MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX

8
MS: What books did you enjoy reading
when you were younger and how have
they influenced you as a writer?
Haddix: I was a huge reader as a kid,
and read everything I could get my
hands on. I think the variety of reading
material—sci fi, realistic contemporary
fiction, historical fiction, mysteries, biographies,
etc.—influenced me in that I
have now also written books in a variety
of genres, and enjoy bouncing back
and forth between various
types of books as a writer
as well as a reader. Some
of my favorite books were
older ones that in some
cases had belonged to my
mother or grandmother—
like Little Women, Rebecca
of Sunnybrook Farm,
A Little Princess, Anne of
Green Gables, etc. I liked
a lot of the character-driven
books, where reading
felt like hanging out with a beloved
friend. But I also liked more adventurous
stories, many of which I borrowed from
my brothers’ bookshelves. Some books I
remember particularly enjoying that were
adventures with girls as main characters
were From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs.
Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsberg;
The Long Journey, by Barbara Corcoran;
and She the Adventuress, by Dorothy
Crayder.
P R E M I E R E I S S U E : F A L L 2 0 1 3
MS: Could you share a little about
your initial road to publication?
Haddix: I studied creative writing in college,
but also studied journalism because
I thought it was a safer bet in terms of
allowing me to support myself after college.
So I worked as a newspaper reporter
in Indianapolis for four years, which gave
me a lot of valuable writing experience
and also exposed me to a lot of interesting
people and ideas. When my husband’s job
took us to a small town in
Illinois where there wasn’t
much job opportunity for
me, I switched to teaching
part-time at a community
college and told myself
that this was my chance
to use the rest of my work
time for writing fiction. Like
most writers, I endured way
more of the “submit—then
get rejected” cycle than I
wanted to. (Because who
wants to endure any of it?) After about two
years, I got an agent; a year later, Simon
and Schuster accepted my first two books
for publication: Running Out of Time and
Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey.
MS: What were some of the most
interesting things you learned during
your research for the Missing Series?
Haddix: I’m a history buff anyway, so I
was fascinated by pretty much everything