Writers Who Read: Maureen O’Leary Wanket

Our Writers Who Read series continues this week with young adult author Maureen O’Leary Wanket.

Who are you?
My name is Maureen O’Leary Wanket and my young adult novel How to Be Manly is coming out September 16th with Giant Squid Books.

How to be Manly is about how in the course of one summer, Fatty Matty Sullivan follows the advice of a self-help book written by late football great Tad Manly and joins the football team in order to get the girl he has a crush on to notice him. When the grandparents he lives with face a crisis and his deadbeat dad comes back to town to threaten their home, Matty has to grow up fast to protect the ones he loves.

I’m a writer, English teacher and education consultant in Sacramento where I live with my husband and two daughters. I was a product of a pretty rough public education until entering a private Catholic high school. I majored in English at UC Santa Cruz, got a couple of teaching credentials, and in the past twenty-one years have taught several grade levels and subjects in schools all over California.

What are three beloved books you first read before the age of 12?
Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton was an important book and I’m not kidding. Mike’s steam shovel was named Mary Anne and she was hardcore. I loved that book. Judy Blume’s entire oeuvre was huge to me. Couldn’t pick just one. I guess I loved real stories the best.

Even my favorite fairy tales were the original Grimm’s that had people facing the consequences of their actions in immediate and graphic ways. No Disney for me. I loved the real Little Mermaid, full of sacrifice, sister love and pain. I also loved the story where the rich woman refuses to give her poor sister bread to feed her family. When the rich woman goes that night to cut a loaf of bread for dinner, it bleeds and she finds out that her poor sister and her children died of hunger. Social commentary mixed with horror. That was the story for me.

I was an intense child.

What is one book you are always recommending to friends and family (and maybe the local barista) as an adult?
I rarely suggest specific titles, not even to my students. Reading tastes can be as personal as choice of perfume. Yet The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh is one that has been so universally appealing while addressing an important social concern that I do recommend it to people. It is about a young woman aging out of the foster care system who has had such a brutal early childhood that she cannot sustain relationships. The novel is riveting, sensual, and so relevant. I read an early draft when the author and I shared a writing group. From the start, each page was heartbreakingly beautiful.

What is your book kryptonite–those unique elements in a book, beyond just great writing and three-dimensional characters, that make you unable to resist reading?
As a reader, I’m one to develop crushes on certain authors and anything they write will then be my kryptonite forever. Francesca Lia Block is one of those “crushes.” Janet Fitch is another. Raymond Carver, of course. Annie Proulx. Toni Morrison. Margaret Atwood. Oh, I could go on and on.

Reflecting on these names, I realize that my favorite drug is dialogue that is true to the ear. I’m a sucker for spare dialogue that reveals character. I love true voices. Short story writer Jodi Angel is an example of a contemporary author who nails the young male voice like few others. It takes a certain powerful listener to be able to do that right. I spend my entire days with young people and I know how they talk. When an author gets the talk right, I’m done for.

What is your ideal time and place to read?
I go to bed an hour or two before I’m sleepy to read in bed. It’s the ultimate luxury. I also love to read with my students. Community silent reading is lovely.

Which books have had the biggest influence on your writing?
Living a Literary Life by Carolyn See has been important since I first read it fifteen years ago. It gave me permission to have a blast with giving writing a real go. It’s full of practical advice and pieces of memoir and whimsy. So great.

I consider Raymond Carver my literary godfather. There was a moment in my early twenties when I was a young bride, reading Carver for the first time, stretched out on the dirty carpet of our converted garage studio apartment in Arcata. I rolled onto my back after reading “Cathedral”, just astonished and changed and totally infatuated. I’d never be that good, but I wanted more than anything to play too. I still feel that way.

How do you balance reading and writing in your life?
It’s more shocking to me that I balance life in my reading and writing. How does my house get clean? My papers graded? My students taught? My family fed? My grad schoolwork completed?

I think it must be the work of magic.

Choose your preferred book form: ebook, physical book, or audio book?
My mom gave me a Kindle one Christmas, and I like it for books I otherwise wouldn’t be able to access easily. There are independent publishers coming out with interesting and well-written work and my Kindle lets me get at those without any fuss.

Yet, I’d prefer they were available at my local indie bookstores because there is nothing like the feel and smell of a real book. Sacramento has an embarrassment of riches in independent bookstores. We have Beers Books, Underground Books, The Avid Reader, and Time Tested Books. Wonderful, thoughtful bookstores are such a rare treasure now.

Do you consciously plan your future reading–i.e., set book goals, keep a TBR list, participate in book challenges or book clubs? Why or why not?
Right now I am determined to read through my own bookshelf—real and virtual. I have stacks of titles on my shelves and Kindle that I haven’t read yet that are winking at me right now as I sit here. Read me, they say. Do you hear them? They are very insistent.

What are you reading now?
We by Michael Landweber. It’s published by Coffeetown Press, an independent imprint I admire. I’m excited by the integrity of a lot of the work coming out from independent publishers right now. It’s an interesting time to be a reader and writer.

I’m also reading When My Heart Was Wicked by my writing group colleague Tricia Stirling. I was privy to some early pages of this novel, and I’m so happy to see it coming out with Scholastic next year. Again, authentic voice is my thing.

For nonfiction, I have Lean In by Sheryl Sandburg going. It’s eye-opening and I’m enjoying it. I’m rereading passages of Paint it Black by Janet Fitch, The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks for the kind of perverse comfort harsh stories give me. In my reading, I always have loved the terrible, beautiful real.

You can find out more about Maureen on her website or Twitter. You can find out more about How to Be Manly at Giant Squid Books.