of The Vanishing Point, p. 866.

Kliatt, March, 2002, Paula Rohrlick, review of Waiting for Christopher, p. 11; September, 2004, Claire Rosser, review of The Vanishing Point, p. 10.

Publishers Weekly, March 8, 1999, review of Rosey in the Present Tense, p. 69; May 20, 2002, review of Waiting for Christopher, p. 66; November 15, 2004, review of The Vanishing Point, p. 61.

School Library Journal, June, 2002, Connie Tyrrell Burns, review of Waiting for Christopher, p. 140; March, 2003, Mary Elam, review of William de Kooning: The Life of an Artist, 251; December, 2004, Ginny Gustin, review of The Vanishing Point, p. 146.