>> Marisa Bellack: Hello. I'm Marisa Bellack. I'm an editor at "The Washington Post," a charter sponsor of the Library of Congress National Book Festival. I'm pleased to introduce Ellen Hopkins, bestselling author of 14 young adult novels and four adult novels. Ellen fields a lot of questions about how to become a successful fiction writer but her path to success wasn't necessarily typical. Although she published her first poem in a newspaper at age 9, in 1964, she didn't start writing for a living until her mid 30s and she didn't publish her first novel until age 49, in 2004. Along the way, she ran a catering service, owned a video store, showed horses, freelanced for newspapers and magazines, and wrote 20 nonfiction books for children. You may have noticed that gritty novels about difficult subjects have become a thing in the world of young adult books. But they were relatively uncommon when Ellen got going and that's not what she set out to write. As you may well know, her first explosive novel, "Crank" was loosely based on her daughter's experience with crystal meth. Ellen chose to tell the story from a fictional daughter's perspective to better understand her real daughter's decisions and to examine the role she played as a mother. She began the novel in prose but switched to verse because she has said in interviews, "Poetry is so interior. It was the right way of getting into Kristina/Bree's skin. Since then, Ellen has written on topics ranging from abuse to suicide to AIDS to teen pregnancy. Her newest book "People Kill People," officially out Tuesday and we think there may be some copies here today, delves into school violence, white supremacy and other timely issues. I imagine she'll say more about that today. Before we dive into our discussion, I'm supposed to mention that the Library of Congress has been the Festival host since it began 18 years ago. I want to thank festival Co-Chairman David Rubenstein and the many sponsors who made this event possible. You can support the festival with a donation. There's information in your program. Please note, too, that there will be time for questions after Ellen's remarks and anyone who asks a question will be filmed for the Library's archives. And for those who are interested, Ellen is scheduled for a book signing session from 4:00 to 5:00 this afternoon. Now please help me welcome Ellen Hopkins. [ Applause ] >> Ellen Hopkins: And please help me thank the not fake news. [ Applause ] Okay, how many of you guys follow me online? Really? You guys are scared of me, aren't you? I don't blame you because I am a political beast. So I first of all before I talk about me or my books, I really want to tell you how grateful I am to be in DC today. This, you know, this place, like I live in Nevada. I live in Northern Nevada, not Las Vegas, okay. There's a whole different -- And yes, it snows in Nevada. So when you're back there, you know, we tend to look at DC as like this monstrosity. It's so, at least now, I mean our political space is so contentious and it's like and -- I think we need to really, really find ways to come back together as much as we can. I hope our books will start to do that again. But I was in the hotel room this morning when Mr. McCain's funeral was on and I couldn't tear myself away from it, you know. It was like to watch people from both sides of the aisle be able to come into this space and to honor a man who was able to do that. For me, I really feel honored to be here today to have shared in that space somehow. I don't know, I know that's kind of weird and kind of a weird thing to talk about but I really wanted to say that. And so I do write -- I write books. You know, there's this new article in "The Wall Street Journal," you guys seen it, The darkness of YA. Well, you know, being a teen is like not the easiest thing to be. You know, I mean seriously. My childhood, my teenage years, they weren't that easy but teens today, the things they're experiencing are harder. I didn't worry about guns coming into my school. That was not a concern at all, you know. Now we're teaching elementary kids how to zigzag down the hallways, you know, and it's like, okay, we need to change things. And I think books are a way to be able to bring people to open eyes to problems that our kids are experiencing every single day. So I hope the parents out there will read my books with their young people and open up lines of dialogue and discussion because that's how we are going to change things and make things better for our kids. And don't be afraid of books. Books are a safe, safe space to explore addiction, to explore abuse, to explore gun violence, which is what I'm here with, "People Kill People," brand new book. I wanted to explore gun violence because it's something that our kids are experiencing every day, a fear of this in their lives. And so we need to figure out why this is happening, who it's happening to and who the perpetrators are so that we can hopefully turn this around. I'm going to read a little bit for you and I'm going to read my author note because I want you to know why I chose to do this. This is the author's note. I grew up with guns. My dad who was both a hunter and an avid collector taught me to respect firearms. I am, in fact, an excellent shot and at another time in my life enjoyed target shooting. I could even do black powder rifles. Have you ever tried those? They're like weird. Today, however, I don't own a gun and as an animal lover would only hunt if it was that or go hungry. I respect the Second Amendment but we must address the gun violence problem in the United States. Statistics show a steep rise in gun-related deaths and injuries since 2014. In 2017, as of November 6th, more than 13,000 people had died as a result of non-suicide gun violence with an average 93 Americans killed by guns every day. The yearend total would be around 18,000 non-suicide gun deaths, up 4000 from 2016. Suicides generally account for 62% of gun-related deaths, which would put the total figure at more than 47,000. Mass shootings, three or more deaths per incident, also show a precipitous upward trend. Young people are often involved both as victims and perpetrators. While the outcome of stricter gun control continues to be debated, I felt it was important to try and understand why someone might be compelled to pull the trigger. This is what authors do. We ask why. Why are people prone to violence? Why do people seek revenge? Why do people hate or fear or despair? Why do people kill people? If we can understand the whys, perhaps we can begin to solve the problem. The characters you'll meet in these pages have powerful life situations driving them in negative directions, any one of them in a precise moment in time might decide to pick up the gun and fire it. If they seem familiar, it's because they are, at least in some small way, inspired by stories that pop up in news feeds every day. They are fictional but real. My editor made me put a disclaimer in there. Views do reflect my own. I would hope that you would know that. So on my dad, my dad was an amazing man. He was the hardest working person I ever met and he was a weekend alcoholic. By that I mean he never touched a drop from church Sunday until Friday night. Friday night until church Sunday, he was wiped out. So he was a responsible gun owner. He kept his guns locked up. I only saw them come out on a few occasions when he went hunting or on two occasions when he was drunk. He put a loaded pistol to my mom's head. He didn't pull the trigger. She was able to talk him down but that was something I witnessed as a child. So all it takes is the wrong time, you know, the wrong second for something to go all wrong. I'm going to read a little bit for you. So all 13 of my YA before this one were written in verse and they were all first person. Every book I've written up until this one I wrote first person. This book, the narrator is omniscient and the narrator is the voice of violence as seducer. The six characters you'll meet in the book are all written in second person. So I invite you onto the page, you, to become those six characters. I was going to do the whole thing omniscient and then I kept wanting to address the reader. I kept wanting to talk to you as these characters. And so I said -- First, I had to rewrite the first 10,000 words in second person but I wanted to address you and to invite you to become these people so you could into their heads and into their spaces and become these characters, which I want it to be an uncomfortable experience for you. So I don't think you're going to be comfortable reading this book and that's not what it's here for. But we'll start in the voice of violence. You, yeah you, come here, please. I need to ask you something. Have you ever felt the desire to hurt someone, I mean pummel them, wound them, watch them bleed? Did you? Would you? Could you? If I were the gambling type, I'd put my money on yes. See, there's this thing inside every one of you, the collective human call toward violence. All it takes is one singular moment to encourage it into play and the lamb transforms, becomes the lion. Take it one step further. Have you ever thought about killing someone, I mean, poisoning them, bludgeoning them, grabbing a well-honed knife and carving them to pieces? Chances are you haven't, wouldn't, couldn't follow through, contemplate. What's required to become the catalyst for death? A moral compass sprung and spinning haywire, antifreeze flowing through your veins, or perhaps nothing more than circumstance? In that instant when the lamb unleashes its roar, would you heed the call or instead defer to the quivering voice of reason? Like dawn and dusk, existence and demise are inextricably linked as per the grand scheme, either drafted by some all-powerful architect or randomly designed. Perhaps this is the true knowledge of Eden, not the mechanics of procreation but the promise that once time on Earth is nothing more than a journey toward inevitable departure. Surely the ancient ones who bore witness to birth in the wilds and death from claw or club or predation by creatures too small for the eye to identify, we're aware of nature's plot. As their spines uncurled and they drew upright to run discovered the value of flint, the power of spear and arrow, the lust for blood billowed like a black-bellied cloud. Oh, to wield a weapon mercilessly extinguish a beating heart. The millennia crept forward, dawn to dusk to dawn to dusk and humankind shed its fur, fashioned clothes, deserted its caves in favor of villages, cities. But even as people learned to plant, harness sunlight and rain to nurture garden fields, their passion for the hunt remained. They killed in the name of survival, protection, vengeance. They killed in response to lust, jealousy, despair. They killed for the thrill, the simple pleasure of witnessing bloodshed. Think for one delicious moment how they would've watched in wide-eyed reverence the advent of gunpowder marvel at the fire [inaudible]-, its relentless evolution from crude spear-driven flame thrower into a fierce weapon, able to discharge 1000 flesh-ripping metal projectiles in 60 lethal seconds. Ponder their amazement at a machine with the ability to level entire villages, infant to ancient in mere minutes. They would've fallen on their knees and lifted their arms in worship. Now you understand the talent of a firearm but perhaps you're unaware of the force to feeling its seductiveness. You know how sometimes you hear a whisper fall over your shoulder but then you turn to search for the source, find nothing but landscape behind you? So then you tell yourself it was just a case of hyperactive imagination, convince yourself that sentiments don't materialize out of thin air but the truth, at least as I like to tell it, is that the voices who speak to you from inside your head have taken up permanent residence there. Some shout warning prodding you to take cover, flee or brandish a weapon. Others murmur haunting you with poetry, like mine. So the voice of violence is in verse. The six characters are in prose. I'm trying to grow my readers up. So if you guys go back to my first books, you know -- How many of you guys started with me with like "Crank" or "Burned" back then? So you guys know as I've moved along, like those earlier books, there's more white space on the page, right. And I've kind of -- And there's less stylistic verse on the page and that's because I'm wanting to grow my readers up. So the early books were like very simple to read, I think, although the verse for very linear readers, like for older readers, it's hard to get to the verse as storytelling because we're taught to read like this. Young people, their brains pick up knowledge in a different way now because of computers and the way computers come on and the way they use their phones and stuff. So their brains are actually hardwired a little differently. They're actually a little more open to the idea of kind of alternative formatting visual interest on the page. So it's been a pleasure for me to be able to bring nonreaders and reluctant readers to books through that kind of more visual interest. But then I also want them to become readers. So if you go all the way through, the verse becomes denser and then you're going to start to get some prose from me. Like the book I'm writing now, it's almost all prose. Yes, I am writing a new book. The 2019 book, which, okay, let's talk about that just for a minute. So this book is a change for me and the book I'm writing now, which the name might change. Right now it's called "Sanctuary Highway." It's set in near future, near future as in like day after tomorrow, if this country keeps moving in the direction it's trying to move in. So it's a very political beast underneath it but it's about a group of kids who end up together having to try to escape the country into Canada, basically. And I hope my kids never have to do that and I hope your kids never have to do that and I hope we don't ever have to try to save our kids from being rounded up and locked up. So that's what I'm doing now. What else is going on in my life? Well, let's see. So if you follow me at all, you guys have been around with Kristina. You know that she's got -- The real Kristina is my daughter Krystal [assumed spelling]. She now has had seven children. Only one lives with her. So we adopted the first. So Hunter, the baby in the back of "Crank," he's now 21 and he's the least ambitious kid you have ever met in your life. I'm like, "Are you ever going to have a real job?" He's like, "I'm thinking about living in my car." I'm like, "Really? Not in my driveway." Yeah, okay, have fun with that. No, he's actually, he's a musician, so he's going on the circuit, the festival circuit. I'm like, yeah, okay, good. Then there are two others. So the two -- So if you read "Fallout," right, that book was from his point of view, Hunter, right. And then two other girls, they live with their paternal aunts, one in Phoenix, one in way Southern California. Five years ago, my daughter had a major relapse, like where I had to go down and pull her kids out of a very bad, bad, bad, ugly situation. So we took guardianship of the kids. They were then three, four, and nine. We still have them and they are now eight, nine, and 14. One just started high school. Yes! I was hoping to have another kid in high school! At least it keeps me close to my readers, right. So there's that and then she had a baby in jail after I took the kids and so he's with her now. She's actually doing pretty well now. She's had a job for a while. He's three. So she's had the same job for a couple years and she's, as far as I know, doing pretty well. But she also married the abuser that was abusing these children and so they will not go back to her. They don't want to go back to her but -- So that's kind of where she is but that also kind of changed my life. You know, it's like, I was like going full bore and then it was like, put the brakes on. Let's stay for a while and take care of kids, get behind on writing projects, piss off my publisher. What else happened with that? So that slowed me down a little bit but now I'm kind of like back into like this whole kind of needing to move forward and to keep going until I write some cool books. I'm not supposed to talk about it but there might be a movie coming. I haven't signed the contracts yet, so I'm not actually supposed to share that. It's "Crank." [ Applause ] And for those of you who are worried about it, I get total script approval. I get cast approval. I get to like make sure that movie is what it needs to be. So I'm excited about that. That's coming up. And that's moving into kind of a new space, too. So that's kind of fun. So I'm trying to grow as a writer. I'm trying to grow my readers. And I'm trying to be what you guys, give you guys new things, give you guys what you want from me but also be true to myself. So yeah. How close are we here? Time wise? Fifteen minutes to go but including Q&A? Okay. So let's do some Q&A. How about that? It's really hard to see. Come on, you guys have questions. I know you do. Come on. You can ask me anything. [ Inaudible Comment ] Okay. Who's first? I can't see. These lights are like really bright in my eyes. So you guys, let's go over here because I saw you. >> Okay. So in my local library, I noticed that a few years ago that they didn't have your book "Tricks." So I contacted them about it because it's odd. They had all of your other books. And it appears that it's being challenged. How do I counteract that? >> Ellen Hopkins: Well, you can, okay, so -- I don't doubt that book's being challenged. That book -- I mean, as far as my books go, as far as content goes, that one goes as far, if you don't know what "Tricks" is, it deals and the sequel "Traffick," they deal with domestic minor sex trafficking, so teen prostitution. You could start a petition. I can give you letters-- Like if you email me, I can send you letters from readers about why that book is important to them, what it meant to them, how it helped them through. And for me, I wanted to explore teen prostitution because I live in Reno and there was an FBI bust there, a big raid. They came in and they took 23 kids, all under the age of 12, out. And so domestic minor sex trafficking, the average age, the average age of a young person trafficked in is 12 years old. That's the average age. So it's important that we understand possible victims, like shopping mall kids who like could be victimized easily, what perpetrators look like. I just had an article come out in "VOYA Magazine" and the big thing is libraries are now one of the places that the traffickers target because they look for vulnerable kids and a lot of vulnerable kids end up in libraries. So that might be a way of looking at it, of approaching them as well. In fact, if you -- I can send you that article and it might be interesting for your librarian to look at it and read it because "VOYA" is very much involved with trying to change that as part of that. >> Great. Thank you. >> Ellen Hopkins: But that content, it's difficult content for sure. Also, "Traffick" which is so -- "Tricks" is about five kids -- >> They don't have that either. >> Ellen Hopkins: "Tricks" is about five kids from all different parts of the country who end up on the streets of Las Vegas turning tricks, right. "Traffick" is about what happens to them after they're pulled out. Can they go back. Can they find love? Will their parents take them back? So it's about -- One's about victimization and the other is about survivorship. And so there is a way out and there is hope. And I worked with a lot of survivors helping them write their own stories, draw pictures if they couldn't write, and so they shared a lot of really interesting stories, many of which are reflected in that book, in "Traffick." >> Okay, great. Thank you so much. >> Ellen Hopkins: Okay, over there. >> Okay, so what advice would you give someone who people who are close to them are starting to go down that same path as "Crank?" >> Ellen Hopkins: So what's really, really hard is to watch a friend go that way or a relative. For those people, they have to know that you care about them a lot but that you can't enable that. And it's really, really important that you don't enable that. So like there are family -- You can't give them money because the money will go there, you know. Even if they say it's going to rent or whatever, to let them know that give them a copy of a book like that or like "Tweak" or like, you know, that really shows how far you can fall if you choose that path and it doesn't take very long. You can tell their parents. I mean, if you want to get that involved, it depends on how close you are to their family of if the whole family knows anyway, I mean, really sometimes it takes a real intervention to be able to save them because once -- So like for my daughter, she started at 16, 17 years old, right. She is now 38 years old and so it's been that long of a journey for her in and out of that. Even if you get help, it will always call to you. And your life, your dreams, they go. So talk to them about their dreams and what they want and then see if you can talk to them about how taking that route is going to take that dream away. For my daughter, it was her dream was computer animation and she was on a fast track to a full scholarship at the Art Institute of Seattle and that's all gone to her now. She can't do it anymore. So especially that kind of drug, I mean, it's brain damage. There are a lot of different things that go wrong when you go that way. >> Thank you. >> First, I would like to say thank you because your book has helped me help other people in, like, my community and my neighborhood so first I want to give you a thank you, Ms. Hopkins. Second, I would like to ask you where you draw your inspiration from for all these books? Like, do they come straight from all the things that are happening like social media and in like the world or do they come from like personal experience or like survivor stories? >> Ellen Hopkins: It's a mixture of both. So, I mean, a lot of it is social media. You know, I was really early to social media. When I started doing this, when "Crank" came out, the only social medial platform out there was My Space. That gives you an idea how long ago it was. Right? But I discovered very quickly the value of being able to connect online with my readers, one on one, like it's a private space. So they would come to me and share stories. And I do, I have, I keep reader letters and there are many, many, many and some of them are just they are devastating. Those seem to come to me like after midnight. I don't know why. It's like, because I'm tired, you know, too many glasses of wine. I'm crying for these kids. But social media is one way and I do, I get stories and people want to share their stories with me. A lot of times it is family. It's friends. It might be something I see on the news. You know, there are lots of ways that I gather inspiration or think about new stories or whatever. >> Thank you. >> Ellen Hopkins: Yep. >> So I've been reading your books since like 2007 and I was lucky because my dad bought like "Crank, Glass, and Impulse" all at the same time and I was like that never happens but so, yeah. But the thing is, now looking on the shelves and seeing the books and I noticed that covers have changed and like to me it feels less impactful because like "Crank" and "Glass," you know, were like first covers and so now I'm just like and so like I want to know why that happened and how you feel about it. >> Ellen Hopkins: So cover design is like not up to me at all. That's a publisher decision. I had the same designer for the first several books. And then my publisher was like, let's update you, let's like, you know, try to draw new readers in because maybe those covers are something they've seen for such a long time that they've kind of just dismissed them. Do you know what I mean? I mean, there are also readers that will open it up and see verse and that's it. They don't -- They're not even going to do that. So covers, although I think, I mean, that's a cover. Yeah? I mean, it tells you exactly what it is. And you know why it's like that? Because big book stores, Barnes & Noble, won't let young adult have an actual picture of a gun on a cover. So book stories, did you know book stores actually do have input into cover design? If they like see a cover and they think it's not going to like look good on their bookshelves, they will actually go back to the publisher and say this needs to change for some reason. It's interesting. But yeah, cover is not up to me so much anymore. I can veto it. If it's something I really hated, I could say, yeah, I don't think so. >> Thank you. >> I recently had a debate with a friend about like the differences between young adult books and fiction books. And I was wondering if in your experience, like how do you decide that when you sit down to write something that's it's going to be intended for children versus for adults. >> Ellen Hopkins: So the difference between YA and adult that I can see is that adult is more reflective. It's like looking back often. You know what I mean? It's like -- Okay, so I put it this way. So young people have this amount of experience. Right? At 16, you have this much. As an adult, you know, that starts to widen. And by the time you get ancient like me, it's like I got so much experience. But it's a reflective thing. So it's like looking back. So I can judge today by this many yesterdays. Young people can judge today by this many yesterdays. So writing for young people is more about discovery, learning who you are, figuring out where you want to go. Writing for adults is more like regret, I guess. I really should've gotten together with that guy instead of that guy. You know what I mean? So I think that's the difference. And also there's a pacing difference. So if you want to write for young people, it's a different kind of pacing. It has to be a little faster. The plot needs to be less heavy, I guess. I don't know. There's a lot of different things but it's really about discovery versus reflection. >> Thank you. >> Hi. So you talked about how in your first few books, your verse was more simplistic and you wanted to catch younger readers and now you've moved into prose and you're writing a book almost all in prose. Do you find the two, verse and prose, very different to write or do you them similar? >> Ellen Hopkins: I actually prefer writing in verse. Verse is, it's every word has count has the page. There's a lot of -- It's a lot more difficult to write in verse. I will tell you that for a fact because you have to -- Every single word has to count. So it's word choice. It's deciding what can, what one word can take the place of like a whole sentence, maybe, sometimes. So I'm going to actually -- I'm going to write in verse. I'm going to do a middle grade novel because this one child of ours, the one that just started high school, he came to us with PTSD, like because of early childhood trauma from like the boyfriends and stuff. So when he first got to us, he would like have daily throw himself on the floor meltdowns, screaming into his hoodie. So he'd go to school and when he started school in this new school, everybody thought he was the freak but nobody wanted to know why. You know what I mean? So I want to write a book for kids like him, for the classmates of kids like him so they can understand there's a reason why kids might be in that kind of space. And I will tell you, those things used to happen three or four times a day. They don't happen at all anymore, seriously. I mean, and it was a slow change, like a slow change. And like last year, I would say it would like once every couple weeks. This year, like it's done. So they can come around. They can change. And they should be allowed to change and to have friends that accept them but I think verse is going to be the way to tell that story because it's, again, such an interior story. So verse is like, it's like really viewing this world, right. Prose is like describing the world. This is like viewing the world. And, you know, there are a lot of giant successful verse novels out now. Jason Reynolds books, you know, Jacqueline Woodson's books, those great making rhymes. Those books are like great, great in verse books. So I'm going to go back to it for that book and then we'll see because, you know, I do want to have a wider audience and there are kids like they look at verse and they're like, unh-uh, not for me. Right? So I want both because I'm hopeful that my writing will attract both eventually and like the prose lovers will go to verse and the verse lovers will go to prose. And then everybody can love me. I think -- Are we done? >> Thank you. >> Ellen Hopkins: Three minutes. I got time. >> So how or why did you decide to make a book or series out of your family story instead of just keeping it private? >> Ellen Hopkins: So why did I choose to write "Crank" instead of just keeping it as a private story? Because my daughter was the kid that we just expected her to be like somebody. You know what I mean? I mean, she has talent. She was a straight A plus student. She has 150 IQ, like brilliant kid. And then you made one wrong choice. You know, she chose to go with this guy and to get high and her entire, all her dreams dissolved with that one choice. I needed to write that book -- Well, first I needed to write it for me to figure out why. But then I needed to write it for teens because I wanted -- I knew if I could just turn one kid or two kids away from that choice, it would mean something really special to me. And now it's been, I'm serious, tens of thousands of young people that I've gotten messages from and emails from and, you know, and they tweet me and they Instagram me and whatever and that I've been able to make that kind of difference in somebody else's life made it all worthwhile. >> Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Ellen Hopkins: Thank you. Alright, well okay, so then I guess I'm done here because they're like -- Is there one more question somewhere? Yeah. >> Hi. I just wanted to give the kids a chance first because I've been reading your books since I was in middle school and I'm a master student now. So you're like, whew, you're like part of my childhood and seeing you in the flesh just I'm nervous and everything. I have had a question since I was a child, since I started reading your books of how the heck do you deal with it? How do you deal with writing of such difficult heavy subjects and you as a human being, you've been doing this for decades now, like how do you cope with so much pain and make it so beautiful and easy to understand and easy to connect with for anyone that reads your books? >> Ellen Hopkins: Again, I think it's just a matter of being able to take some of that on myself for so many other people, that I actually feel I have a relationship with the creator and, you know, I think I was put here to do what I do. And so, He gives it back. Do you know what I mean? So my life, I've been so blessed in so many ways that I feel like if I can bless some other lives that I'm doing what I was put here to do. >> I agree with that. Thank you so much for everything. >> Ellen Hopkins: Thank you. Okay, I'm wrapping it up. I got the sign here, wrap it up. So you guys come. I'll sign some books for you downstairs at 4:00 o'clock. Catch me in the hallway if you want. I'm not going anywhere. If you got other questions, I'll be here and just thank you guys for being with me on this journey. I love you [applause].