What was the seed for The Sky Is Everywhere?
Lennie crashed into my psyche and came fully formed, with her copy of Wuthering Heights and her clarinet in her hand. It was like she crashed through the roof. I knew that her sister had died, and I knew the triangle was there, with Joe and Toby. I saw it as a movie in a way. The first thing that came was the girl scattering the poems everywhere and I knew she was grief-stricken. In the inception was California. I invented this river town, though I felt like I know the area where it was, with the redwood forest, and this rushing river was part of the emotional landscape of the story.
I started with the poems, because I'd never written fiction before. I first thought it would be a verse novel, but I knew within a month that I had to tell this in prose. The only thing keeping me from writing fiction was my fear of writing fiction.
The way that you write about grief suggests that you have experienced it yourself.
One of the reasons I wanted to write the story was I lost someone very close to me very suddenly, and I was blown away by the experience of grief and how transformational it is. It's a cataclysmic event but it takes you to the beating heart of the world and the preciousness of life. Loss can be so huge and almost geological--at one point Lennie talks about "tectonic plates shifting."
But I also think it's the sort of emotional journey that can make you live in a more hopeful way. Not that you get over it or even come out the other side. But that idea that grief and love are conjoined brings you to a place of peace--for me it does. Grief is a measure of how much we love and how much we can love in the future.
Is that why Toby and Joe both have such a strong pull for Lennie?
With Lennie I felt, just imagine at that age, experiencing such loss. I wanted to write about the transformational power of grief but also write it as a love story. She'd work through it through these boys, even though it was her own journey. Grief and love are the most powerful emotions we have. Lennie got hit with both.
Do you think many younger siblings blossom when they step out of the shadow of their older siblings?
I think it can go a million different ways. I do think, had Bailey lived, Lennie would have still gone through this process. It might have taken a little longer, but I think she still would have become who she is. I think Lennie feels guilty about this, too, that nothing good should come of [Bailey's death]. The music became the necessary outlet for her grief. It became a way to communicate with Bailey, too. I think she would have gone back to her music anyway.
Your descriptions of playing music and listening are so evocative. Are you a musician yourself?
I love music, but I'm not a musician. When I was a little older than Lennie, I fell in love with a musician, so I had a sense of what that was like. I think in some ways I replaced her experience of music with my experience of writing. That line that the band teacher says--"You guys think you're musicians? You have to stick your asses in the wind!"--that's a line from our writing and poetry professor at Cornell, "You guys think you're poets? You have to stick your asses in the wind."
Have you ever left poems around town for others to discover?