Ask the Author: Nina Neilson Little
Answered Questions (4)
Nina Neilson Little
The world of Harry Potter, of course! I would love to go shopping on Diagon Alley, see a world Quidditch match and meet a dragon, unicorn and maybe a hippogriff. I would also enjoy a visit to Narnia to meet some talking forest creatures. Lastly, it would be fun to follow the white rabbit through Wonderland (although the mean flowers and cryptic caterpillar scared me as a child, not to mention the Queen of Hearts, so on second thought, maybe not).
Nina Neilson Little
This summer, I read Born a Crime (absolute favorite), A Murmur of Bees, Educated, Where the Crawdads Sing and Little Fires Everywhere. I also read some books by fellow authors and friends, Tetch, Water Masks, Corridors of Transmutation, Southern Rain and Guidebook to Relative Strangers. I just started reading Crazy Rich Asians, but I'm struggling to get into it.
Nina Neilson Little
Nearly a decade ago, just before my grandmother passed away, she gave me a typed copy of the diary of my great, great, great grandmother, Susan Alice Gray. I was very honored that she chose me to edit the diary and write a more "readable" version. The diary begins on her wedding day in 1853 and continues until the middle of the Civil War in 1864. While the history is fascinating, the original diary includes a lot of tea parties and complete church sermons. I did a lot of editing and research to create a new, more readable version. I am happy to say that I completed the new edition and was able to share it with my grandmother before she died.
The process of writing Spirit Baby and reliving my five-year battle with infertility caused me to draw a lot of comparisons between the trials and tribulations that my great, great, great grandmother suffered as a woman and mother in the 1800s and the challenges I have faced in more modern times. This led to an exciting concept for another book, "The Lives of Women," where I plan to tell the history of women in my family throughout multiple generations and compare/contrast the challenges for women, wives and mothers throughout time.
The process of writing Spirit Baby and reliving my five-year battle with infertility caused me to draw a lot of comparisons between the trials and tribulations that my great, great, great grandmother suffered as a woman and mother in the 1800s and the challenges I have faced in more modern times. This led to an exciting concept for another book, "The Lives of Women," where I plan to tell the history of women in my family throughout multiple generations and compare/contrast the challenges for women, wives and mothers throughout time.
Nina Neilson Little
After suffering through five years of infertility, I was blessed with twins and lucky to be able to stay at home with them. However, after a few years, I became bored and restless and needed a creative outlet. So I began writing children's books, then dug through a drawer of old journals, where I found the two journals I kept while traveling in China and began writing about the path that led me to China. At first it was simply a travel memoir, but the reason we went to China (five years of infertility, a yearning for the healing benefits of travel and the hope of becoming culturally aware and sensitive parents to a Chinese orphan) was always there. So as I wrote about my trip to China, my memories of my journey through infertility seeped onto the pages and the concept of my Spirit Baby continued to blossom and take flight.
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