I said to debbie, i cant wait to do appearances with you so we can have these conversations, this is not anything we ever wouldve imagined when we were setting up the tour at the end of last year but we are nothing astound abadaptable we will take solace in the fact that we know many of you who are watching right now public could not have physically got to crow read books tonight, but you can join us virtually. I will reiterate on what was said that you should treat this as if you were in the bookstore when youre in the bookstore for reading you by books. Please do that it would be great if they were debbies books but really, buy a lot of books because when youre in a bookstore you dont just buy one book you buy a lot of books. I imagine with this crowd debbie needs no introduction but i will just briefly say ab with all my friends. [laughter] i think whats great is if you look at her body of work you see two very very strong themes, theme of social justice, and the theme of defining america and who gets to define america. She has done this in books like freedom summer, middle grade, especially with the Aurora County books. She did it in the interesting intersection of middle grade mia with the 60s trilogy and got so much acclaim for that. Now and why a shes done it again with kent state, it is a remarkable book, as anybody who knows me knows i believe one of the best things i worked as an editor and 25 years, i think its a masterpiece. I think it is a book that defies categorization and basically as with the 60s trilogy, some people they like the novel form, they traditionally like to write novels in a very straightforward way but debbie has done in this part of her career and she has decided to push the limit of what a book can do and rather than just sort of sitting back and accepting a genre and conforming her story to that genre she will in fact invent her own way to tell the story with the 60s trilogy she invented the documentary novel as a way of giving this wide lens look at the 60s and the people within the 60s and the choices that were being made and all the conflicts they are and with kent state she wanted to tell the story with not just one way with money and she invented a form that fits the story perfectly. It is an honor to work with you always, debbie, but it is certainly wonderful to get to talk to you about this extraordinary book. Before, i will get to questions about how to the book come to be and the writing process and editing process but ill start with the obvious question, for now, which is just as we did not anticipate us having Virtual Events and being in this world that we are in, the other big strand of where we are right now is the culture of protests and everything that has happened in, think about camp state when they saw everything that was going on from the peaceful protests from trump teargas and people so he could go hold a bible up it just is eerie how it has come all around again, although again, there is the scary part but theres also the inspiring part of a [inaudible] what has it been like . You spent years of your life researching and looking at camp state and interrogating camp state in your mind and then this is the world we are in, what has been going through your mind looking at our world through the lens of the book . Thats a really good first question, before i answer it, im going to turn off the light that i think is causing feedback, let me do that, do you still hear it . Whats been going through my mind, thanks. First of all its unbelievable, we couldnt have planned this, we couldnt have planned to a published a book that came out not only during a pandemic but that came out at the same time that the United States erupted over the very same source of issues we were looking at during camp states time in the vietnam war and Richard Nixon in the white house and all the protests going on to end the war, the National Guard occupying the campus at camp state and killing for students and wounding nine more. Students exercising their First Amendment rights. So what is so inspiring to see right now is people who are doing that very thing getting out there and exercising those First Amendment rights and protesting and rallying and having their voices heard, free speech, the ability to track your own course in this country and say what you feel and what you believe in and have the right to do that. Its been scary to watch the National Guard be called out once again, even more militarized now than it was in 1970 and abjust to look at the scenario abits a front slap of camp state because we need to talk about this so it doesnt happen again, here we are again. Its a surreal time im grateful the book is there and the response weve had to it so far has been just tremendous with people who are picking this up from word of mouth and posting in various places just like today, the echoes of today back to 1970 are amazing. Ive been really humbled i guess is really just really humbled by it because the response in the middle of a pandemic has been overwhelming. And i can put this right back to you and say thank you to scholastic for always being such risktakers with me. I knew this was a risky book, and i knew the 60s trilogy books were a big risk because theyve never been done before but one thing led to another, led to another and consistently scholastica said yes, yes, yes. How can we make this happen . Even to the new book we are working on now. So thank you for that. Its good to talk to you its good to see you. The last time i saw you i think was like january we thought we will be on the road together. The circuit again we will be on the festivals for a book to come out any book because i know you are shepherding a lot of them, any book to come out without schools, libraries, bookstores, conferences and festivals to support it are in a particularly interesting