Anneliese (Huggy) Schultz / Writer of Climate Fiction, Young Adult and Children’s Books, Poetry, and Flash Fiction
Teaching, travel, translating, advanced degrees, embedding sustainability in ‘Green Italian, and of course, writing—short stories, novels. essays, and more. Huggy has had much on her plate! We asked if she would tell us a bit about her path.
This is what she shared:
“Notes on a novel I was editing:
Make sure you 'punch it up' with a timeline of ‘first this, then that’ / 'and then!' / 'and also' / 'but when' / 'plus now' / 'not to mention’ / 'however'/ 'finally' / 'oh no!' / 'on top of that' / ’will he ever’ / 'how will she' ...
Thoughts on middle-grade fiction:
I don’t think there are any taboos anymore,” says David Levithan, v-p, publisher, and editorial director at Scholastic.
It’s not necessarily a question of taboos... More like, how many unnecessary burdens do we want to lay on middle-school children's shoulders; how much innocence and joy do we want to afford them before the burdens are inescapable? AS
Re how much and what kind of research fiction requires:
It is of course the constant observing and pondering, noting and compiling that goes on automatically for a writer. Sometimes, as for my climate fiction or for a story set in a jail, it is googling prison garb or reading the latest IPCC reports or yet another book on self-sufficiency. And always it is following the trail through one's mind and heart that allows one to BE the young girl in love with a gang leader, the tired activist, the young couple who has lost their home to Hurricane Sandy, the 80-year-old woman, the bipolar dad, the unwilling nursing home resident, the wife whose husband has not spoken to her for 27 years... What deep, privileged and eminently satisfying research that is!
The trajectory of being a writer: I'm quite sure that by 2015, I had hurtled past my 10,000 hours of writing, which definitely has led to the words flowing always more easily and wildly. My passion for the Earth, already strong when I was at Middlebury, has brought me squarely into the moving realm of climate fiction. And there’s more, always more, as I push across boundaries into short stories of aging and addiction, into travel saga and even flashes of fairy tale, back into memories of Sicily and forward into inhabiting the mind of an android who only wants to love…”
Contact & Inquiries:
Reach out to Huggy for more about her novels, essays,poetry, and more, or just to catch up. You can reach her at:
email: aschultz@mail.ubc.ca
▼Click on photos to enlarge
Wanna see more?
Click (https://linktr.ee/AnnelieseS for more on Huggy’s writing…
Click here for the full article in ‘Solstice’…
Reviews:
“Bread”, Fiction Winner, Cedric Award…
“This piece is remarkable for its creative vision, for the atmosphere of “mystery and obsession” you create using Gregor and his grandmother’s book as channel, Jo and Patrick as people caught in a spell. Bread is the perfect metaphor for their longing for nurture, for something they may “have lost” or “never knew,” linking them to centuries of longing. Your writing is a compelling blend of the ordinary and the spiritual and your structural technique sophisticated. I was swept away by the story and reminded of my own very few hallucinatory moments of connectedness with the mystery of life. Bravo!"
Tricia Dower, author and Cedric Award judge
__________________
“Child", Fiction Winner, “Enizagam” Fiction Award…
"Child" is a story that offers what I think of as fiction's greatest pleasures: the experience of shadowing another's consciousness, as well as the illusion of inhabiting another's body. In this story, the body is aging and in pain, and the consciousness is often set delicately adrift, yet the writing throughout is nimble and exhilaratingly alive. Anneliese Schultz takes the most familiar of struggles - growing old, losing independence, surviving the Christmas holidays - and imbues them with a fresh sense of mystery and urgency. Equally poignant and funny, despairing and triumphant, "Child" is itself a triumph.”
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, best-selling author, Enizagam 2013 Fiction Award Judge, New Yorker 20 Under 40