From The Library: Holly Black

Posted by ElizabethGenco on Thursday, November 2 2006 at 9:20 am

From The Library is a series of interviews with some of my favorite storytellers. For the latest SCHEHERAZADE update, click here. For NIGHTVISIT, click here.

Holly Black brings mythic fiction to the masses in a big way. For that alone, she qualifies as one of my heros, but naturally that’s just the beginning. Holly is charming, gracious, and generous with her formidable writing expertise. Evidence: she once drove me to the train station in the pouring rain, kept me warm and dry in her car ’til the train showed up, and then passed the time with an insightful mini-lesson on plotting that completely changed my outlook and has guided my own story choices since.

Of course, I fell hard for Holly’s rich, juicy prose well before I met her. TITHE and VALIANT, her urban gothic faerie tales, are delightfully (read: brutally) true to the old tales and the lives of teenagers. Her series for young readers, THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES (with Tony DiTerlizzi), are bestsellers; production on the movie has begun.

Also? she’s just neat. You’ll see what I mean in a sec.

You just finished up a stint at that infamous speculative fiction writer’s workshop, Clarion. Was Clarion your first experience as a writing instructor? I know that you’ve worked extensively with critique groups as a participant; what was it like to be on the other side of the desk, so to speak?

It wasn’t my first time instructing, but my previous experience was more of the “get in, say some stuff, do an exercise, then get out” kind. This was the first time I was teaching over an extended period of time.

First of all, let me say that it was immense fun to work with the extremely talented 2006 Clarion class. They were smart, funny and really good writers. The hardest thing about teaching Clarion, in fact, is the quality of the writers. It is much easier to figure out what an obviously flawed story needs. It’s a lot harder when the stuff is of very high caliber.

It was hugely helpful to have Kelly Link as my co-teacher. She’s been through Clarion before as both a student and an instructor and could explain things that I wouldn’t have ever known, like:

Kelly: Here’s the part where we make them wear dresses.
Holly: There’s a part where we make them wear dresses?
Kelly: It’s tradition.
Class: *dons sparkly gowns*

Also, Kelly is a genius, so working with her was a learning experience for me as well as the class.

According to the bio on your website, you collect rare folklore books and spooky dolls. Tell me a bit about your collections. A superdorky corollary that I can’t resist: name the top five titles in your folklore book collection.

This is the superdorky question I have long dreamed of being asked!

Actually, what I have is old editions of books, like the 1893 version of Robert Kirk’s Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (with introduction by Andrew Lang). The thing is, there are exciting new editions coming out all the time–like the new Secret Commonwealth Maria Warner is bringing out in November–so there’s nothing I’ve got that you can’t get now, although some books were out of print when I first got them.

Hence, this is my top 5, not according to rarity or any academic criteria, but just my favorites:

1. Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by WY Evans-Wentz
2. The Middle Kingdom by Dermot Mac Manus
3. The Encyclopedia of Fairies by Katharine Briggs
4. A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture by Charlotte F. Otten
5. Vampires and Vampirism: Legends from Around the World by Dudley Wright

As for my spooky dolls, my collection has evolved to be almost exclusively Korean ball-jointed dolls, often known as “dollfies.” I have even gone so far as to buy them tiny coffee cups and cigarettes so they can join me in my ennui.

What were some of your favorite stories growing up? (”Growing up” refers to any time between the ages of zero and, say, eighteen, and “stories” can refer to anything — books, movies, comics, and, of course, folklore and fairy tales.)

This is the hardest question to answer, because there were so many books that were important to me. My favorite book when I was a kid was THOMASINA by Paul Gallico. After that, I read a lot of Lloyd Alexander and Madeline L’Engle. A couple of years later, I remember reading Anne Rice’s INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE obsessively, along with Tanith Lee’s LORDS OF THE FLAT EARTH, Michael Moorcock’s Elric books, and Tolkien. Also hugely influencial for me was Brian Froud and Alan Lee’s book, FAERIES.

My mom had an “unedited” compilation of Grimm’s fairy tales that I loved and when we had to do a huge report on a subject in eighth grade, mine was vampires in folklore.

Victorian mansions, fairies, ghost stories, crazy hats — I’m guessing (call it a hunch!) that you probably like Halloween. What was your most memorable Halloween costume?

Hahaha. I did like Halloween as a kid, but the thing was, my mother liked to make me and my sister these elaborate costumes. She was hard-core about it, so you had to tell her what you wanted to be six months in advance of Halloween. And often the costumes were so complex you could barely move. But there was a contest at the community center every year and my mother was going to kick all the other mother’s asses. I remember being Lady Mouse with a giant paper mache head that was impossible to move in and also The Frog Prince, where I had a huge rubber head. Basically, I remember barely seeing out of a lot of eye holes.

Name one thing that you have yet to do but would like to do.

See a ghost.

Category: From the Library

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