Writer Spotlight: Sondra Soderborg

 

Portable dishwasher, THE CAT WHO WENT TO HEAVEN, turkey herding, weight-lifting, ZOMBIE CAT: author Sondra Soderborg

Charlie Barshaw coordinates our regular Writer Spotlight feature and interviews writers of SCBWI-MI. In this piece, meet author, and weight-lifter Sondra Soderborg.

Breanna in SKY ROPES was a secondary character in HEY EYEBALL who “kept stealing the scenes.” How’d she do that?

So EYEBALL (the current working title) is the first book I wrote. It hasn’t found a publisher yet, but I still have hope, hope being a primary currency in this business! 

Like any beginning novelist, I didn’t know what I was doing, and the early drafts are just a series of character studies around a single event. Breanna was a tough kid, opinionated, brash, proudly misbehaving. She had energy around her from the start. 

I didn’t know that that was a way our books kind of guide us to our stories (as George Saunders talks about). But one day, in a late draft, Breanna was walking down the stairs at school, and she knew Mitchell, my MC, was watching her. 

As she disappeared out of sight, she lifted up her hand and flipped him off. That was the first time one of my characters shocked me. She came alive and has stayed strong and distinct ever since. 

First published book at 60. Not so bad for a spring chicken. Persistence, how?

I am a dog with a bone. I really do stick with things. 

But in 2006, when I was about to go back to practicing law, my husband and I had what I still consider an extraordinary conversation about how I wanted to write for kids and wasn’t doing it, and maybe it was time to get serious. 

Mylisa's latest

I didn’t go back to the law. I just tried to focus on writing and on learning about this byzantine business. At that point, I was already working with my great friend Mylisa Larsen. 

We exchanged work and checked in once a week, just to create some structure and accountability. I went to SCBWI events. I went to workshops. I just kept writing and editing. Mylisa and I tried to help each other, but we didn’t know enough and had some terrible ideas. But we learned. 

Along the way, there was enough encouragement to keep going. I could do that work because we could live on one income. It was a privilege to persist the way I did. 

Your primal moment in reading development involved six-year-old you on a portable dishwasher, looking at pictures and trying to sound out words. You had health problems that made reading hard. Was this another bout of fake it until you make it?

This is such a core story for me. I was in a coma as an infant, and the doctors told my parents that there was no accounting for what brain damage I would have as a result. They specifically said that I wouldn’t be able to learn to read. So that was the expectation. 

My first grade teacher, Estelle Smith, in SLC, UT,  was smart and paying attention, and I am so lucky. She assured my parents I could learn and taught them how to teach me. I was behind, but I suspect my aptitude for reading was pretty normal. 

It took time and practice and we worked while I sat on top of that portable dishwasher and my mom or dad washed dishes. The reason it’s so significant is that I didn’t think it would happen.

I remember every victory in learning to read, like understanding the sounds of vowels. Big deal! And then once I learned, I wanted to read everything. The book I remember most from first grade is The Cat Who Went to Heaven.

In an interview you said your work, RUBY was “especially close to your heart.” But your next sentence is about BARNABAS. What’s so heartfelt about RUBY? And what does a seven-year nap in a drawer do to BARNABAS?

Showing Baby Grand,
Sondra doing what she loved best at 13

RUBY. Ah! That is another book that hasn’t found a publisher. I wrote it after Sky Ropes. RUBY is close to my heart because it was based on work I did in child advocacy as a lawyer. 

It is about a young girl being asked to decide whether she wants to remain with her mom, who Ruby loves, but who, over years, can’t  provide stability, or to be adopted by a long-term foster care parent. The setting is different. The names are different. 

But some (not the most graphic)  details are real and the impossible choice that child faced is real. It is an experience burned into my heart. 

BARNABAS. Seven years in a drawer means time to grow as a writer. The book is contemporary fiction, but the character is mythological. The story and characters are steeped in magical realism. 

I didn’t have the skill set to handle those things when I wrote my first 300 page draft. Even when I got it out of the drawer, it was very hard to pin it down. I’m hoping I managed.  It is currently with my agent. 

