Category Personalities

Almost every article on Joyce Carol Oates begins with the astounding number of books the veteran writer has written. So far there are about 100 titles, including novels, plays, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. What’s the secret of her success? Her work is ethic. At 81, Oates zealously writes for at least seven hours daily and regularly tweets on social media on issues close to her heart. It’s the love of writing that drives her.

A child prodigy

Born on June 16, 1963, Oates was the first in her family to graduate from high school. Growing up on a small farm outside the town of Millersport in New York, she attended a one-room school, where all the students studied in a single classroom irrespective of their age. Even in such a dismal setting, Oates shone. Recognising her talent, she was transferred to bigger suburban schools. In 1956, she graduated from Williamsville South High School, making her family proud.

Grandmother’s gifts

Oates’ grandmother played a special role in her life. She encouraged her to read from a young age. Oates’ foray into reading was Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, which was a gift from her grandmother and she considers it one of her childhood treasures. Her love for books blossomed over time and she fervently devoured books by Emily Bronte, William Faulkner and even the complicated tomes of Dostoevsky.

Reading inspired her to try her hand at writing. When she turned 14, her grandmother yet again steered her in the right direction by giving her a typewriter. And there was no looking back after that. She churned out one story after the other and soon, won the Scholastic Art and Writing award.

She later published The Gravedigger’s Daughter based on her grandmother’s life.

Milestones ahead

Oates won a scholarship to attend Syracuse University, where she honed her writing skills further. She was introduced to more complex writers such as Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka and D. H. Lawrence. Her writing improved and she bagged a college short story award at 19.

After becoming a Phi Beta Kappa, the top honours at Syracuse University, she went on to pursue her post-graduation in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a doctorate from the Rice University. She decided to become a full-time writer.

Fresh out of college, Vanguard Press published Oates’ first book, the short-story collection By the North Gate, in 1963, and later, her first novel, With Shuddering Fall, when she was 26.

An all-rounder

A multi-talented Oates is lauded for her ability to write across different formats and genres on any topic, from powerful human emotions and inner lives of celebrities to the realities of the working class to semi-biographical works and even a fictional, but unerringly accurate, account of the lives of boxers.

Oates also loves writing for young adults and children because it gives her a chance to write happy endings and positive resolutions. Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You, After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread my Wings, and Flew Away, Freaky Green Eyes and Big Mouth & Ugly Girl are some of her popular young adult books dealing with topics such as teenage friendships, loss and addiction, and school violence.

Her writing style is quite unique, a blend of colloquial language and contemporary cultural and political references. In 1998, Oates received the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature.

The mystery lady

Oates ventured into mystery writing under the veil of anonymity. She wrote several books, mostly suspense novels, under the pen names Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly. However, her cover was blown in the late 1980s when her publisher and agents found out that Rosamond Smith, who wrote Lives of the Twins, a short psychological thriller, was not a first-time author as she claimed.

Disappointed at being found Oates swore not to write under pseudonyms again. But she soon broke her promise, publishing a total of eight books under the Rosamond Smith moniker as well as another three novels as Lauren Kelly. Eventually, it was revelaed that Rosamond Smith wasn’t her first pseudonym. She had also published several stories under the name Rae Jolene Smith.

From writer to publisher

Distressed by the Detroit race riots and the U.S. waging war on Vietnam, Oates took the bold step of moving to Canada. With considerable writing experience under her belt, Oates along with her husband forayed into publishing. In 1974, she founded a literary magazine (as the assisstent editor) called Ontario Review in Canada. The idea was to provide a platform to showcase literature from the U.S. and Canada. Later, the duo set up a publishing house, Ontario Review Books.

A gifted teacher

Oates was also an exceptional teacher. She has taught creative writing at the University of Detroit and at Princeton. She is currently visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches short fiction. Countless young writers in the U.S. credit Oates with shaping their writing. Jonathan Safron Foer, the bestselling author of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, who took an introductory writing course with Oates in 1995 is one of them. Oates helped him find his voice as a writer.

Goldmine of stories

It’s no wonder that Oates has been frequently nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; and is one of the crowd favourites for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her storytelling has won many awards including the National Book Award and the prestigious O. Henry Award twice. She is also the recipient of the National Humanities Medal and the Jerusalem Prize. So if you haven’t read any of her books yet, just grab a copy and start reading.

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“Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.” – Greg Child, mountaineer.

Shrouded in mists and mysteries, the 6,960-meter-high majestic summit of Mount Aconcagua beckons one and all. Only a few dare to answer its siren call. Fewer still are capable of scaling its seemingly infinite peaks. But Kaamya Karthikeyan is no stranger to its heights. On February 1, 2019, she became the youngest in the world to scale the highest peak Argentina, South America.

At 12, the young daredevil has reached the top of Europe – Mount Elbrus (5,642 metres) – and even walked on the roof of Africa – Mount Kilimanjaro (5,895 metres). Here’s an account of how she got started in mountaineering and some of the hair-raising moments from her latest expedition.

