YA AUTHOR INTERVIEW: An interview with Vikki Wakefield.

Welcome to Episode 5 of this blog series:


YA Authors in Conversation!


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Yay, today I am hosting award winning Australian YA author, Vikki Wakefield on my blog, chatting about her wonderful books, and the YA scene. 

​I hope you find it as interesting to read as I did!

Vikki Wakefield Interview:
Questions asked by Poppy Nwosu.

You are the author of four beautiful Young Adult books, All I Ever Wanted, Friday Brown, Inbetween Days and your latest, Ballad for a Mad Girl.
There is a very haunting and unsettling quality to your beautiful writing style (of which I am a massive fan) and also in the striking sense of place you feature in all your stories. Your novels tend to show a side of the Australian experience we don’t so often see in YA literature, for instance, dying dead-end country towns, homeless teens or poverty stricken suburbs.

• I’ve often  wondered if there is a special reason for this continued theme of showing the underbelly of Australia?

I don’t intentionally set out to explore class as an issue or theme—I just represent the lower classes in my stories. I wasn’t particularly conscious of a class divide when I was growing up; everyone around me had a similar standard of living and education, so I didn’t frequently stop to ponder the lack of anything, apart from those things necessary for acceptance and survival. Everyone was just getting on with it. Nor was I conscious it would be perceived that, when my books were published, I write about class. For a while, I thought, ‘Oh, yes, that’s what I do’, but now I tend to disagree. I’m not writing social commentary, seeking to educate or to foster discussion about class division—I’m simply writing about people I know. I’m not confident or imaginative enough to explore new worlds without the benefit of experience, so I stay in the world I understand.



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• Your books have a very strong sense of style. I can only describe it as both unsettling and beautiful, which I think is a very interesting combination. I wondered whether you initially set out trying to write with this feel in mind, or was this something that grew naturally from your work?

Thank you! I pretty much write the way I think and speak: a combination of my vernacular, my preferences, and the influence of the books I read and the people in my life. I’ve come to accept that style is mostly innate, but you can bend it by adding some elements, eliminating others, and translating through character voice. And it evolves with every book. I think I bring an objectivity and lack of sentimentality about the subject to my work but, in terms of character and setting, I’m a bit of a romantic. I’m always looking for that fine line between beauty and ugliness—it’s possibly the contrasting ideas and imagery that many readers find unsettling.

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• Have you found any of your novels harder to write than others, and if so, why?

They’ve all been difficult for different reasons. It takes me a long time to distil ideas and figure out what I’m trying to say, so each novel changes dramatically from the first lines to a finished book. Process-wise, I’m all over the place. 

All I Ever Wanted was hard because I had to learn how to commit to writing a book. I constantly measured the probability of success against the hours I had stolen from my family. And I had no idea what I was doing.

Friday Brown was difficult because I cared too much about others’ expectations—I became paralysed halfway through. I had a looming deadline, a bunch of disjointed scenes and character sketches, and no idea how to stitch the whole thing together. In desperation, I pretty much wrote the book backwards and added the prologue at the eleventh hour—which changed (and fixed) everything. I got there, but not without tears.

Inbetween Days, I think, is my best book. Emotionally, it’s the most honest thing I’ve ever written (which is why it was hard), and technically it hits every beat. But, for some reason, it’s the book fewer readers connect with. So, after fighting the battle and nailing the process, I’m left wondering whether I have a process at all and, if I do, can I trust it? (Which is also why this book was hard.)

Ballad for a Mad Girl was the book I had the most fun writing because I gave in to whimsy. I wrote it without a deadline and I felt free to mash up my favourite genres: contemporary, horror, suspense. But process-wise it was the hardest to write—I had to pay attention at a micro-level to make sure every sentence lead to the next without losing the plot. Some days I just wanted to set it on fire. ​

• I have heard you speaking in the past about what sets Young Adult literature apart from other readerships. One thing you mentioned that really stuck with me was your view on how important it is for YA narratives to include a thread of hope. Can you explain a little bit more about this idea? 

 
I could probably apply this to every book I read. I don’t enjoy reading the last paragraph and feeling dead inside, or wondering why this character I’ve just spent hours, days or weeks with doesn’t have a life (literal or figurative) beyond the final page. Hope can be subtle. YA books need it because they’re for and about young people, and young people (of all people) should not feel dead inside when they turn the last page of a book.

• What is the most recent book you read that really moved you?

Emily Gale’s I Am Out with Lanterns is the perfect combination of funny and moving—it’s told from multiple perspectives and each voice is pitch-perfect. I’m a sucker for stories about misfits and outsiders, and this one went straight to my favourites list.
I’m also rereading A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. I’m not usually a big fan of bleak books, but the characterisation is extraordinary and it’s breaking my heart all over again.
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• If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

My younger self didn’t write, so I’d tell her to start. I will always regret not writing decades sooner—my second-biggest fear is that I’ll fall off my perch before I can make sense of all the stories I’m carrying around. On the other hand, I’d also tell her to take her time and wait until she has something real to say. 

 
 

• What can we look forward to reading from you next?

I’m editing ‘Youth’, told from a male perspective and set in the same suburb as All I Ever Wanted. In many ways Nate’s story is the flip-side to Mim’s—I wanted to explore some ideas I’d set aside when I wrote my first novel because they were in conflict with the heart of that story. I’m also writing another YA contemp which, against my better instincts, is turning out to be not-at-all-disguised memoir. (It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever written because the plot already exists. I probably will burn this one.)

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​Thanks so much for your time Vikki :)

About Vikki Wakefield:

Vikki Wakefield’s first YA novel, All I Ever Wanted, won the 2012 Adelaide Festival Literary Award for YA Fiction, as did her second novel, Friday Brown, in 2014. Friday Brown was also an Honour Book at the Children’s Book Council of Australia, in 2013, and was shortlisted for the prestigious Prime Minister’s Awards. Vikki’s third novel, Inbetween Days, was Highly Commended in the 2016 Barbara Jefferis Award, was a 2016 CBCA Honour Book and was shortlisted for the 2016 Prime Minister’s Awards. Vikki lives in the Adelaide foothills with her family.

Follow Vikki on:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Website

​For more interviews with YA authors, check out the past episodes of this series: