By Andrew Hamlin
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Tae Keller (Credit: Jesse Dittmar)
Writers surely sprout most anywhere, but Seattle’s own Tae Keller remembers the fecund soil of her native Hawai’i as most important.
“I grew up in Waipahu, outside of Honolulu,” remembered Keller, whose new middle school novel, “When Tomorrow Burns,” was selected by the Washington Center for the Book, to represent Washington state at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. “I remember all the things that were distinctly Hawai’i about my childhood, the beach and Spam musubis, and the mountain of shoes and slippers piled outside everyone’s front door.
“But I also have childhood memories that I think are familiar to kids in many places. Making ‘potions’ out of plants and dirt with my best friend. Reading way past my bedtime. Being lovingly terrorized by my younger sister.”
Keller spoke at Bellevue Library on Sept. 20. She’s part Korean, part white, and felt lucky to grow up in Hawai’i, where about one-third of the population is mixed Asian of one kind and/or another. She always felt like she fit in, until she went off to college on the East Coast.
“They expected me to pick one side or the other, and I wasn’t prepared to push back on that or claim my identity for myself. I felt a bit lost for a while, and that’s one of the reasons I eventually wrote [the novel] ‘When You Trap a Tiger.’ It’s a book about biracial Korean family and storytelling. Writing that book reconnected me to my identity and made me feel at home in my skin again.”
Tae Keller (Credit: Jesse Dittmar)
She read constantly growing up, favoring the “Magic Tree House” books from Mary Pope Osborne, and the award-winning “Holes,” by Louis Sachar.
But she had a secret weapon, right at home.
“My mom [Nora Okja Keller] is a writer. She wrote novels for adults, ‘Comfort Woman’ and ‘Fox Girl,’ so I wasn’t allowed to read them as a kid, but I watched her write, and I was in awe. She taught me a lot about writing, and still reads my drafts today.
“And because she was a writer, she was also surrounded by other writers, which meant I had many role models. One of her friends, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, ran a poetry school so I attended once a week for many years. I learned a lot about writing from her, and a lot about life as well. She had no filter, ha!”
After spending time in Philadelphia, and later New York City, Keller made her way to Seattle in 2020.
“I still get to be near water and mountains, which reminds me of home, and the pace out here is more relaxed.”
Her first book, “The Science of Breakable Things,” appeared in 2018.
“It was the first middle school book I’d tried to write. I’d tried writing high school [level] and adult [level] previously, and I realized that [middle school] was the age group I should be writing for. It felt natural.
“Honestly, I’m grateful for the things I didn’t know! I’m more aware of the middle grade market and practical publishing limitations now, which is helpful in some sense, but that early ignorance gave me the freedom to experiment.”
Credit: Washington Center for the Book
But her new book, “When Tomorrow Burns,” had a different inspiration.
“The driving question behind ‘When Tomorrow Burns’ is: How do we live in a world on fire? I mean this metaphorically and literally. The first year I moved to Seattle, the wildfire smoke was terrible. The experience stuck with me, and I knew I wanted to write a book set during wildfire season. But there are also a lot of figurative fires of our times, not to mention the “fires” of adolescence, with changing bodies and friendships and crushes.
“I wanted to capture that overwhelming feeling of all those fires happening all at once, because that’s what this modern era feels like to me. And then I wanted to offer some hope. To say, okay, this is the experience, this is how it feels, and now here are some strategies to move through it.”
Asked about future plans, she responded briefly. “I’m working on my next book for middle schoolers! The first draft is due to my editor next week, so I’m frantically writing it!”
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