atmosphere right now to be able to try to share books and get them out there and get the word out and be able to tell our stories with Young Readers or all readers. Does not answer the question. It does. Whats interesting is looking at talking about this today, we are looking at sort of what is selling what people want to read what bookstores are promoting. Whats fascinating to me is really, there is this question of relevance. People want to read books that are relevant. Which i love because i think it shows people are reading to try to figure things out. That a lot of times we read for escapism but now people are largely reading for engagement, i think your book is one where people are engaging. Thats good to hear. Im curious, ive witnessed some people talk to you before the book came out about having read it. I would love for you to talk a little bit about the response, i feel like there is a twotier response, you are getting some very intense responses from people with very personal connections to camp state but also youve gotten intense responses to people who really had no idea about camp state and could you talk about some of the things people have shared with you. Let me back up just a bit with that to say that ive always known about camp state because i was 17, i was 16 it was three days before my 17th birthday when the National Guard open fire. I lived in Charleston South Carolina and my dad was stationed at the air force base and i didnt see him for two years because i saw him he was in and out but he was flying, the protests were growing from 68 to 70 one we lived there and then that day may 4, 1970 the National Guard called the campus that week and open fire it was all we could talk about at school, it was we were almost the age of these kids who had been killed, they were teenagers pretty much, 219yearolds and 220yearolds it was so scary our friends were on the cusp of being drafted and going to the war in the entire country responded to this as one, we did that at the beginning of a pandemic, weve done it, we seen it happening after the murder of george floyd can we just saw this boom, the whole country did that and it was just in amazement and its 50 years has gone by and its kind of faded into some sort of background for younger people, especially. Just like i did with the 60s trilogy, i want young people especially to know that they are on the cusp of change and heres your American History, here is the myriad of drugs that fall into one of that stopped about people, places and dates, its about all the stuff that happens that makes a mosaic of what happens during that time so we are doing that now, we are living through this amazing time right now, its surreal but amazing. I come across people whove never heard about what happened at camp state and they are like, really . Is this nonfiction, is it fiction . Did you make this up . This actually really happen. Its almost shocking because its just part of my life all my life ever since it happened its been a part of my life. I always wanted to write about it but i always push it away because it was horrific. When i wrote anthem the last book of the 60s trilogy, i kept running into camp state i created a pinterest board kept putting things over there that i would find and saving stuff and i would say, but i will never write about it, its too awful. Eventually i think i called you or we had a conversation and i said, well, i guess theres just no way i cant write about camp state now because i talk about it in the schools, kids wouldnt know what it was they never heard of it. Even adults would say, camp state, something at camp state but it had gone away. Its so fundamental to where we are as a democracy, what happened there is so fundamental to our freedom and its so important to remember. Lets talk about the private acts conversation we had was how i rate this book . It was one of the best editorial conversations i think ive had with an author, in that we generally started the a agenuinely started the conversation having no idea what the conversation would be and basically came to i was a good answer. Can you talk about that . What you were debating, how you were debating and what led you to tell it this way . This is the fun part too. The writing is excruciating but the fun part is like dreaming, you dream about it, imagine it, and you have some despair, every one of us who writes anything has that moment you are like, i cant do it its too hard. I had a vast mountain of material an absolute mountain of material and it was just there, okay, this is it, next it actually was aanthem and the natural progression from anthem over to camp state, however, anthem is big. Every 60s trilogy because massive and has seven or eight scrapbooks and resource material and i have all the primary source material there was so much of it newspaper articles and opinion pieces, you name it there was so much support there was a place to go, kent state university. When you and i talked i mentioned all this i said i have no idea how to get into the story and i dont want it to be like the 60s trilogy because it stands by itself yet since a part of it theres a part at the end of anthem of the day of camp state come may 4 at camp state. I did that purposely because i was dreaming already of writing about it so when we talked i remember you might remember it differently or more but one of the things i remember is both of us talking about, how do you tell a story that has so many different opinions . Because what i did find in that amount of information was that the townspeople said you should have killed more of them, which was horrific and the National Guard said we dont want to be there and they said some said they were outside agitators, others were saying it was the students, the students were saying it was the guard off campus that was the most important thing