SCBWI-MI Spring Conference Presenter Kat Higgs-Coulthard

River Bluff Road, NWP, Get Inked, dogs, and suspenders for pantsing: Author and educator Kat Higgs-Coulthard

Charlie Barshaw coordinates our regular Writer Spotlight feature and interviews writers of SCBWI-MI. In this piece, meet author and  educator Kat Higgs-Coulthard. Kat is also part of the cast of distinguished faculty at the SCBWI-MI spring conference. 


You were born in Niles, MI. How did you end up at the University of Nebraska for your undergraduate schooling? You eventually settled back in Niles. How far are you from where you grew up?

I grew up on the north side of Niles only about a mile from both sets of grandparents. That was a huge blessing, as we were very connected to the extended family. 

One set of cousins lived across the street. They would come over and roller skate on the concrete floor of my basement and we all spent lots of time helping our Grandma Brown snap peas grown in my grandpa’s garden. My other grandmother (Marlin) had a kiln in her basement. One of my favorite things was to paint ceramics with her and help her sell them at local festivals.

While I went away to college in Nebraska, Michigan called me back. I love the rivers and creeks and especially Lake Michigan. Michigan is a great place to raise a family.

You talk about exploring the dump below your house, about the “treasure trove” it held for you.  Did the junkyard below the bluff supply any treasures for JUNKYARD DOGS?

As a child, I lived on River Bluff Road. Our home was literally on a bluff overlooking the river. Families that lived there before us had used that hill as a dumping ground and as I child, I found it fascinating to explore back there—finding old bottles, abandoned appliances, and even a junked-up truck. 

Kat w/Maya

That was part of the inspiration for JUNKYARD DOGS, but an even larger part came from trips with my dad to an actual junkyard. He would go there to drop off debris from my uncle’s construction business and I would be left to roam the huge piles of junk, often finding bits of treasure—like teacups that I could bring home for my mom’s collection. Often they were more like mugs—nothing too special—but she would fill them with soil and grow marigolds in them.

Your family grew up without a lot of money. Your Dad would take the kids to a junkyard to find “treasures” like teacups still fit for drinking. Where many people might be embarrassed by this unusual outing, you were able to embrace the adventure. Why?

It never occurred to me to be embarrassed by it because it was just a normal part of my childhood. My parents worked hard to make sure we had everything we needed, so even though we were right on the cusp of poverty, my brother and I didn’t feel poor. There were certainly many families in worse shape.

It was decided that you couldn’t take a creative writing class because you didn’t excel in English(!?) Later in college you were exposed to the National Writing Project, which helped develop teachers as writers, and as teachers of writing. You even started a novel. Were you different, or was it the attitude of the instructors?

Kat w/Gabi

I have been a writer for as long as I can remember, filling notebooks with world building and character descriptions even in elementary school. My third and fourth grade teacher (Miss Consigny) nurtured that in me and our elementary school librarian (Mrs. Bigford) started a school newspaper so that kids like me could have an outlet for our creativity.

I actually don’t remember why I wasn’t allowed to take creative writing in high school. I think that I didn’t know it was an option or hadn’t been recommended for it. So when I found out that my best friend who didn’t even like to write was placed in the class, I was aghast. I advocated as hard as I could to be let in, but the class was already full and they said no.

When the guidance counselors started talking to us about college, they swayed me away from a career as a journalist and into teaching. Again, I am not sure why—I had great grades and was in the Honor Society, so it wasn’t for lack of talent. I figured, oh, well, at least I’ll be able to share my passion for writing with my own students.

My first year teaching, I was recommended by a colleague to the National Writing Project’s Summer Institute. NWP supports teachers as writers, believing that to be a good teacher of writing, one must write. 

The NWP nurtured the writer in me and helped me bring that into my teaching. I have stayed involved with the NWP and even served on the Hoosier Writing Project’s (Indiana) executive board.

Tell us about the Michiana Writers' Center. What is it? How did it come about? Is there a summer writing camp set for this year? What are the plans for the future?

I founded Michiana Writers’ Center because there just weren’t any writing opportunities in Southwestern Michigan or Northern Indiana. Everything was 3 hours north or 2 hours south of where I lived. 

I knew I couldn’t be the only one in the area that wanted a community of writers, so I started one. I hired local writers and teachers to provide workshops to adults and kids. We ran a summer camp for grades 3-12 for several years. 

Since Covid, more people have turned to online opportunities and our classes weren’t filling, so we’ve turned our energy to one big event each year—the Get Inked Teen Writing Conference, which we cohost with Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, where I am a tenured associate professor in the Education Department.

By the time this piece publishes, the Get Inked Teen Writing Conference will have happened. Tell us about Get Inked, where it sprung from, what you hope to achieve. (And what a cool line-up of faculty you’ve got this year, including a bevy of SCBWI-MI writers!)

The Get Inked Teen Writing Conference grew out of my desire to create a conference for teens modeled after the amazing writing conferences out there for adults. I had just attended the SCBWI annual conference in New York in 2013 and wanted to bring that feeling home to kids in my area. 

Kat presenting

Many school districts have Young Author Conferences for kids, but they peter out once a kid hits 5th or 6th grade. Get Inked takes over from there—inviting writers in grades 7-12 to begin to drive their own growth as writers—selecting which craft workshops they are interested in and which YA authors they would like to work with. 

The other cool thing about Get Inked, is that it brings kids to a college campus so they can see what it’s like. I’m a first-generation college grad and I didn’t even consider many colleges because I couldn’t see myself there. This helps overcome that barrier for some students.

JUNKYARD DOGS is a young adult novel. How much difference between writing a middle grade novel versus one for older teens? Your novel involves housing instability, mental illness, betrayal, and dead bodies. Where do you draw the line for teen readers? Is there a line?

