WAW award nominee excited to come for Emporia conference
By Bobbi Mlynar
Originally published 02:16 p.m., April 18, 2008
Updated 02:16 p.m., April 18, 2008
Area students on Saturday will learn about writing from an author they may have voted for in this year’s William Allen White Book Award balloting.
Lisa Harkrader, who lives in Tonganoxie, is one of two authors who will be here as part of the Young Writers Conference at Emporia High School. The conference is sponsored by Emporia Public Schools and the Emporia Public Library, with financial support from other area schools, businesses, organizations and individuals, according to Nancy Horst, community relations director for the Emporia district.
The WAW Book Award winner was to have been chosen this week and will be announced later.
“I would love to win because I grew up in Kansas and I voted on those books,” Harkrader said in a telephone interview this week. “To be on that same list — I can’t even believe that I’m on that list.”
“Airball: My Life in Briefs” already has won the 2006 Juvenile Literary Award from the Friends of American Writers and a host of other honors. The book was a Junior Library Guild selection, a finalist for the Thorpe Menn Award, and was a nominee for the Texas Lonestar Award and the Main Student Book Award. It was named a “Kansas Notable Book” and made the lists of “Bank Street College Best Books of the Year” and “New York Public Library Best Books for the Teen Age.”
Harkrader began to write “Airball” as a “fractured fairy-tale” type of book. She had just completed her contribution to an anthology of fractured fairy tales and decided to base one on “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” by Hans Christian Andersen.
“It all centers on KU basketball,” she said. “I went to school at KU and I graduated in 1988, which was a very good year.”
KU won the national title in 1988, and Harkrader was in Lawrence on Sunday for the 2008 champions’ return.
“We were at the parade, screaming and jumping up and down, but it was cool to be there,” she remarked.
The book started as an updated tale, using a seventh-grade basketball team as its base. The book’s protagonist, Kirby Nickel, goes out for basketball with the sole goal of meeting an NBA superstar Kirby is convinced is his father.
“It sort of evolved and evolved and it sort of took on a life of its own,” she said. “Once you start developing the characters and the stories, you just kind of have to go where it takes you.”
In “Airball’s” case, it took her away from the fairy tale and into what a “Booklist” review termed “an amusing, wholly affectionate portrayal of a small-town community’s devotion to basketball and of a klutzy kid’s success on the court in spite of himself.”
Harkrader began writing as a third-grader and in 1992 began to seriously pursue a career in writing.
“I kind of always wanted to be a writer,” she said. “If you’re going to do it, you need to do it, so I started. ...
“I started selling short stories pretty regularly right away. I’ve written a lot of non-fiction and I ghost-wrote some ‘Animorph’ books. I think I had an easier path than a lot of people do.”
Harkrader will talk with the students about how she creates her stories and how they can create their own.
When she speaks with the younger group, she expects to talk about where she gets ideas for writing and the research she does.
A writing workshop with the older students will involve “what makes a story, how you create a story, the story structure.”
She frequently shares her writing secrets with students through workshops and conferences, including one at KU with students from across Kansas and parts of Missouri.
Her goal is not only to teach students how to write but make them think and to make them excited about reading.
“The teachers came up to me afterwards and said, ‘After we went to your classes, we were so excited. It spurred ideas,’” Harkrader said. “I think reading does that — spark an idea in your head.”
Harkrader currently is working on a mystery for young adults and another middle-grade book about a boy who loves comic books and is trying to create his own.
During the local conference, intermediate and secondary students will receive copies of “Airball”; elementary students will receive copies of Susanne Pitzer’s “Not Afraid of Dogs.” More than 300 students in first grade through high school have been selected to attend, based on their writing skills, Horst said.
At the conclusion of the program at 11:30 a.m., both authors will be available to sign books.
More information may be had by calling Shane Heiman at Village School, 341-2282, or Kara Conley at Walnut School, 341-2288.