in the administration couldnt agree on anything where you land . How do you tell the story . You and i had both read recently lincoln and the bardo by george aboth of us loved it and i started saying, in that book theres all these disembodied voices, these people who voices who are arguing, talking, agreeing everybody just having this Big Conversation throughout the whole book and all given American History at the same time you learned so much with these snippets of history yet they are coming to a conversation. We both stopped for a minute like, abyou are the one i think you came up with the idea of collective memory and he said, in the event in history a aany event in history is a collection of stories, a collection of all the people who were there, all the people who experienced it, all the people who went through whatever it was in that ring so true to me and thats what i think it began to gel, is that a remembrance . It was. And its rarity you can boil things down to two words but it was that phrase collective memory, the minute we hit that i was like, okay, this is where its going to go. I still didnt know whether you going to use a first person plural, the chorus idea or whether it was going to be distinctive voices and whether youre going to give the names or whether it was going to be a athere were a lot of coefficients i did not understand when we left. Me neither. [laughter] what i did know was that it was going to be sort of the camera room above watching and what you ended up feeling, its really the camera shifting from one person to the next. You do get the total from the sum of the parts. Another point to make about that conversation was that lincoln and the bardo eveready had a name, every character was named but i also mentioned the book you had written two boys kissing i love that book so much because i remember you reading that out loud to me im getting so teary, i think we were at. [inaudible] the decatur book festival thinking, theres greek chorus, thats it. In a way its accommodation of those sorts of things because no one is name, no character is named andy camp state but you know who they are and you know who they are by the placement on the page, the side or that side you know because of the a aand you know because of the type size and not the design, however, i did two different typefaces with every voice. You should be able to say, thats who this is and this is a student, this is a National Guard soldier, this is a county, this is another student, this is one of the black United States, you should be able to know who everybody is pretty quickly, i dont think too many people have been confused about that. I just trusted the reader to come with me and where is the book . I could show you that this is a conversation the conversation goes side to side to side eveready talking back and forth in that conversation then we eulogize the events and we also dont spare any detail and tell you how they die. With those analogy at the end asking young people to get involved, insert your name here. It all just came together when it came together it came a in the initial conversation i would love to talk a little bit about the choice telling it from the point of view of the people who died or were hurt was actually never on the table. Know. Can you talk about that decision. I tried that and it was obvious before i even got a sentence out and typed a sentence it just wasnt right, i cant talk in their voice, so many are still living, there were people who acall themselves victims and they were are they were there they may not have been shot but they were very much in their. They are still there and one of the wounded has died i think, and the others are still there in the four who died from their memory is sacred and its not me to put my voice into their story. I wasnt there. What i can do is i can take all the research i did, which was three trips to camp state and sifting through the archives and going to the mountains of letters and photographs and articles and information all about may 4 all the days i sat there and 40 cop ab photocopied everything. Watching every year there is an observance on may 3 and may 4, a vigil on the night of may 3 and may 4 there is a remembrance and going to that was very powerful. They held onto the very last minute before they canceled, it was sad but the virtual celebration was really great too, we all participated. It informed the storytelling. Since you did go into it with obviously you knew what had happened and the outline of the story, im curious what surprised you the most when youre doing your research. Was there a part that either was a fact or something that you hadnt understood or didnt know or just something that really didnt hit you as hard as when it was in the abstract but then when it was in front of you you really thought, much more. Heres a couple things, first of all, i didnt understand the conflict was for days because when i heard about it as a 16yearold kid it was so shocking in that moment. Thats what i talk about when we work with young people and helping them tell their own stories about the context a story gets told in. I didnt really understand what it was about so i had to do my research about nixon wanting to order the invasion of aband telling the American Public on april 30 and on the bars came may 2 and escalated from there, that first of all was a surprise, but there are two pieces of information in my research that just slayed me and one was a letter to the ellensburg that was more than one after the event that said, these kids have destroyed our time, you shouldve killed more of them. I remember standing up from that archive room in the library and was at the other end of the room and saw me stand up and she said, are you okay . I said, no and then to understand the National Guard a lot of them were 19, they were students