S12 E08: Chasing Rabbits with S.D. Smith

In today’s episode we’re going to hear from a young adult fiction writer whose creative work is fueled by the inspiration of family and who gains tremendous creative energy both from his children and by writing for children.

Our guest is S.D. Smith, author of The Green Ember Series, a bestselling middle-grade adventure saga. The Green Ember has reached hundreds of thousands of readers and spent time as the number one bestselling audiobook in the world on Audible. Smith’s stories are captivating readers across the globe who are hungry for “new stories with an old soul.” Enthusiastic families can’t get enough of these tales.

In our conversation, S.D. (Sam) shares why family and community are important to him as a writer.

This conversation continues the season 12 theme of Art & Identity, offering a meditation on how family and community shape the people we become and the art we make.

We will be talking in greater detail about this relationship between art and family in the Makers and Mystics Creative Collective. If you’d love to go deeper with us in these conversations, I want to invite you to visit Patreon and sign up today.

And since this episode features the work of a children’s book writer, it seems appropriate to tell you here that starting the first Wednesday in October, our collective will begin reading through The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

S11 E13: Building Bridges with Katherine Paterson

There is a relationship between grief and transcendence that may not be immediately recognizable. But it’s one often expressed within art and in particular, children’s literature.

Whether it’s Lewis’s wardrobe to Narnia, Dorothy’s house transported by cyclone to Oz or a bridge to Terabithia built across a chasm of loss.

Grief has a way of transporting us to a fantastical world of imagination where we can more easily grapple with the difficulties of loss and even find closure to the trauma that sent us looking for relief.

In this episode, Makers & Mystics host Stephen Roach talks with children's book author Katherine Paterson about the motivations behind her writing and why she feels it is important to create a safe space through art and literature for young adults to work through difficult emotions and experiences.

Katherine Paterson is the author of more than 40 books, including 18 novels for children and young people. She has twice won the Newbery Medal, for Bridge to Terabithia in 1978 and Jacob Have I Loved in 1981.

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S3 E12: What The Night Sings with Vesper Stamper

Vesper Stamper is an illustrator and author who was born in Nuremberg, Germany and raised in New York City. Her family was an eclectic mix of engineers, musicians and artists who didn't think Voltaire too tough for bedtime reading, Chopin Valses too loud for wake-up calls, or precision slide rules too fragile as playthings. She married filmmaker Ben Stamper right out of college, and together they have two wildly creative children. When Vesper earned her MFA in Illustration from School of Visual Arts, Ben gave her an orange tree. She illustrates and writes under its leaves and blossoms at her grandfather 's old drafting table, in the pine woods of the Northeast.

In this episode, Stephen talks with Vesper about her debut, young-adult historical novel, What The Night Sings. The two discuss Vesper’s creative process in writing and illustrating the book and how her interest in the Holocaust led her on a search for redemption in the midst of unimaginable circumstances.