Thank you to Legend
Press for allowing me to take part in this blog tour for The
Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore – and to author, Kim Fu, for answering my
questions as part of my contribution.
I do love
interviewing authors about their writing – I did one with Jess Vallance
for her novel You Only Live
Once a while back and it was lovely to learn about her writing processes
and inspiration. And now with Kim Fu, I was curious as to how she came about to
write THIS story, and her thoughts on writing in general. Here are five
questions she generously answered for me, including the blurb, author info, and
useful links. Happy reading!
Blurb
A group of young girls descend on a sleepaway camp
where their days are filled with swimming lessons, friendship bracelets, and
songs by the fire. Filled with excitement and nervous energy, they set off on
an overnight kayaking trip to a nearby island. But before the night is over,
they find themselves stranded, with no adults to help them survive or guide
them home.
The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore traces these
five girls through and beyond this fateful trip. We see them through successes
and failures, loving relationships and heartbreaks; we see what it means to
find, and define, oneself, and the ways in which the same experience is refracted
through different people.
A portrait of friendship and of the families we
build for ourselves, and the pasts we can't escape.
Interview
I love how The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore is a crossover between YA and adult fiction – what inspired you to write the story in this style?
When I was writing,
I intended it as adult fiction, but I’m so pleased that readers in the YA community
have picked it up and found crossover resonance. I do read both, of course, so
I’m sure there were some subconscious influences as well. (I particularly like
Marissa Meyer and Angie Thomas.)
Where did you get the idea for the story?
The way I work, I
had these characters in mind first, interacting and bouncing off each other,
but I wasn’t quite sure how they fit together. Then, in 2015, I did a
three-month writer’s residency in a subarctic town in Yukon, Canada, where it
got to be -40 degrees. The people I met there, and the time I got to spend
traipsing about in the cold and the snow and the isolation, led me to think a
lot about outdoor survival. The image of the girls in kayaks came to me, and it
cracked the novel open.
What did you learn whilst writing the book? Were there struggle points?
I learned I can
only write what I’m compelled to write at any given moment. I love a lot of
writers whose styles and interests are very different from my own, and after my
first novel, I felt pressured to create in a new way. I came up with a lot of
high-concept ideas, and even a few outlines, that ultimately did not speak to
me when I sat down to write. The nitty-gritty kind of writing, word by word. It
took a long time for me to learn that I couldn’t write with my mind full of
imagined critics, and that my style would evolve over time organically—I
couldn’t force it.
In your opinion – what do you think makes a good writer?
Oh, there’re so
many ways to be a good writer! I love a page-turning plot, I love innovative
language play, I love that constriction in your chest when you’re feeling what
a character is feeling. I love fiction as thought-experiment, as an
illumination of the world around us, or the world as it could be. I love
writing that shocks and surprises, and I love writing that feels like a
comfort, a homecoming. I love returning to a distinctive, consistent voice, and
I love writers who are always doing something new, putting on a thousand
disguises. I’m hard-pressed to think of a definition that encompasses them all.
As a child, what visions did you have for your future career-wise? What advice would you give to young minds today?
As a child, I wanted to be a writer, but I veered in other directions
along the way, and my vision of what being a writer would be like certainly
doesn’t resemble my life today. (There’s a lot more email, bookkeeping, and
side-gigs.) My best advice is always: one, read, and two, seek out
community—peers who share your dreams and your vision of how the world should
be. Support each other emotionally and practically, celebrate each other’s
achievements and mourn each other’s losses. Build the future together.
About the Author:
KIM FU is the author of the poetry
collection How Festive the Ambulance and the novel For Today I Am a Boy, which
won the Edmund White Award, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and was
a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice.
Links:
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