at kent state, they were trying to avoid the draft, they did not want to be there. They were scared. I didnt understand that. I also didnt understand of the black united students player, there was an Organization Called bus, black united students, they were told to stay away from the campus on may 4 because their refrain was, you see an officer or soldier standing there with the gun and you dont get loaded . That white kids didnt believe the guns were loaded, they didnt think they had bullets. Those things were shocking to me. I didnt understand it. Writing always helps me to understand a story to understand myself and frame of the story and understand that way, more of an understanding so i can go on it changes me to write something and certainly this book did. At this point i do see we are at the 7 30 p. M. Mark so i will encourage people to ask questions, i will not ask all of the questions tonight, these put questions in the q and a come i will dip in there and we will ask questions. I dont know but have asked you this, which of the voices was the hardest to write . Thats an interesting question i think they were all hard, they all came together in this took half a need ab mostly separating them out because it was like, stop, stop, so i could write this down because it came very quickly when it finally came but it was so many years ahead we were working on it before something opened up, that kind of my process but i never trusted the next time and the next time. Separating out those voices and giving those students three voices two white students, one black student, letting them argue. [inaudible] a student at kent state, he would not give his name i think sandy helen knows who it is, she put together the program at kent state and i dont need to know that was amazing and that made it really hard to write also the black united students dont have as much what i had to do with the black united students had to do with the long arc of government overreach. Particularly for black americans and marginalized people in the country and Going Forward and looking at whats happening today. Back to me was very hard to do because i didnt want to be out of that time period and that voice but i wanted very much to draw that line to show kent state as part of a continuum. I wanted that voice to be able to get the overview as well, very angry, but im very angry too so thats whats been hard. [laughter] to write the angry voice was not hard. [laughter] one of the questions, i think you touched on this, did you come up with the voices separately . Did you tinker around with them individually or did you basically establish them in relationship to one another . One of the things i like to do most in writing fiction is characterization and i said, dialogue is your power tool for characterization because it does three wonderful things, it characterizes, provides information and moves your story forward. Those three things always trying to make sure happen when i create characters and with this particular conversation because i had the days of so many, may 1, may 2, may 3, may 4, i knew what basically happened, i let them all go and i was basically you have to go back and revise and fix it so i had a massive stuff to work with, you are working with it too the conversation i allowed them to have, which i practiced at doing now, conversations with voices, i love intertable conversations. Gives you so much characterization so i let them add it. Another question, which i never wouldve asked you if the book had just come out a week ago because that wouldnt have been fair but its been out enough tiffany asked a great question, which is about the choice we get to may 4 and all the fonts all the way you decided to shift the narrative, from all the columns in different fonts to a different way. Can you talk a little bit about the decision theres a lot thats unknown a i wanted that to be part of the narrative, of course theres this whole, youll find theres this whole helicopter thing, so many people thought it was saturday night and it was on sunday night when i researched, i let them think it was saturday night and argue it out, that kind of thing. When we got, doug was saying he only heard the audiobook, thats true, you dont see that in the audiobook, the audiobook is stunning. On may 4 the backandforth drops away and you just have lots of litigated pros down the middle of book, thats because the pace picks up, i deliberately made the choice to get those voices off the page because they are now going to become a i want you living in it, i want you as the reader to be in that come i want you to be there on may 4 and i want you to be looking at this person saying this, that person saying that. Crowd is shouting, the crowd is making all kinds of accusations. The National Guard is, people are yelling and screaming with fire, theres a call to fire, pop pop pop, people are following you you are trying to help them, people are yelling, the chaos, i wanted to create the chaos on may 4 because honestly, if you look at the back and forth, they have the conversation going and they are angry with each other most of the time, however, when you get to may 4 its like this, its just everywhere. I think you and i really struggled in that section more than any other just trying to make sure we had a different type base, but it was known these were not the same people talking in this area. We played with type base pretty crazy and that section. [laughter] a fantastic job responding to our questions. It looks totally different and yet it breaks the fourth wall at some point too. You mentioned the audience, a number of the questions are about doing staged readings and have you thought about performing it . When i wrote it, that was on my mind but as i finished it and looked at it i understood thats what we had. We have something that can be read