Maureen McQuerry: The Girl Who Asked Questions

Poet and novelist Maureen McQuerry decided at age six that she would be a writer. She was in her forties before her first novels came out. In between, she was the neighborhood kid called "question box," a closet poet in high school, and a teacher who chose the classroom because writing felt too risky. Maureen talks with Terry Heath about the fear that kept her from long-form fiction and how she got past it. She describes the phone call when Abrams bought three books at once, and the family history behind _Between Before and After_: her father became a flu orphan at ten during the 1918–1919 epidemic and survived on the streets of New York. The novel came out in 2019, just before a new pandemic, and then lost its editors and publicist, leaving the book orphaned too. Soon after, her agent of twelve years left the industry and she moved across the state to Bainbridge Island, where she knew one person. They also discuss finding two brothers she never knew she had, one at the front door and one through a DNA match. The conversation covers the green man carving that became a poem and then a middle-grade duology, why poems and novels should open questions rather than answer them, the terror of release day, what writing costs, and the question under all her work: what does it mean to live well? Highlights 00:36 Deciding at age six to become a writer 01:37 Spying on the neighbors with a notebook 02:11 A closet poet in high school 03:14 From poems to novels, and being a role model for her kids 05:16 Getting past the fear, bird by bird 06:17 The phone call: Abrams buys three books 07:13 Her father, a 1918 flu orphan, and Between Before and After 09:19 An orphaned book: two editors, a distillery, and a fired publicist 11:36 A brother at the front door, and another found through DNA 13:57 Myth, fairy tales, and Celtic legend 15:07 Every story starts with a question, and the green man 17:38 Rift and climate refugees 19:11 "Question box" 19:40 Why she chose teaching 20:40 The turn in a poem 21:29 Hope that denies universal defeat 22:45 How few answers there really are 24:38 Terrified on release day 25:51 The story her father wanted told 26:49 Walking Brooklyn with a guide in his nineties 28:01 Telling her brother who their father was 29:40 Isolation and community 31:57 Milestones don't change you; the work does 34:19 The dark night of the soul 36:01 The influenza orphan 36:10 Rebuilding, and a back-porch book club 37:53 What she still wants 40:27 What writing costs 42:22 What isn't two-sided 43:25 What it means to live well Books by Maureen McQuerry The Peculiars (Abrams/Amulet), ISBN 9781419712067 Time Out of Time, Book One: Beyond the Door (Amulet), ISBN 9781419714931 Time Out of Time, Book Two: The Telling Stone (Abrams), ISBN 9781419719165 Between Before and After (Blink/HarperCollins), ISBN 9780310767282 Big Ideas for Little Philosophers Box Set, with Duane Armitage (G.P. Putnam's Sons), ISBN 9780593111703 Rift (forthcoming) Find Maureen: http://maureenmcquerry.com BOOKS: 9781419701788, 9781419710162, 9781419714948, 9780310767381