“The recognition extends beyond the field of children’s book professionals,” he says. National Book Award Finalist Feed rocketed Anderson to fame. After revising, the novel was published in 1998. “Part of my reason for doing that was I had to eat something and they paid money, but it was obviously my interest in children’s literature and my interest in getting published as a writer of children’s literature, so I wanted to find out about the industry from the inside.” Anderson submitted an early version of Thirsty to his boss who said he needed a plot. Prior to publishing Thirsty, his first book, Anderson worked for Candlewick Press in Massachusetts as an editorial assistant. As a teenager, “I didn’t have the arsenal of tools…to capture the weirdness the Oscar Wilde-like wit of the characters.” When Anderson revised the story as an adult, he felt empowered because he now had the skill to bring his creation to life. Many years later, Anderson revisited The Game of Sunken Places “and turned it into something publishable.” The four-book series features a fairy-like race of characters called Norumbegans with a caustic wit, but no human sense of sentimentality. “The most important part of writing was actually that zone where I was sitting there and coming up with the material and getting excited by the plot and trying to think of how to best say what I wanted to say.” “It got universally rejected as you might expect,” he says, but the early experience of writing and submitting to publishers showed him that publication was not the most important part of writing for him.

By age 17 he wrote the first draft of The Game of Sunken Places and sent it to publishers. “So much of my writing has come from that experience of being in the woods and making up stories about what goes on there.”Īnderson remembers writing simple stories at the age of six or seven, and by 7th or 8th grade, he wrote 30- to 40-page stories that he liked to call novels. He describes his house as “1970s suburban,” yet out his back door a forest and a lake beckoned. Matthew Tobin Anderson grew up in a small bedroom community for urban professionals.

Whales on Stilts by M.T. Anderson