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• How do you pronounce your last name?
  • “Buh-rill-ee”.
• Where were you born?
  • Orlando, Fla., my mother’s hometown. My dad was in the U.S. Navy and his ship was on a deployment in Europe, so my mom was staying with her parents as she awaited my birth. Though my middle name is Sue, I have always been called Suzy, with the “z” denoting that my dad was in France when I was born. The French version of my name is Suzette – with a “z.”
• Where do you work now and what do you do?
  • I am a writer and a teacher. I teach English and Journalism at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh. Although I have given it up in Spring 2010, for the past 10 years, one of my Spring classes was Eng. 110 – Freshman Composition -- for inmates at the N.C. Correctional Institution, commonly referred to as “women’s prison.”
• What are your writing credentials, degrees, etc.?
  • I have a journalism degree from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MEd from NC State University. Yes, I guess am a Tar-Packer, as NC State offered the program I wanted and was closer to my home in Cary when I was ready to pursue a master’s degree.
• When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
  • My fifth grade English teacher, Julie Carlson McAlpine, encouraged me after reading my compositions. In high school, I worked on the yearbook one year, then I wrote a column about happenings at the high school for our local weekly newspaper, and wrote for and was co-editor of the high school newspaper my senior year. In junior college, I was assistant editor of the college newspaper, and while at Carolina, I was assistant features editor for The Daily Tar Heel. Following graduation, I began my reporting career. There is reporting in my blood, however. Both my parents were journalism majors at Carolina, working at the DTH and at newspapers and in public information following graduation. Readers of Undaunted Heart will learn that my great-grandfather was a newspaper managing editor and my great-great grandfather a reporter and editor.
• What prompted you to begin a career in writing?
  • It is what I always knew I would do. I can’t remember a time when I was NOT going to write.
• When did you write your first book and how old were you?
  • Oh gosh, there’s that age question, and I’ve told myself for 35 years that I look at the world through the eyes of a 22-year-old college co-ed! I wrote my first book over a period of 17 years, from when I first discovered the letters that Ella Swain Atkins had written to her parents after she married a Yankee general and moved away from home until I actually sat down to write a manuscript in summer 2007.
• How did you come up with the concept for your novel Undaunted Heart?
  • The letters found that told of Ella’s early years of marriage were the prompting I needed to tell her story. Before then, all I had ever known was that she married a Yankee general, the neighbors were angry and closed their shutters as her wedding carriage passed by, the UNC students rang the bells in South Building and hung her father and her new husband in effigy, and her mother refused to sit at the dinner table with a Yankee, so he carried his mother-in-law’s dinner tray up to her in her bedroom, then sat with her while she ate. In some ways, it’s a lot of information and would have made a great work of fiction, which a professor once told me to decide: either make it fiction or non-fiction, but don’t combine the two. I think he wanted me to write their story as fiction, but the journalist in me wouldn’t allow that to happen!
• What message do you want to convey in your novel Undaunted Heart?
  • I’d like readers to see that despite Ella and Genl marrying at a time when Southerners were bitter about the war being lost, love could and did overcome obstacles, though it couldn’t always make life the “fairyland” Ella notes in one of the letters during her first few months of marriage. I also hope my research shows that the cause of UNC’s closing in 1870 was NOT lack of funds because the president’s daughter married a Yankee general and no one wanted to send their boys there, but lack of funds because of state budget problems related to Reconstruction.
• Have you published other books?
  • No, this is my first. I am co-editing the Papers of Richard Caswell. He was North Carolina’s first governor after independence was declared from England. He is my 5th great-grandfather and my co-editor is a Caswell cousin!
• Have you published essays, short stories, or poetry?
  • I’ve published essays and tried my hand at a few short stories. Some are posted on my blog: www.suzybarile.blogspot.com.
• Where have you published your other works?
  • As a journalist, my work has appeared in newspapers I worked for, such as The Messenger in Madison, NC, The Daily Dispatch in Henderson, NC, the News-Post in Frederick, Md., Triangle Business Journal in Raleigh, the Independent in Durham, and the Raleigh Times and News and Observer in Raleigh. The Raleigh Times was the capital’s afternoon paper, but it ceased publication in the late 1980s. My work also has appeared in several books, including Emyl Jenkins’ The Book of American Traditions and From Storebought to Homemade, in William S. Powell’s The Encyclopedia of North Carolina, and in a couple of anthologies, as well as magazines such as Carolina Business and in newsletters for a number of non-profit agencies and city and state government. Often my work has been republished and I’m always amazed at the places I find it, like the archives of NC State’s Department of Computer Science for an article I wrote for TBJ about the College of Engineering’s dean.
• Have you ever won any awards for your writing?
  • Yes, I’ve won awards from the N.C. Press Association, the N.C. Press Club, the National Federation of Press Women (NFPW), the N.C. Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), and the N.C. Society of Historians, and other similar professional organizations.
• You have graciously agreed to be the judge of the Wilson Community College 2nd Annual Literary Magazine Contest. Have you even been a judge for writing contests? If so, where?
  • Oh yes. Over the years, I’ve judged the work of professional writers from states such as South Dakota and Virginia, as well as that of high school journalists. I’ve been director of the N.C. Press Club’s High School Communications Contest for several years and had the opportunity to read the work of young people who have gone on to bigger and better. One outstanding young high school journalist whose work I had the pleasure to read is now the editor of The Daily Tar Heel at Carolina.
• What do you look for in submissions for writing contests?
  • Like Edgar Allan Poe noted in “The Philosophy of Composition,” a good work needs to have an inviting lead or first paragraph. It needs to let the reader know what to look forward to and take that reader into the piece. In newspaper articles, the grammar and punctuation have to be correct. I tell my students that they can have fragments and run-on sentences when they are rich and famous writers, but not before!
• What do you think makes a good story?
  • A good story must grab the reader’s attention in the beginning, offer a plot that will make the reader turn page after page, and allow the reader “in” somehow, to feel a connection of some sort. Good examples are Reynolds Price’s novels. He spent his formative years in Warren County, and I covered Warren County for the Henderson Daily Dispatch, so when I first read his work, I could connect with the setting because I was familiar with it. But a reader must also feel satisfied upon reaching the end of a story – not left wondering “what if?” Although Nathaniel Hawthorne leaves the decision of whether his protagonist went into the woods or was dreaming in “Young Goodman Brown,” the reader knows the outcome.
• What advice would you give to writers interested in submitting their work to writing contests?
  • A number of years ago I attended a writers’ workshop with Zelda Lockhart, a great North Carolina novelist. In the beginning, she said, she entered every writing contest she could, carefully following the rules and even paying entry fees. Once she published her first novel, she decided to enter only contests where she did NOT have to pay a fee. She felt she had enough name recognition to compete in arenas with what she considered the better writers. She kept track of every contest she entered, placing a copy of the entry form and story she sent in a manila folder and filing the folders based on when winners were to be announced, so she could keep track of when she should hear back. She devoted a half-day every week to entering contests and keeping track of those entries. Although I have entered few contests other than ones sponsored by organizations of which I am a member, I think her tips are sound advice.
• Where do you get your information or ideas for your books?
  • The background for this book came from the family stories and Ella’s letters to her parents. The Caswell book is based on his papers while he was governor – correspondence, official documents, etc. However, when I write essays, the ideas often come from an experience I have had or from something happening that spurs me to react with words. For example, when Ted Kennedy died in August, I recalled my own mother’s death from the same type of brain tumor and wrote a piece that appeared in the News & Observer, and when Coretta Scott King died, I recalled a time I heard her speak and then met her, and how inspirational I found her. That one appeared in T he Cary News, as did a piece I wrote about attending President Obama’s inauguration in Washington, D.C.
• What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?
  • I knew only what was published in history books, so learning about the intimate details of their interactions with one another was exciting. Also, finding cousins I had never known was gratifying. I was able to tell the descendants of Ella’s brother Richard that their great-great aunt was not disowned by her family after she wed the Yankee general – that’s what they had been told in their family’s lore.
• How long does it take you to write a book?
  • Because I already had a speech that I had honed and added to over the years, when I began to turn Undaunted Heart into a manuscript, it didn’t take as long as it might have had I started from scratch. I spent six solid months of writing and research, plus several more months of intermittent writing and research, prior to sending it to the publisher. It was the third time I had approached that particular publishing house – but the first time I had a completed manuscript. While the publisher did not accept the manuscript, another publisher – Eno Publishers – was recommended, and that’s who I eventually had publish the book. My editor and I then embarked on the editing process, which took an additional nine months.
• What is your work schedule like when you're writing?
  • After undertaking this project, I understand why most teachers who also write do much of their writing in the summer, or teach one semester and take the other off! The nine-month editing process was like having two jobs. I taught fulltime both fall and spring semesters, creating lessons and teaching and grading papers while doing additional research and editing and proofreading. It was an exhausting time!
• What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
  • I don’t know if it’s a quirk, but I am a recursive writer, and I read my work aloud before sending it off to be published. I guess I’ve been writing for so long that if I make an error or have a typo, I am able to fix it immediately and not forget what I was writing, instead of waiting to make those changes in the editing process. When I think a piece is finished, I read it aloud, continuing to make changes until I am satisfied. Then I read it aloud to someone I trust, someone who will tell me if a phrase doesn’t sound right or that I need more clarity.
• What else do you like to do besides writing?
  • I’m involved with several professional organizations and a writing group. I also have a large extended family – six brothers and sisters, and 16 nieces and nephews, plus in-laws and new cousins I acquired as I finished researching the Swain family – so there are lots of opportunities to get together. As a UNC grad, I’m a huge Tar Heel fan, and one of my college roommates and my daughter and I have season football tickets; Saturdays in the fall are filled with day-long outings to Chapel Hill. For the past five years, my husband and I have been planning the renovation of his grandparent’s home in Iredell County, which we own, and that project is under way. We will move there in spring 2010. On top of all that, since August 2009, when the book came out, I have had readings and workshops, so the past year has been hectic!
• What does your family think of your writing?
  • Everyone is proud and all have been supportive. During the intense editing process, there were family events I sometimes had to leave early, but they always understood, and they have listened to me talk about my research for a very long time. All my siblings went through their possessions to see if they had papers or photos or books belonging to Ella and Genl, and I have been caretaker of those for the past few years. One of my sisters inherited Ella’s wedding ring, and she has graciously loaned it to me to wear to speaking engagements. They also learned a lot about their heritage from my research and that has been fun to share.
• Do you plan to write any more books?
  • Well, the Caswell book is in the research stage and will entail finding his documents, deciding which to include, writing explanatory notes for each, so that will keep me and my co-editor busy for awhile. I also want to create a supplement for family of all the information and photos that didn’t make it into Undaunted Heart. I don’t know beyond those two projects if I have another book – non-fiction or fiction – in me!
• How do books get published?
  • I can only speak to my experience, and it was as smooth as I think it could have been. After the publisher and I agreed to the terms of the contract – terms that I went through with a fine-toothed comb and asked advice about from others who had published books – the task of editing got under way. Because my editor wasn’t familiar with the story, she had lots of questions, and often I had to do more research to come up with the answers. She also looked at the story from a chronological and thematic approach, instead of the strictly chronological manner in which I had written it. I like to say she took my chapters, threw them up in the air like 52-card pick-up, and put them back together with the thematic focus. After all the writing was completed, the manuscript went to the book designer to actually have the words put on the pages and the covers and chapter breaks designed. The book then was read one more time by me for accuracy, as it also was being read by someone for grammar, punctuation, and clarity, another for historical accuracy, and another for continuity. It also went out to several people who had consented to write back cover blurbs. Once it arrived from the printer, review copies went out to dozens of people with hopes they would write nice things about it. I’m pleased that the bulk of the reviews have been positive.
• How difficult is it to get a book published for an emerging writer or an unknown writer?
  • I suppose that depends on whether someone is trying for a large publishing house or is content with a smaller one. There are thousands of presses around the United States, and each has a particular focus. So, if a writer wants only the top publishing houses – Algonquin, Simon and Schuster, Random House, Oxford, etc., – it will probably take an agent to help get it accepted. But with a smaller publisher, the author can handle the task. I would caution writers not to sign a contract until it has been reviewed thoroughly, and perhaps by a publishing contract attorney. I am pleased with the contract I signed, but we did dicker over some points before finally reaching agreement.
• What advice do you have for anyone who wants to become a published book writer?
  • Persevere. Had I given up the first two times the publisher I wanted to handle my book turned me down, I would have published it myself and not had as good a product. In the long run, what is on the bookstands is a much better story than what I originally wrote. The help of a good editor who can see beyond what I had decided was the best I could do was immeasurable.
• Do you ever travel and give readings and workshops?
  • Do you have any upcoming book readings, book signings, or speaking engagements? Oh yes. I will go just about anywhere to tell the story of Ella and Genl! It’s probably best for people interested in my reading schedule to check the publisher’s website – www.enopublishers.org – for the list of places where I will be. I plan to travel in June to Freeport, Illinois, where Ella and Genl lived, and hope to branch out to other adjacent states sometime in 2010. I think the life of the book is fairly long – the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War is in 2011 and the story is so timely that I should have a number of engagements throughout that timeframe.
• You are planning a book reading/book signing at Wilson Community College on March 18, 2010. What sage advice would you give our readers who may have an opportunity to do a book reading?
  • Choose the passages you want to read early and then practice! Think about the fact that some people may not be familiar with the story, so provide some context for what you will read. And always be prepared for the darnedest questions! My 10-year-old nephew attended a reading, and after hearing about the babies Ella gave birth to who died, he asked, “If everyone died, how can there be grandchildren?” I thought that was an intuitive question for such a young man. Clearly he was listening to what I was reading!
• How can our readers get a copy of your novel Undaunted Heart?
  • It is available at major bookstores and their websites, at amazon.com, and at www.enopublishers.org.
• Can our readers contact you? If so, what is your contact information?
  • I can be contacted through Wake Tech – vsbarile@waketech.edu.

Continue to part two of the interview with Suzy Barile