The making of a champion

Mountaineering comes naturally to Kaamya. Sitting snugly in her baby sling, she accompanied her parents, Indian Navy Commander S. Karthikeyan and Lavanaya, who is an early childhood teacher, on numerous treks even before she started to walk. By the time she turned three, she was used to basic treks to the Sahyadris in Lonavala; and at seven, she mastered high-altitude Himalayan treks to Chandrashila and Roopkund. Later, she reached the Everest Base Camp in Nepal (5,346 metres) and in 2017, became the youngest mountaineer to conquer Mt. Stok Kangri (6,153 metres) in Ladakh.

Not old enough to enrol in training schools, Kaamya trains with her father, from whom she caught the mountaineering bug. “My father led expeditions for the Navy and used to go away for really long periods. So I wanted to know what there was in the mountains that kept calling him again and again,”Kaamya, who is studying in Class 7 at Navy Children School in Mumbai, tells The Hindu In School.

To build her endurance and stamina, she climbs up the stairs of her 15-storey high-rise building saddled with an eight kilogramme backpack. She does this not once or twice, but at least 16 times. Alternatively, the workouts are mixed with either a 10-km run or 20-km cycling. Weekends are relatively easier, with the family going out for treks.

But the grit and confidence are her own doing. “I admire all mountaineers. Going to the mountains is hard and after you have done it once and then to do it again and again takes a lot of courage. My role model has always been my dad,”she says.

On top of the world

Kaamya’s momentous expedition to Mount Aconcagua got off to a rocky start. She required a special permission from a judge in Mendonza to climb the mountain because of her young age. Despite carrying medical certificates from India, Kaamya was asked to take some more medical examinations and psychological assessments in Argentina. The delay set her back by about 10 days; finally she embarked on her adventure on January 17, 2019.

The sheer height along with extremely cold temperatures makes Aconcagua a challenging ascent even for the most accomplished mountaineers. For Kaamya, who has climbed the mountains of Ladakh, it was familiar territory, but the harsh winds threw her off.

Dressed in a padded jacket, she pushed past the howling winds. She climbed about 400 to 500 metres daily. “No other mountain in the ranges around Aconcagua is taller than 500 metres, so that makes it very windy. There is a traverse of two hours on the way to the summit when we are thrashed by winds,” she adds. “This made the expedition more difficult and challenging from my previous experiences.”

To make matters worse, when she reached close to the summit she was forced to turn back because of the inclement weather. “It was a windy day and my fingers were cold. The guides thought I was showing symptoms of acute mountain sickness. So they decided to turn me around and come back down. That was emotionally challenging and that drained me out a lot,” she recounts.

Not one to give up, she repeated the long and arduous, 19-hour-long steep climb again. “The company we climbed with was very helpful. They gave us a personal guide to climb the mountain second time,” she adds.

As she made her way to the top, everything else became a blur. She reached the highest point on the mountain and unfurled the Indian Tricolour. It took her about 18 days to complete the expedition.

“When you reach the top, you don’t feel like you have conquered something great. Instead, when you look at how big and majestic the mountains are it only makes you more humble. That’s what I have learnt from mountaineering,” says the gritty traveller.

Mountaineering has also helped her overcome her deep-rooted fear of the dark. “After all my expeditions, I have learnt that if there is dark then light will follow. And it has helped me overcome my fear. Apart from that there is no other fear,” she adds.

Kaamya aspires to become a forest officer. For now, she has set forest officer. For now, she has set her eyes on completing the Explorer’s Grand Slam, which involves climbing the highest mountains in all the seven continents – she has only three more to go – and skiing to the north and south pole. Stay tuned for her next adventure.

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It was 1996 when this then aspiring author sent a story to the Annual All India Tinkle Short Story Competition for adult writers of children’s fiction. That won her the first prize, but for the next seven years she won the first prize for her stories. And though the protagonist of the first story was named Butterfingers, Khyrunnisa didn’t let any opportunity slip through her fingers! With her 13-years-old protagonist Amar Kishan aka Butterfingers, she has created a smashing seven-book series, including one on the way.

The Thiruvananthapuram based author who was born and brought up in that city, says she started writing quite by chance. “I’m a chronic reader and a huge lover of books and English literature, but it had never been my ambition to become a writer, although, when it happened, I was delighted and am totally enjoying it now,” she says.

The making of a writer

Khyrunnisa confesses that the story of how she began writing is a rather long one. The author and her husband used to subscribe to the Mumbai-based magazine “Tinkle” for their son. The magazine had announced a competition for adult writers of children’s fiction and on a whim, she decided to send an entry. The story she wrote was “Butterfingers. “It won the second prize and I was very pleased. My story as a writer would have ended there had it not been for a visit to my house by two strangers – a lady and her husband. The lady was Prabha Nair, the then assistant editor of ‘Tinkle’. She had come to Trivandrum from Mumbai on a personal trip and when the staff at ‘Tinkle’ got to know about this, they had given her my address and asked her to look me up to find out if I was as bubbly as my story. I don’t know what she found out, but I was pretty thrilled to have an editor visit me on the basis of one story,” she laughs.