as a solo but, it can be read as a classroom book and can be read as all school or all Community Read but also lends itself to readers theater, lends itself to a classroom where you have those different, six voices that are, six kids in a classroom, six students who can read that in the first section and six more, may 2 or could even be a play, it could be staged. I didnt write it with that in mind, i just wanted a way to have you here the voices, have you be in it. To have you understand history, its so much more than just what he said or what she said. Nobody ever agrees, look at whats happening now. Nobody ever agrees on whats happening in history. I see christina, yes, definitely, we need to get the audiobook. Christina is in the audiobook. Shes one of the voices. Paul gagnon he tells me shes one of the most nice person youd ever want to hear from. Here she is sounding like a [laughter] the experience, we werent thinking about the audio and how it would be this radio play but the people of scholastic audio were extraordinarily committed to making it real and luckily for us it was before the pandemic hit so it can be a very intense experience. Could you talk a little bit about how it was adapted . I would love for paul and lori to be here to tell you about it. They were here that day. Lori came home and sent me pictures from that day, so did paul. Then i got to hear snippets of it and i was so knocked over, i cried. They had a full cast of every character its own actor and i have pictures, they were around one big table with the microphones and laptops and reading through and acting out those parts. Paul had that vision, paul gedney said, this is what we are going to do and they made it happen, they all came together and did this and i understand they did it in one day and its magnificent. Talk about putting you right there in that moment. Its that conversation in that argument and that coming to realizations and being heard. Thats another reason i wanted to write kent state as we argue so much right now, we scream and argue and dont listen to one another. I write a lot about listening. People think theres a listening rock because you can go listen, i feel like we dont listen. These characters in the end do come to be able to at least listen, they dont have to agree but they can listen, its really hard to hate someone when you know their story. Being able to get every person story out there is really vital. There are a number of people asking about a stage version or permissions, i believe you hold the dramatic right see your agent would be the right person to contact. Somebody asked if the session being recorded . It is. If you are a member of the quail ridge books, secret society, i forget what she said it was called. The red ribbon club, whatever it may be, one of the things you can do is see all the Virtual Events, which is a nice segue for me to remind you that we are, even though we are not physically in a bookstore, we are at a bookstore event. Please support quail ridge books, they have audio as well as the book, even if you have the book and have read the book i strongly encourage you to get the audio, it is a different experience and, vice versa, if you only experience the audio, what w did on the page will astonish you as well. They are different experiences totally, each complements the other and its hard to find an audiobook that does that, i listen to more books than i read these days because of my life but this i would need both. Thank you christina and all of you out there doing your work with this audiobook, its an amazement, i moderate. Chad asked, you guys can see how bad my vision is, why is david getting so close . [laughter] rather than paraphrase, the question having studied this in the public response to it like they should have killed more kids, do you see differences in the responses to the current demonstration . Has only the technology changed . Oh, boy, its really hard to put a book like this out into the world and not be political but especially at this time that we are living in. You do too, first we see the same thing my country right or wrong is one thing but being able to say i dont care about you, i only care about me and i want to do what i want, my freedom is more important than anyone elses i also dont like the phrase we are all in this together, we are all in this in such different ways. Such different circumstances. Its not fair to say we are all in this together but we are all one country, it would be really nice to think we are able to put each other abwhat is it the common good . The government of the people, for the people, by the people and the people should have a say in the people should be able to listen to one another and make change based on what is good for the people. Which was how we felt in 1970 as well. I think after the roger stone thing we saw the revival of it, you know you are in trouble when youre nostalgic for Richard Nixon. [laughter] of dragon seems like a saint in comparison. [laughter] its a sad commentary. Its important not to say that if you voted for Richard Nixon, if youre republican you are wrong, thats not right. Im not trying to say that with kent state at all and im not trying to say that now about whats happening now. Im just trying to say, this is something i work on because i need to understand how to say it in ways that are true to who i am and also clear. Writing this book for young people and every book i write for them is because i want them to think critically, i want them to register to vote, i want them to have reasons behind the way they feel and think and the ways the things they believe in why, not because someone told you to believe that way but because you have books about it and youve investigated it and you are curious and you ask questions and you want to know its important to just remember that as