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Susan Williams Beckhorn


susanwilliamsbeckhorn.com


susanwilliamsbooks.com






As a children’s writer, I have several strikes against me. I did not have a rotten childhood, although I was a reasonably miserable teen. I was not a prodigy, but bumbled through Dick And Jane like everyone else. Writing what I knew--a comfortable, white, middle-class childhood in Winchester, MA--was exactly what a literature with expanding cultural viewpoints was escaping.
My lodestone was a belief that I could write, and (my family will smile knowingly) a powerful stubborn streak that kept me writing. I grew up in the simpler fifties and very cool sixties. We wore dungarees and plaid flannel shirts on the weekends and dresses to school. I walked nearly a mile to Lincoln School, home for lunch, and then back again for the afternoon sessions. The walks were perhaps the best part of my early education, through an old granite quarry and woods, being galloping wild horses on the downhill stretches, crunching through autumn leaves, slogging through snow and slush, slipping in the mud. Later, in sixth grade, I walked past a neighbor’s greenhouse and pond on a little brick pathway, very much like Mr. McGregor’s garden. Those walks were educational, too, because once I reached Highland Avenue and could navigate by peripheral vision, I read most of the way—or recited my multiplication tables when I absolutely had to.
My two older brothers and sister and I were showered with the luxuries of childhood: a dog, woods and a lake in New Hampshire, an old row boat, butterfly nets, paints, and books. We were read to copiously: Wait Till The Moon is Full, The Burgess Books, Stuart Little. I became addicted. Books provided a haven of drama and adventure in my cozy little life.
We weren’t completely normal! Our compulsions ranged from animals to fishing to ice hockey to drawing—and books. Sane parents would not have allowed me to raise an orphaned raccoon, but mine loved the little home wrecker as much as I did, and shared my pride in his successful return to the wild. My kindergarten teacher called my mother in for a conference, but Mum felt that any child who didn’t hold the door open for imaginary animal friends was strange—and a little rude. I was shy. At times, I thought our dog, Spike, was the only one who understood me. I still have a letter that I wrote to him.
My first novel, The Kingfisher’s Gift, which was a Junior Library Guild selection and International Reading Association honor book, started out as a seventh grade creative writing assignment. The germ of my story was the fairylike nature of the Luna moth. It was a good notion and I like to use that example with kids as proof that their ideas are valid. Grandmother is modeled after my great-grandmother, Mina Vestal French, better known as, “Nin.” She was an odd little woman with white braids wound around her head when I knew her. I was always told that she had once been “The Belle of Knoxville.” Her house in Wayland, MA was filled with a collection of birds that she mounted herself. It’s still there--hasn’t changed much--except for the surrounding land. The owner was kind enough to show me around a few years ago when I got serious about making the story into a book. She still tends the roses.
My husband, Fred, and I live in a stone house that we built ourselves in the wilds of western New York, where we raised our now grown daughters, Fern and Spring, and a constant menagerie of pets. Fred is a rustic furniture builder and sculptor. (Naturalformfurniture.com) He works wood; I work words. We grow most of our own vegetables and eat venison rather than beef. Together we collect everything from seashells to Indian relics—and of course, books.

Susan Williams Beckhorn
susanwilliamsbeckhorn.com
susanwilliamsbooks.com
As a children’s writer, I have several strikes against me. I did not have a rotten childhood, although I was a reasonably miserable teen. I was not a prodigy, but bumbled through Dick And Jane like everyone else. Writing what I knew--a comfortable, white, middle-class childhood in Winchester, MA--was exactly wh... More