From the July/August 2005 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

Laurence Yep

BY JOANNE RYDER

e was a Winkie from the West, and I was a Munchkin from the East. We met in the middle, Milwaukee, at Marquette University, learning about words and newspapers and life. That was thirty-eight years ago . . . when I was lucky enough to meet Laurence Yep.

The graduating editor of Marquette’s literary magazine, Gail Gleason, introduced us and suggested Larry join the staff. We will always be most grateful to the wise young woman who grew into Gail Collins, now the editor of the New York Times editorial page.

As he always does, Larry threw himself into his work at the Marquette Journal and ended up being a one-man team, acquiring art and writing short stories, articles, and poetry — under a pen name or two. He even helped me paint the office. We both ended our first painting experience a nice robin’s-egg blue.

Working together, we discovered we shared a childhood love of reading, especially fantasy and science fiction novels. He traded me his beloved Oz books and his Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton tales for my Narnia books, Moomintroll adventures, and Alice in Wonderland.

Over meatball sandwiches at Angelo’s, we discussed our plans and dreams: mine to return to New York, to edit, and then write children’s books; his to get his Ph.D. in English, teach full-time, and write fiction. He had just gotten his first story, a novelette, “The Selchey Kids,” published in If magazine. This was such exciting news! The editor of If, Frederik Pohl, wrote a note accompanying the story: “A young San Franciscan who is now a sophomore in college, nineteen-year-old Laurence Yep is clearly headed for great things!”

When I recall the Larry of those early days, he is mostly hidden, bundled in two scarves, padded gloves, and a hooded down jacket, puffed up like the Michelin Man, protected from the winds wailing off Lake Michigan. A thick shock of black hair escapes, tossing every which way, and kind, watchful eyes twinkle within.

Larry started writing for children while attending graduate school at SUNY Buffalo. Sweetwater is the science fiction story of a young boy torn between his love for music and his obligations to his family surviving on a foreign, flooded planet. I think the child reader within him was overjoyed when Andre Norton praised it. “Sweetwater is outstanding,” she wrote. “It is difficult to believe that this is a first novel. The extremely competent handling of alien background, plus excellent characterization, suggests rather a long apprenticeship in the craft.”

Homesick for San Francisco, Larry wrote Dragonwings, a novel that helped change the course of his career. He drew upon records of a real Chinese American aviator who, inspired by the flights of the Wright brothers, built his own plane. But he also drew upon the stories of unknown Chinese American pioneers and immigrants, especially his father, Thomas Yep, who like young Moonshadow came as a boy to live with his father in America, a stranger in a strange land.

Dragonwings was Larry’s first novel to deal with the Chinese American experience, and it was chosen a Newbery Honor Book. The scarcity of teaching jobs for English Ph.D.s in the seventies and the success of Dragonwings changed Larry’s plans. Though occasionally he has taught college classes at UC Berkeley and Santa Barbara, he has been a full-time writer for over thirty years.

As his writing career was beginning, Larry finished his dissertation on William Faulkner and then happily returned to California. “I think I identified with Faulkner,” he says, “who as a writer tried to live in various places and wound up going home, where he incorporated his hometown into his imagination, making it his own so it became Yoknatawpha. In a similar fashion, I wound up back home in San Francisco, incorporating Chinatown into my imagination and then putting that fictional one down on paper.”

Larry has written more than sixty books, among them the Dragon of the Lost Sea and The Tiger’s Apprentice fantasy series and the nine-volume Golden Mountain Chronicles that include the Newbery Honor books Dragonwings and Dragon’s Gate. His books are richly populated by Chinese American and other memorable characters — siblings sparring in the fifties (as he and his brother did), a young girl growing up in a laundry in West Virginia (as his mother did), Hiroshima survivors, immigrant miners, railroad workers, clever princesses, foolish ghosts, even Mr. Sulu in his one Star Trek novel.

When we bought our house, we knew we needed two things: enough space for us to work separately and enough wall space for bookcases. We live in a home full of all styles of puppets and bears (mine), toy soldiers and towers of anime (his), and books for research and enjoyment (ours). Larry is a lark, and I am an owl. He gets up early to begin his writing session every day. I work at night. I am the sprinter working on several short books and poems at a time. He is the marathon runner, going to his desk each morning, pacing himself, working for hours through early drafts, revisions, and more revisions of a novel.

As I type this, the world is dark, and he is dreaming. In a few hours when the world has turned gray again, he will follow the smell of programmed coffee, fill his cup, snatch the newspapers from the driveway, and head to his study to write. I will be dead to the world as he turns on his music — music selected for today’s writing project. He often chooses pumping rhythms, Japanese hard rock, to get him going. If you could slip into his study, you could tiptoe and stand right behind him. As he focuses, staring at his computer, it is likely he would not know you were there. He is far away where miners are in danger or dragons are battling ancient foes in the sky overhead. Wherever, the phone or doorbell cannot reach him.

I admire Larry’s faithfulness, perseverance, and dedication to his work. Every morning, weekdays and weekends, Larry returns to his writing. There have been times when the stories have been painful to discover — the sufferings of the Hiroshima survivors; the cruelty of the massacres of Chinese American miners in Montana. After some writing sessions, Larry looks drained and tired, but he has never given up or run away from the truth within his characters.

Each writer has methods for creating over the long run. One of Larry’s is to follow a difficult and painful story with a folktale, fantasy adventure, or contemporary novel. Not a lighter story, but a necessary respite. For someone like Larry, writing is a long journey traveling on many different paths, some to darker places and some to hamlets of hope and joy and family.

When I met Larry, he was perhaps a bit more serious than I. My playful Irish teasing was foreign to him. But he has learned over the years to tease and kid like a master, wiggling his ears in an amazingly dragony way and grinning as wide as the impish Monkey King. His hearty laugh is recognizable anywhere! That, and the fact that he finds the humor in many situations, makes him very easy to locate in a dark movie theater.

And to his way of thinking, any day — sunny or rainy — is a good day to see a movie or a play. When he needs a break from writing, when he is blocked on a book, or when he simply has a craving for Junior Mints, off he goes to a movie or a show. If he did not write novels, I suspect he would love to write plays. When Berkeley Rep asked him to adapt Dragonwings for the stage, every aspect of creation and production captivated him. His one-act plays, Pay the Chinaman and Fairy Bones, have been produced in San Francisco and New York. It is always more lively around the house when Larry is involved with a play. Working in the theater is more social and collaborative than working in publishing. We’ve learned to expect and chuckle at the phone calls from actors querying their motivation and questioning their lines. When Larry writes books, he might wake up thinking about his characters, but they don’t phone at midnight.

Sometimes people ask us how two writers can be together 24/7 and stay married. We laugh and say only with separate studies . . . and with gentleness and understanding. We know how the other feels when a rejection comes, and we head out for a long walk or a slice of pizza. When we get good news — an acceptance, a fine review, or an acknowledgment — we hug, we celebrate, and we truly enjoy that we’ve been able to make this long trip together doing what we love to do.

When Larry learned that he was to be awarded the 2005 Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, recognizing his contribution to children’s literature, it was totally unexpected and wonderful news. We haven’t stopped celebrating. . . . Larry and Laura. How lovely!

Joanne Ryder is the author of more than sixty books for children, including The Snail’s Spell, My Father’s Hands, Earthdance, and Won’t You Be My Kissaroo?