Michelle Laurent

What was your favorite thing to do as a child?

Read. My dad would tease me when I came peddling home with a stack of books in my basket. The challenge to get

through them in two weeks without renewing became more enticing. 

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How do you start and end a story?  

I think you start with an idea, let it carry you and discover its ending.

 

What inspires your writing?

I write what I used to like to read and still want to.

 

Do you see yourself in one of your characters?

My characters are a collection of pieces of me but also of those I’ve met.

The line from Emily Parker Gray, “How many times had she forgiven her?”—that was me with someone who I thought was my friend.

With Ernestine Baylor in Maxwell Keeper, I saw her hands first—the “dinner plates.” She reminded me of someone I'd known in middle school.

 

What makes a good protagonist?

I think it’s someone you want to champion. You want to go through their experiences with them and see how their story ends.

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Who edits your work?

First, my family. Writer's are gentle souls. Then, when I'm ready to introduce my characters and their world to a broader audience, my writer's group.

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What were your favorite books from childhood?

When I was a child, some of my favorite books were those by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read all of the Little House on the Prairie books. My favorite was The Long Winter.

I loved The Lonely Doll series by Dare Wright, Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White and The Borrowers by Mary Norton.

Favorite books for young adults now that I’m not a child would be Watership Down by Richard Adams, The Giver by Louis Lowry, Sarah Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan, Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt, Holes by Louis Sachar, Hatchet by Gary Paulson, Morning Girl by Michael Doris, Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell, A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park, The Tale of Despereaux and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert O’Brien, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson.