School Library Journal: Diverse Mentorship
School Library Journal
March 9, 2021
In 2019, Diana Ma and Angeline Boulley were part of the We Need Diverse Books Mentorship Program, partnering with YA heavy hitters to craft their debut novels. Boulley’s Firekeeper’s Daughter is the story of a young Ojibwe woman who witnesses a murder and becomes an FBI informant on a new drug. Ma’s Heiress Apparently follows a Chinese American actress who travels to Beijing for a role and discovers long-concealed family secrets. Here, the authors discuss their writing challenges, their families’ reactions to their novels, and using the YA genre to underscore insights about identity and culture.
Diana Ma: I loved your beautiful, gripping, and powerful book! Firekeeper’s Daughter took me on such an incredible journey of loss, love, and healing. Thank you so much for sharing this story with me! I want to start by asking about your experience with the We Need Diverse Books Mentorship Program. Like me, you were a 2019 WNDB mentee. In fact, your picture is right next to mine in the WNDB press release about the 2019 mentees! I have that image hanging in my office at my college, and it always gives me a thrill to see myself in the company of such a talented group of diverse children’s book creators. My own experience working with Swati Avasthi as a mentor was so incredibly invaluable, and I wonder if you could talk about your experience in the WNDB mentorship program.
Angeline Boulley: I had applied the year prior and was not selected. When it was time to apply for the 2019 program, I read the bio summaries about each of the three YA mentors, as well as their body of work. There was something about Francisco X. Stork’s voice; he wrote about harsh realities facing teens. I felt a connection with the themes of his books. So, it was not only a fantastic thrill to learn I was selected, but that I would be mentored by Francisco. He reached out right away, even before the program officially started. We began emailing back and forth, sometimes daily. He asked about why I had written the story and what it meant to me. He wrote about his career as an attorney and coming to the United States as a child. If you’ve ever met Francisco or heard him speak, you immediately know that he is a kind and gentle soul. He feels deeply, processes deliberately, and writes with honesty and compassion. Francisco read my manuscript and provided feedback in sections. His emails would include overall impressions, and the attached manuscript section would have detailed feedback via track changes. His comments were thoughtful, and spot on!
I was living in the Washington, D.C. area at the time, so when Francisco had a speaking engagement in the city, we met for breakfast. He was just as wonderful in person as in our previous communications. Once Francisco finished providing feedback on my full manuscript, he invited me to send it to his agent, Faye Bender. She is now my agent. So, the WNDB mentorship and Francisco X. Stork changed my life.
How was your connection with Swati Avasthi? Were you a fan previously? Was there anything about the mentorship experience that surprised you? … Keep Reading!
Netflix & the Obamas' Higher Ground will Adapt FIREKEEPER'S Daughter for Series
DEADLINE - February 5, 2021
President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground Productions has set its latest slate of film and TV projects for Netflix.
The streamer is developing two TV series and four feature films as part of the slate.
On the TV side, Reverie and Extant creator Mickey Fisher is adapting Firekeeper’s Daughter, the debut YA thriller from Angeline Boulley. The book follows an 18-year-old Native girl as she reluctantly goes undercover in a police investigation on her Ojibwe reservation. Fisher will serve as showrunner and co-write with Wenonah Wilms, the Horsehead Girls writer who is also from the Ojibwe tribe and will also act as exec producer.
Deal of the Day!
Publishers Weekly - "Debut YA by Member of Chippewa Tribe Sells in Seven-Figure Deal" - October 8, 2019
A debut YA novel called The Firekeeper's Daughter sold for a sum rumored to be seven figures, after a 12-bidder auction, in the run-up to next week's Frankfurt Book Fair. The novel by Angeline Boulley, which Tiffany Liao at Henry Holt Books for Young Readers nabbed in a North American rights agreement, is currently making the rounds among foreign publishers.
Boulley, who was represented in the two-book deal by Faye Bender at the Book Group, is an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians (based in Michigan's Upper Peninsula). The director of the Office of Indian Education at the U.S. Department of Education, Boulley gained some attention thanks to a mentorship program overseen by the publishing industry nonprofit We Need Diverse Books, participating in the 2019 WNDB Mentorship Program. (The program allows up-and-coming authors to workshop a manuscript, one-on-one, with an established author working in their genre.)
In a pitch letter for the novel, which PW obtained, Bender compared Boulley's book to Tommy Orange's bestselling and award-winning 2018 novel, There There. Like Orange's debut, which explores Native American identity, The Firekeeper's Daughter also delves into questions of identity in the Native American community.
The heroine of the novel, Daunis, is of mixed heritage. Unenrolled in her local tribe, she, according to Bender, feels "like an outsider both in her hometown and on the nearby Indian reservation." Despite being the valedictorian of her high school class, she is not headed to college. Instead she's bracing for a future as the caretaker for her emotionally unstable mother. But then, after witnessing a murder, she "must decide what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) when she is forced to choose between saving those she loves, helping the FBI, and protecting the tribal community."
"How the WNDB Mentorship Program Helped Me Grow as a Writer"
By Angeline Boulley
I applied for the year-long mentorship through the We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) nonprofit organization in October 2017 and was not selected.
As any writer knows, rejection is part of the process. Every rejection hurts, some more than others. This one was not so bad. Something about it felt hopeful. I sensed I was a contender and that it just hadn’t gone my way in this instance.
Nearly a year later, after a major revision and working with a freelance editor, I was encouraged to try again. I dusted off my WNDB application, reread my writing sample from 2017, and saw my growth.
As a writer, I hover between extra confidence (“My manuscript is fantastic and I must remember that one high school anecdote for when Terry Gross interviews me on Fresh Air!”) and zero confidence (“No one will ever read this or be moved by it. Who am I to even try?”).
So, in an extra-confident moment in October 2018, I applied again for the WNDB Young Adult Mentorship Program. And then my confidence went on hiatus. Doubt crept in. My manuscript is dark. Wherever the line is in YA literature, my story surely crosses it. It is not everyone’s cup of tea. Would my sample pages resonate with any of the mentors?
I’d read the bio sketches of the three YA mentors and one, Francisco X. Stork, stayed with me. I read his most recent book, Disappeared, which dealt with siblings grappling with drug-related criminal elements in their town. I connected with his stories and his writing.
In December 2018, I received an email notifying me that I had been selected for a WNDB mentorship in the Young Adult category and my mentor would be Francisco X. Stork!
The year-long mentorship began in January 2019. Francisco and I communicated via email. He read my full manuscript and offered to provide feedback in sections. He also wrote about his experiences as a writer, working with editors and publishers. Sometimes we communicated every week and other times we both had work, travel, family, and other commitments that took priority.