americans in a way as americans we are all in this together in the same country but we all have a different experience to bring. I will say that we have time for a couple more questions, if anybody else has questions there are still some that i have not gotten to but we could use another one or two if need be. One question was about, what is the youngest audience you presented this book to . I will add to that the question of, this is the first explicitly why a book youve written and did it feel different to know that you werent writing for to be concerned about what a 10yearold or 11yearold might be able to process but instead to be able to put it on the level of a 14yearold or 15yearold . This is where i really dependent on you because you write why a and i knew that each book of the 60s trilogy countdown character is 11 for any of the 11 and sonny is 12 and in anthem molly is 14 and her cousin abeach of the books deal with progressively older material. Countdown fourth grade and fifth grade but i wouldnt give them anthem and that material is a little bit older but when i got to catch state it was a whole new ballgame. When we came to the National Guard it was just there and put it there, i said is this im reading so much middle grade im reading so much picture books, they were assuring me this is okay but for part of me i wanted them out of there because i wanted it available from middle grade readers but i got the book and the entry into why a was exciting and also brought with how do i do this but in the end it was just just write your story, trust your editor, work together, it will be fine. And it did. Was at eight star reviews the book . I didnt know they were that many. Everybody who i know in the book that says that too, when the day ever have more than five . Thats okay. [laughter] speaking of working together, deborah hopkinson, you and i are very familiar with asks of course asks the obvious question of whats next. So you and i both know whats next so i will tell, i just started talking about this and its been years since ive submitted the book. This is pushing it away before all this stuff is happening. I wrote a proposal and i asked to write a book i said i really like to write a book about the lost cause of the confederacy and the rise of white the primacy and everyone said, what is the lost cause. [laughter], everyone knows what it is today because what we are going through right now politically and socially and culturally in the country the lost cause of the confederacy that says the northern aggression was a war for states southern independence and was over states rights it wasnt over slavery and on and on it goes. Textbooks for change to reflect the lost cause, our men were noble and fought for the right thing, i believe it put us where we are today. This lost cause of the confederacy and i think the working title for the book is charlottesville, though i dont know whats going to happen with it, i just have a mass, like with kent state, massive amounts of material. The landscape is shifting and im trying to keep up with it. [laughter] so thats what im working on, thank you deborah. [laughter] just as i thought a lot about county state and certainly with this book too. I look at as a companion to catch state i decided its going to be a companion and i think i mentioned that in our proposal but i think it will be an interesting audiobook as well, i dont know if it will be exactly in that format because it doesnt want to be but it will be something that is kind of a conversation, we will see, its a lot of material, trying to put together. We will talk. [laughter] we are closing in on our closing moments, i will ask my customary closing question and, again, with the encouragement that, quail ridge books is right here, we just in case you missed it we both really love lincoln on the bardo by george saunders, you absolutely should if you have not read it, how convenient that quail ridge books is right here for you to order it from. I always like to end by asking some book recommendations, is there anything you read lately that you loved or an old favorite you revisited or been thinking about lately . What would you recommend our audience go out and read . Im getting ready to listen to the third of the wolf all books. The mirror and the light Hilary Mantell and i have the audiobook and im anxious to listen to that. Ive gone back to old audiobooks favorites, listen to kp camilla walking the park, i love it. I listened to francis mays, not under the tuscan, under magnolia, the memoir of growing up in the south in the 40s and 50s, its so good. The lorentz by james dickey is another one i absolutely fell in love with. Conrad trilogy, the fields, but all of those have been important to me lately. I think im going to be shopping at quail ridge books right after this. It is so wonderful to see you and so wonderful to get to talk about county state. Ever the want to thank quail ridge books for setting this up. I believe we are the first why a Virtual Event and we certainly as you heard will not be there last, which is really exciting. Thank you all for coming and for just being a part of this conversation. I hope you get to read or listen to the book really soon, it will definitely change the way you see this world. Thank you to all my friends for showing up and being here and to all of you who im just meeting for the first time, david, thanks for giving the time to do this especially to quail ridge books, one of the most fun things i did when i came there was every single book was to have you hand to sell me so ive already done that to the pandemic i think its time again. [laughter] thank you all so much. And now, more television for serious readers. Mark and i are going to chat for 20 or 25 minutes or so but then we would love to take questions from you all in the audience. If you have a lot