So much of what we create is informed by our own curiosities and that is certainly true for me in my work. I write to answer questions about why people do the things they do—good and bad. (Check out Lifeboat Theory, one of my 1st published short stories for an example: https://www.cleavermagazine.com/lifeboat-theory-by-katherine-higgs-coulthard/#:~:text=He%20said%20rich%20nations%20was,get%20into%20the%20richer%20lifeboats . ) 

What makes one person work three jobs to support a family they didn’t think they wanted while another person walks away? What do we choose to ignore and what can we simply not see? Why do some people never seem to have enough and how do others survive—even thrive—with so much less?

Nothing I write is beyond what actual kids experience in the real world. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop has said that books should serve as windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors for readers to see themselves and others—I take that edict to heart. 

Readers need to see other kids struggling with complex family dynamics. It is horrific to think about, but the truth is many kids live in poverty, experience abuse, have lost people they love. 

Where I draw the line is that stories should show a path through trauma. It must provide hope by showing readers an example of a kid who survives—and maybe even thrives—despite the challenges thrown at them. 

But it has to be handled carefully. Putting a big shiny bow of an ending on a difficult story won’t ring true to kids living these situations. The ending has to be believable. How can the characters be okay enough at the end of this book to be there for the next part of their story?

You reference Stephen King in your interview with Danielle DeFauw . His writing advice includes a teacup. A situation may present itself to the writer, but it is only once the writer finds the cup handle that they can proceed. Young you searched the dump for unbroken teacups for your mom. Writer you searches for the teacup handle. How does one find the handle?

I love this question! My approach to writing has been nurtured by many of the writers I admire. Ralph Fletcher says that writers should keep a journal to collect ideas much like a ditch will collect odds and ends over time. You don’t know what will work its way into a story. That connects with what Stephen King has said about letting a story idea sit until you find a handle to pick it up. 

SCBWI event 2024

An example of how this worked with JUNKYARD DOGS: In my notebook I had collected memories about visiting junkyards as a kid, losing our home and everything we owned in a fire when I was in 5th grade, being so nervous to try out for sports in middle school that I was physically ill, observations of a stranger with unique habits walking downtown and seeing him again in a food court. 

All of these pieces seemed unrelated. Then I stumbled on a retrospective of the 2006 Manhole Murders written by reporter Virginia Black and there was my handle—what if a teen was somehow mixed up in the scrapping ring at the center of the murders?

You prefer the drafting part of the writing process. You “pantsed” your first three novels, but now you at least wear suspenders. What metaphor do your suspenders serve?

While I love finding my way through a story by writing, rather than plotting it out, pantsing my way through my first novels created huge headaches for me during revision. 

Now, I try to do a little more prep work—to sketch out my characters a bit in advance, get more of the setting on paper, consider what will need to happen in the story for the outcome I’m writing toward. This has helped streamline my discovery draft, so that more of the pieces make sense in that draft and less has to be worked out in revision. 

I guess I would say I have put suspenders on my pantsing—or another metaphor might be setting out trail markers on the path from blank page to story draft.

You’re another success story of a writer who attended an SCBWI-MI event and eventually published with the editor on the faculty. How did you end up at Peachtree? What steps were involved in getting published?

SCBWI-MI rocks! I still remember how excited I was to find out there was such an organization. I’d been working on a middle grade book and the only support system I had was through NWP—which is great, but most of my colleagues were writing for adults. 

Then I met Cynthia Furlong Reynolds at a Barnes and Noble event and she brought me to my first SCBWI conference. My whole world changed! I met so many kind, talented writers and illustrators. Going to an SCBWI event has always felt like a big family reunion to me.

Flash forward to April 2021. Peachtree Teen editor, Jonah Heller spoke at the SCBWI-MI spring conference. I was drawn to his approach to publishing because of what he said about the need to center our audience. 

Kat kayaking

I had been revising a book about a teen basketball player hiding his poverty from everyone at school and believed Jonah would connect with the teen voice and important issues in the story. His submission policy at the time was to physically mail the query, synopsis, and first few chapters. 

I loved this quirky throwback to before email and Query Tracker became the norm, so I printed out my materials and sent them off in the mail. A month or so later, I received his email requesting the full. Luckily, I was allowed to email that. By October I had an offer!

Working with Jonah and the team at Peachtree on JUNKYARD DGS (2023, hardcover; 2024 paperback) has been a dream come true. They involved me in many of the decisions, such as the cover art and selecting the narrator of the audio book (Robbie Daymond!). 

Presenting at the ALAN conference

Peachtree has a devoted marketing team that even made possible one of my biggest dreams. I have attended NCTE’s ALAN conference for several years because I love the insightful author panels and the 40-pound box of books each attendee receives (It’s like Christmas for teachers/librarians.) In 2023, Peachtree secured me a spot on a panel at ALAN and put copies of Junkyard Dogs in the ALAN boxes!

It was very different from my experience working with a smaller press to publish HANGING WITH MY PEEPS (2016). That press did not have the resources to promote the book and didn’t involved me in any of the decisions about cover art or the internal line illustrations.

What’s next for Kat?

I spent three rejuvenating weeks in March at South Porch Artists Residency. (Thanks to writer-friend Dawne Webber for suggesting I apply!) 

During that time, I completed the latest revision of a YA ghost story about a girl who moves into a house already occupied by two ghosts who are in a perpetual game of hide and seek. 

I also began drafting my next project, a YA speculative fiction about a kayak trip on a Michigan creek that goes horribly wrong.

Please share any social media platforms:

Website: https://writewithkat.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kathiggs/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kathiggscoulthard/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15141419.Katherine_Higgs_Coulthard