Why, after four young adult novels, did you decide to write a middle grade novel? It wasn’t something I planned for because we really didn’t know if the Dumplin’ movie was happening until it was happening, ya know? I try not to overthink things or worry about whether it will be of interest to the film world, but I do know that I was working on Puddin’ as the movie was filming, so it was really cool to see those characters come to life while I was writing about those characters again. That has changed for sure, but I don’t think that it’s changed how I write. I think that it’s really helped me think of my books in a more three-dimensional way. Has the success of Dumplin’ affected your writing? I started to think about how I loved coming-of-age stories and what was so special and magical about those moments for me.

I found myself playing with screenplays for a little while and, when the Twilight series came out, I also found myself really interested in being a librarian for teens. I loved reading, but the thing that I really loved the most was movies. I was going to school for political science, so whatever I was writing for fun had nothing to do with what I was learning. Was it clear from the start that you were interested in writing for a YA audience? It was a much slower thing I discovered over time. You’ve probably talked to a lot of writers that say that as soon as they could walk, they had a pen in their hand, but it wasn’t like that for me. It was the first time that I gave myself permission to explore reading and writing without any type of academic burden or pressure. It wasn’t until college that I started to figure out it was something that I might actually enjoy. I appreciate my teachers from high school, but so many of them really ruined reading and writing and took the joy out of it for me. Even into my high school years, I never really gravitated towards writing because it felt so much like homework. When reading isn’t a huge priority, writing isn’t a huge priority. Reading, while something I enjoyed, wasn’t really a priority. It was more about putting food on the table, putting the kids to bed, and starting the whole thing over the next morning. I have fantastic parents that I love, but they were hardworking, blue-collar parents who didn’t have time to come home and read to me.

Have you always known that you wanted to write novels?

Puddin' by Julie Murphy