Unpresidented is available now from Macmillan. We asked Martha a few questions about the nonfiction writing process as well as teaching at VCFA in the Writing for Children and Young Adults program.

Thank you for joining us, Martha!

 Nonfiction isn’t a popular choice among students at VCFA, but it’s a growing and important part of kidlit. What’s the appeal for you? Do you encourage your students to try it?

When I was a kid, I read voraciously, and although I didn’t really think much about whether I was reading fiction or nonfiction, some of the things I’ve most remembered are nonfiction works. Specifically, The Diary of Anne Frank, which is every bit as gripping as fiction, and all the more resonant because it was a true story. And I did go through a phase as a writer where I considered fiction, and particularly literary fiction, to be “the best,” but I’ve moved past that now. As a reader, I remain voracious, and nonfiction books give me at least as much delight as the fiction I read. It feeds my writing and my humanity. As a writer, you can take from nonfiction with impunity. You can’t take from the fiction that you read. So, if you’re at all greedy, as I am, you will start to read more nonfiction. Your writing will be enriched as you deepen your understanding of the world.

I definitely encourage my students to try writing it, and I support them in their efforts. And while we are not a program that focuses at all on publishing as a business, I can say that for two semesters in a row, I’ve worked with students on nonfiction picture books. Both of those students produced work that was agent-ready. Both signed with agents, and one has already sold her manuscript. It is exceptionally difficult to write an outstanding nonfiction picture book, but it’s also easier to write something that feels fresh and original in this category, which is already chockablock with books about bedtime, tooth fairies, and beneath-the-bed monsters.

At our next residency, I will be hosting a couple of nonfiction lunches for students eager to talk more about it. As my work attests, you can write both fiction and nonfiction—and my own feeling is that you can be a stronger writer with a solid understanding of both.

You’ve written a number on non-fiction books over the years. How do they start? What’s the main difference between writing something like Unpresidented and writing something like The Game of Love and Death?

Unpresidented and The Game of Love and Death have more in common than you might imagine. Both were books I had to write. The Game of Love and Death was my book about love (is love is love), as well as the meaning that death gives to life. As a human being, I wanted to say these things before I died. Unpresidented felt even more urgent (and the production schedule reflected it). This book, I had to write because I wanted young readers to know the truth about the president. When I woke up the day after he was elected, aware of the disturbing statements and behavior on the campaign trail, I felt a cold sweat thinking about the books that would be written. The ones that shined him up and sanitized him because that’s what adults often do for children. I also feared books that would normalize him, and the one thing democracy cannot withstand is the normalization of habitual deception. It’s not “normal.” All politicians do not lie like the president does.

And so that’s where both books started… with an urgent desire to say something important to young readers.

And I feel like I should say that neither book immediately found a home in publishing. This was discouraging, to say the least. But I stuck with Game for three years. I stuck with the idea of the Trump book and its importance for the first full year of his presidency. And around the anniversary of his inauguration, while I was crossing the bridge in Montpelier with my colleague Liz Garton Scanlon, the offer came in. At the next residency, I was already working on copy edits—even though I had not yet written the book’s ending, and did not know what it would be until two days after residency finished, and I had only three weeks to turn in the final manuscript.

All of this is to say: Write what you must. Write without a net. Be bold, and you will find resources within yourself that did not exist until you wrote them into being with the strength of your faith and desire.