Breanna is fearless—except of heights. How is Sondra with high places?

I have some fear of heights. But it’s manageable. I can drive on steep mountain roads (in daylight). I can stand on the glass floor of the CN Tower. My legs are wobbly, but I can do it. 

Breanna’s fears are pathological. And she’s earned them. I started Sky Ropes by wondering what this character from EYEBALL who wasn’t afraid of anything might, in fact, be afraid of. 

Once I realized it was heights, I went to a team-building camp that my kids had been to with the Ann Arbor Public Schools. High ropes were part of that. At first, I thought it was enough to observe. But I had to do the ropes in the end. It was very instructive!

Talk about the law you practiced.

I worked for a Detroit firm doing litigation right out of law school. Then I was a clerk to a US District Court judge in Detroit. That was a great job. By then I had two kids and I did contract work for a small litigation firm. I taught paralegal training at Scott Regional Correctional Facility. I taught Civics at a high school in Ann Arbor. I kept moving further and further away from the law. I didn’t really have the stomach for the conflict that was at the heart of most of the work I did. But I appreciate the education and the experience.

You credited a “community of writers” for help in getting published. Care to thank any by name?

I owe so much to the writing community I’ve  met through Highlights: Patricia Lee Gauch, Mylisa Larsen, Louisa Jaggar, Susan Wheeler, Sharon Dembro, Christine Carron, CS Perryess, Stella Michel, Tara Carson, Lisze Bechtold. What I love about the group is that we are deeply committed to helping each other succeed.

Why change Ann Arbor into a pseudonym, when so much real-life Michigan is in the rest of SKY ROPES?

This is an interesting, writerly question, one I weighed in writing my book. Beecham, the fictional city that is largely a stand in for Ann Arbor, is in both EYEBALL and SKY ROPES. I wanted to use real details from my city, to keep things grounded. 

But I also wanted the freedom to change what I needed to change, and that meant it wasn’t actually Ann Arbor. So I changed the name. 

In some ways, that almost- my-city-but-not-quite quality helped with the magical realism that is simply part of my books. Hewing to reality helps that magic shine when it comes.

First novel, you got blurbs from Jerry Spinelli, Gary Schmidt and K.A. Holt. How’d you score them?

That was wild! So after I did notes with my amazing editor Taylor Norman, she moved from Chronicle Books to Neal Porter. When it was time to do blurbs, I got a note from a new editor that I interpreted as meaning I had to go get blurbs myself. 

I absolutely panicked (cue calming phone call with Patrick Flores-Scott). I had met Jerry at Highlights, and I contacted Patti Gauch to see if she thought it made sense to contact him. She did. She gave me his email, I asked, he said yes. It happened very quickly. 

And then I got an email from Chronicle clarifying that they would help me. It was a sweet moment to be able to say, “Okay, great, and I’ve got Jerry Spinelli.” 

They reached out to Gary, who I knew, because I take classes through Whale Rock Workshops. He had actually coached me a little on the book, the scene on the school bus. 

And then Kari Ann was on a list of possibilities Chronicle suggested. Kari Ann and I are agency mates, we both have books from Chronicle, and I respect her and her writing very much. I picked her from the list.

Turkey farm

Okay, I’ll bite. Turkey herding?

I grew up in the suburbs of Salt Lake City. My dad and Grandpa owned the family farm together in southern central Utah (Sanpete County!). They raised thousands of turkeys. So my first job, starting at probably age six or seven, was helping herd turkeys when we needed to load them into trucks to move them to bigger coops or . . . for other reasons turkeys ride in trucks. 

The way you herd turkeys, is you form a line of people with gunny sacks and you shake the sacks at the turkeys and you move toward them and guide them as best as you can.  It was smelly, sweaty  work and the full-grown tom turkeys were as tall as I was. But I did it with my cousins and uncles, and I felt useful. And I got paid.

I was an absolute farm dilettante, working occasionally and mostly riding the horses. But that farm is precious in my life.

