MY PAT H TO PUBLICATION
ALICE AUSTEN
The debut author describes how she never forgot Ken Kesey’s advice to collect the ‘acorns’ that would grow into a historical novel set in Brussels in WW2 ©Joe Mazza
I’ve been writing stories for as long as I can remember. When I was five, I made my first book by stapling together airmail stationary from my grandfather’s desk. The ink bled through the thin, tea-green paper and my illustrations were blotty and poor, but I remember the pleasure of working on it. I began telling people I was a writer. Little did I know then how long my path to writing books would be, one that has doubtless shaped my work.
When I was 14, and living in the Pacific Northwest, Ken Kesey announced that he would be teaching a small writing class. He hadn’t taught since his days at Stanford decades before, and writers sent their work from all over the country. Undaunted, I submitted a short story, and Ken admitted me to the class; I was the kid. I’ll never forget something he said. That writers must gather acorns. Let them germinate, sprout, grow roots. The trunk, the branches, the leaves of the tree, would come in time. I’ve thought of that a lot over the years, most recently in the context of 33 Place Brugmann. My characters are all fictional but the experiences I had in Brussels were the acorns for my novel in exactly the way Ken had described. Ken also told me I was a writer. That was like a torch being passed.