When I discovered Dream Weaver, by Jane Yolen in 1979, I was dazzled that a contemporary writer created such fairy tales.
I’ve read many more Yolen books: Here There Be Dragons, Owl Moon,
and Sleeping Ugly, to name a few. She’s written more than 300. Yes, THREE-HUNDRED books, including fairy tales, fantasy stories, and poems seemingly for children and young people only, but not really.
Yolen isn’t a stranger to the Twin Cities. Her son, musician, etc. Adam Stemple, lives here and Yolen is often at guest at the Kerlan Collection, an outstanding children’s literature research center at the University of Minnesota.
Tonight, I heard her for the second time when she spoke in St. Paul at Hamline University. I was sure the room would be standing-room-only. After all, many do consider her America’s Hans Christian Anderson. The audience for her reading was modest in size, but great love for this artist and her work.
Her new book isn’t for children. It’s a very adult book, of poems that tell of her husband’s illness and death in 2006 and her life then and after: Things to Say to a Dead Man: Poems at the End of a Marriage and After (Holy Cow! Press, 2011). The poems are plain spoken and raw with shards of hurt at what leads to death and what happens after. Read more about Yolens’s first book specifically for adults and learn about this most prolific and spot-on author, one of my top literary heroes: “Ten questions for author Jane Yolen.”
If you’re in Minneapolis-St. Paul, you have another chance to meet her. Jane will be reading at The Loft in Downtown Minneapolis on Wednesday, October 19, 2011.
Travel well, Jane Yolen. And, keep bringing the spirit to life in your writing!