Being a teacher in high school and in prison. What’s the big difference?

Security, structure and pain. Going to work through prison security is intense. Metal detectors, bag searches, pat-downs. If babies were coming in, the guards would change their diapers to make sure no contraband was inside. The messages that you were entering a different, very controlled  world were clear. 

The pain was in how deeply the women missed their kids. I was a mom myself, expecting my third, and that pain was the hardest part. They were good and serious students, some because they were training for jobs outside and some because they could earn better money as paralegals inside. 

I taught at the Ann Arbor Academy, which is a private school for neurodiverse kids. That was a loosely structured school, completely different than the control of the prison. I loved that there was room there for kids to be themselves. The students were the joy at both places.

One book. How many awards?

Three

The Friends of American Writers’ Young People’s Literature Award 2024

The Scripps National Spelling Bee Great Words, Great Works selection for sixthgraders, 2025

Current nominee for the Great Lakes/Great Books Award, grades 4-5.

Highlights and Patty Gauch. How are you connected to them?

Theo

I found Patti Gauch at Highlights. She is one of the people who worked with Highlights in the early days to build the foundation for the extensive training and resources they have now. 

My writing partner Mylisa heard Patti speak when Highlights was held in Chautauqua, NY. She called me and said, “I found a teacher for us.” It took me years to have the courage to apply, and I only did it when Mylisa confronted me for not taking this necessary step. 

That’s the kind of writing community I have, one that holds me accountable. There happened to be room in the group the year I applied, and I have been with them ever since. That was probably 12 years ago. 

Composing is hard, revising easier. Are you better at paring down or building up?

I have to do both. I write to find my story at first. Sometimes, my first drafts lack voice, but they have a narrative line. And then I build on the things that feed that narrative line and cut what doesn’t, and I eventually find voice. But right now, I’m working on a new book, Zombie Cat, and its definitely leading with us. That’s exciting for me. 

Weight lifting. You lift weights. You have a coach. For your health. Are you a badass?

I started weight-lifting because I knew it was healthy and my son kept bugging me to do it. It turns out, I really like it. 

During the pandemic, when life felt so strange, I got a virtual coach. It helped me physically and emotionally to learn to lift well during that time. 

Getting strong is a really powerful thing. It changes how I move through the world and how I understand myself. It has strengthened my courage. If that’s bad-ass, I’ll take it. 

It feels like survival in this current moment, claiming fierceness, strength, honesty, thick-skinned toughness, and the power of words to meet what we’re facing.

CHRISTINA KATERINA AND THE BOX by Patricia Lee Gauch. How is it 50 years?

I know! I read that book in my friend’s basement as a kid. She was a challenging friend, but boy did they have good picture books!

How did you come to work with the esteemed Erin Murphy of EMLA?

I bid on access in a fundraiser for hurricane relief that Kate Messner organized. It was a little bit complicated and I didn’t actually win. But I was offered the chance to donate anyway. Erin read Eyeball. We talked on the phone, and I could just hear her weighing the question of whether or not she would offer me representation. That was one tense call.

Was CAMP WHATEVER the working title of SKY ROPES?

Yes. My editor didn’t want it to sound like it was a camp book, because that is its own genre and Sky Ropes didn’t fit there. She was right.

Eulogy for your Uncle Allen was also about your dad and his brothers. Quite a tribute to lives well-lived.

Thank you! I am lucky to have kind, grounded, extended family members.

You, Jack Cheng and Shari Swanson, 2024. What was the honor?

Friends of American Writer’s Young People’s Literature Award. It’s a long-lived, serious literary group in Chicago, honoring writers from the Midwest or writing about the Midwest, who are early in their careers. I was in great company.

Old family pic

What's next?

What's next for me is a new book called ZOMBIE CAT about a girl, Carmen, who knows her beloved cat is going to die soon. And yet, as summer passes and the cat lives on, she begins to wonder if the cat might have actually turned into a zombie. 

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I'm hoping to get to Bluesky next month.