Episode 118: Laurel Snyder

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Rachel talks with long time friend and writer for children, Laurel Snyder. They talk about the Iowa Writers  Workshop, Laurel’s path from poet to children’s book author, money, the novice brain, labor, being “messy and extra but not totally batshit,” the relationship between poetry and picture books, the experimental nature of picture books, world building, getting things out rather than getting things down. 

Books by Laurel Snyder

• The Witch of Woodland (Walden Pond Press, 2023)

• Endlessly Ever After (Chronicle Books, 2022) 

• Charlie & Mouse: Book 1 (Chronicle Books, 2019)

• Hungry Jim (Chronicle Books, 2019) 

• My Jasper June (Walden Pond Press, 2019)

• Orphan Island (Walden Pond Press, 2018) 

• Swan: The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova (Chronicle Books, 2015)

• Camp Wonderful Wild (Two Lions, 2013)

• Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains (Yearling Books, 2010) 

• Any Which Wall (Yearling Books, 2010) 

• The Myth of the Simple Machines (No Tell Books, 2007)

• Half/Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes (Soft Skull Press, 2006)

Also Referenced

• Marvin Bell

• Gary Blankenburg (teacher at public high school in maryland)

• W.D. Snodgrass

• UTC University of Chattanooga

• Catherine (Cathy) Wagner

• Bradley PaulCarl Sandburg

• Theodore Roethke

• Hamburg Inn No. 2

• James (Jim) Galvin

• Greg Brown’s Songs of Innocence and Experience

• Tammy Wynette

• Annals of Otorhinolaryngology

• Jane Yolen

• Edward Eager

• Richard Nash, Softskull editor

• Thisbe Nissen

• Isaac Babel

• Robert Creeley

• SCBWI: The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators

• Vanderpump RulesEmily Hughes (illustrator for Charlie and Mouse)

• Jason Isbell

Bio

Laurel Snyder is the author of eight novels for children, including, most recently The Witch of Woodland, My Jasper June, and Orphan Island as well as many picture books including the Charlie and Mouse books (with Emily Hughes), Endlessly Ever After (with Dan Santat), Bruce Springsteen: A Little Golden Biography (with Jeffrey Ebbeler) and Swan, the Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova (with Julie Morstad).

Laurel has written two collections of poems, Daphne & Jim: a choose-your-own-adventure biography in verse and The Myth of the Simple Machines. She also edited an anthology of nonfiction, Half/Life: Jew-ish tales from Interfaith Homes. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Michener-Engle Fellow, Laurel has published work in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the Utne Reader, the Chicago Sun-Times, and elsewhere. She teaches in the MFAC program at Hamline University. A Baltimore native, Laurel lives in Atlanta with her family.