When Prabha Nair asked her if she was sending an entry for the following year’s competition and Khyrunnisa replied in the negative claiming she had already won a prize, the former suggested she send an entry since she wrote very well. Happy with this encouragement, Khyrunnisa did send in an entry that went on to win the first prize. That winning streak continued for seven consecutive years. “The writing bug bit me and very soon I was writing for other publications, had a column in ‘The New Indian Express’, won the 2007 Unisun Children’s Fiction Award, and got several other prizes. And when I was asked by ‘Tinkle’ to create a regular character for the magazine, I brought back Butterfingers. It was just a matter of time before the ‘Butterfingers’ series of books was published by Penguin Random House,” says the prolific writer.

Khyrunnisa loves humour writing, and is sure it must be the influence of her favourite writer, P.G. Wodehouse.

Writing like Khyrunnisa A.

Reading is quintessential to writing, says Khyrunnisa, listing out her tips for budding writers.

1. Be a reader first. Writing happens on the solid foundation of reading. Read extensively, both fiction and non-fiction, for that familiarises you with different kinds of books, plots, characters, ideas and writing styles. Meanwhile, keep writing, but don’t aim to be a published author the moment you start writing. The more you read, the better your writing style gets, for you keep revising what you have written.

2. Have a notebook where you jot down ideas that you get at odd places, or exciting incidents you read or hear about and wonderful sentences that come to your mind suddenly and then disappear.

3. Writing is hard work; be persistent. Don’t allow rejection to lead to dejection. Find the genre you are comfortable writing and eventually you will attain your goal of becoming a published author.

Khyrunnisa’s books

• Lost in Ooty and other Adventure Stories
• Howzzat Butterfingers!
• Goal, Butterfingers!
• Clean Bowled, Butterfingers!
• The Misadventures of Butterfingers
• Run, It’s Butterfingers Again!
• Of course It’s Butterfingers!
• The Lizard of Oz and Other Stories
• “Smash It, Butterfingers!”, the seventh book in the “Butterfingers” series, is due later this year and is going to be a badminton-based novel

The writer’s routine

“I am not a disciplined writer who puts in a certain numbers of words every day nor am I too organised in my writing,” she confesses, adding that almost all her writing has been deadline writing – whether it is the Butterfingers stories for “Tinkle” or the stories for other magazines or the regular columns in “The New Indian Express” or articles for other publications. “My ‘Butterfingers’ books have all been written against contracts. So I am always conscious of the deadline and plan my writing accordingly. I am most inspired and write at a frenetic pace when the deadline approaches; that’s also when I write best,” she says.

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Himanjali Sankar was only five when she wrote a poem called “Rain”. Her mother loved it so much that she insisted on reading it aloud to family and friends. “She might have lost a few friends over that but it was the start of a writing career for me,” laughs Himanjali, the author of my favourite young adult (YA) books – “Talking of Muskaan” and “The Lives We Tell”. The author was born in Kolkata, or rather Calcutta, which is what the city was called the she studied English Literature at JNU, New Delhi, and taught English at the University of Indianpolis in the U.S.

Himanjali is a master storyteller who traverses the world of homosexuality and mental health in her young adult books with as much ease as she does fantasy-scifi-humour for Middle readers.

Among her favourite authors for children are Roald Dahl, Peggy Parish, Roddy Doyle and Cornelia Funke – some of whom she read only as an adult. “I read a lot of Enid Blyton as a child and was sad that my children never liked her books!” she rues. Among Indian writers in English for children, she loves the work of her contemporaries, Anushka Ravishankar and Asha Nehemiah.

Books by the author

• The Stupendous Timetelling Superdog (Middle readers)
• Missing: A Magnificent Superdog (Middle readers)
• Talking of Muskaan (YA)
• The Lies We Tell (YA)
• Mrs C Remembers (for adults)

The writer’s routine

Himanjali prefers not to follow a set for writing. She says, “I write when I can – at night, in the mornings, more on weekends when I don’t have to go to office. I don’t write every day at all. And sometimes I write only in my head when driving on taking a walk in the park!”

Writing like Himanjali Sankar

Himanjali is an editor as well as an author, so she multitasks writing looks, and editing and publishing them. Sometimes everyday writing takes a backseat. “While I no longer write every day, but I think when you are younger it is important if you maintain a schedule for writing if you wish to become an author some day,” she says. Here are her tips for budding writers.

Definitely maintain a daily schedule with daily targets for you to write towards.
Keeping a diary. It is always a good idea – write about your day, include unusual details, and definitely, observations about your friends and family.
Writing is supposed to be fun and pleasurable activity. It should help clarify your thoughts and understand the world a little better. So you must certainly not do it if you are not in the mood or even if you see it as a chore that has to be done.

Bet you didn’t know that she loves putting blue nail polish or her toes because she looks down she feels like she is getting a peek at a hidden ocean somewhere under her feet!

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