Twice a month, The Rumpus brings your favorite writers directly to your IRL mailbox via our Letters in the Mail programs.
We’ve got one program for adults and another for kids ages 6-12. This month, subscribers will be receiving letters from Ashleigh Bell Pedersen and Paige Clarke, and Anika Fajardo and Tamara Girardi, respectively.
We got to chat with two of June’s featured authors about some of their favorite books, which you can read below. Sign up before June 2nd to receive their letters.
Letters in the Mail
Ashleigh Bell Pedersen’s novel The Crocodile Bride was released on Hub City Press in May 2022. Her fiction has also been featured in New Stories from the South, The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, Design Observer, and the New York Public Library’s Library Simplified app. Her story “Small and Heavy World” was a finalist for both Best American Short Stories and a Pushcart Prize, and her story “Crocodile” won The Masters Review 2020 Flash Fiction Contest. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, and she currently resides in Brooklyn, NY, where she also paints and acts.
The Rumpus: What book(s) made you a reader? Do you have any recent favorites you’d like to share?
Ashleigh Bell Pedersen: I became hooked on reading when I was in second grade, and I think it began with the Nancy Drew books and a little competitive drive. I remember being envious that my teacher had discussed those books with a fellow classmate who had apparently already become interested in reading. Spurred on by envy, I read several of them—and then I read practically everything else I could get my hands on, including books no doubt too advanced for me but also digestible wonders like The Baby-Sitters Club and the Sweet Valley Twins series.
Recently, I read and loved Ottessa Moshfogh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation. I often think about the sense of disconnect and isolation she created with not just the plot but the narrator’s voice itself.
Rumpus: How did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Pedersen: As I mentioned, I was an avid reader as a kid, and I am certain that led me to writing eventually. But to be honest, I didn’t dream of being a writer until I was a senior in college and by some strange loophole in the class registration system, accidentally found myself in an advanced fiction class—though I had almost no experience writing fiction. Thankfully, I didn’t realize my error until the end of the semester! The writers in the class could really write, and they forced me to take both my writing and myself more seriously. (When I submitted my story to workshop unfinished, I distinctly remember one classmate calling me out on how disappointed he was that I couldn’t meet the deadline.) My writing grew by leaps and bounds because of that class and by the end of it, I knew I wanted to pursue my MFA in fiction writing.
Rumpus: Tell us about your most recent book? How do you hope it resonates with readers?
Pedersen: From first draft to publication, my novel was a ten year labor of love. It’s about a little girl growing up in the fictional village of Fingertip, Louisiana, and how she copes with both trauma and her own changing body. If my novel can reach readers and make them feel less alone—about their own relationship to their body, around breeched boundaries of their body, or the impact of their parents or grandparents on their own lives—then I will be thrilled. In a big picture sense, my greatest hope is that this novel contributes in some way to the conversation around these topics.
Rumpus: Is there a favorite Rumpus piece you’d like to recommend?
Pedersen: Oh, yes—I absolutely love this 2021 interview with Melissa Febos about her essay collection, Girlhood. As a writer I find the interview both affirming and inspiring—especially the part about working hard on sentences, and about needing friends and colleagues to remind her that when she writes, she’s trying to “grasp these truths in [her] own story, through the lens of [her] own experience.”
Letters for Kids
Anika Fajardo was born in Colombia and raised in Minnesota. Her books for middle-grade readers include the award-winning What If a Fish, Meet Me Halfway (forthcoming), and the Disney tie-in novel Encanto: A Tale of Three Sisters. She is also the author of Magical Realism for Non-Believers: A Memoir of Finding Family. She lives with her family in Minneapolis, where she teaches at Augsburg University’s MFA program.
The Rumpus: What book(s) made you a reader? Do you have a childhood favorite you still like to return to? My mom read Little Women to me when I was about 10. It was my great-grandmother’s original copy, held together with tape, so I knew that it was a special book. My mom also read The Little Leftover Witch to me, and I had such fun reading it to my daughter.
Anika Fajardo: What excites you most about writing books for kids? I love the way kids get invested in the characters. When kids read, they see truth, even when it’s fiction. I love creating that.
Rumpus: How did you fall in love with writing? Jo March from Little Women (see above) was my first inspiration, followed by Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables. Both of those characters wanted to be writers and that made me want to be a writer. My fifth grade teacher Mrs. Thompson encouraged my writing. I won a poetry contest with a poem I wrote in her class. When I graduated from elementary school, she gave me a book of poetry.
Fajardo: What’s your best advice for creative kids? My advice is: go for it! Surround yourself with creativity, whether that means reading lots of books and filling many notebooks with stories, or going to museums and looking at art online, or listening to music and playing instruments. Whatever creative pursuit you love, do it all the way.
Rumpus: What is your best/worst/most interesting story that involves the mail/post office/mailbox?
Fajardo: When I was 16, I wrote a letter to my dad in Colombia. I hadn’t had any contact with him since I was a baby, so I decided to secretly write to him. After I sent the letter, I would rush home from school every day to check the mailbox. I eventually received a letter in return and we began corresponding. We’re both glad I took a chance on writing that first letter.
Rumpus: Tell us about your most recent book? How do you hope it resonates with your readers?
Fajardo: My next book Meet Me Halfway comes out in September. It’s about two girls who discover they have the same Colombian dad and go on an adventure to find him. I was inspired by the shenanigans in The Parent Trap and the adventure in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and I hope readers will enjoy the journey along with Mattie and Mercedes.
