Anica Mrose Rissi

Anica Mrose Rissi is the award-winning author of more than a dozen books for kids and teens, including picture books, chapter books, middle grade, and YA. Her essays have been published by The Writer and the New York Times, and she plays fiddle in and writes lyrics for the band Owen Lake and the Tragic Loves. Rissi grew up in Maine and spent many years in New York City, where she worked as an executive editor in children’s book publishing. She currently lives in central New Jersey with her very good dog, Sweet Potato.

Rissi's new book is Girl Reflected in Knife.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I think it pulls its weight! Girl Reflected in Knife is a short, sharp, unsettling title for a short, sharp, unsettling novel. I hope readers will feel intrigued by the title and the tone it sets, even if they’re not quite sure what to expect. Likewise, I hope they’ll be intrigued by the book’s unstable narrator and her story, even as they’re not entirely sure where it might lead them.

What's in a name?

This is a question the novel poses as well, in the fragments of a dark fairy tale version of Destiny’s story that runs parallel to the main narrative, woven in throughout. Here’s a taste:

The girl’s name contained a promise—an expectation and prediction

of some larger fate, or perhaps of a path she must follow.

But how does a destiny differ from a curse?

Her mother did not name her Lucky.

So was the girl’s twisted fate her mother’s fault? This was,

after all, a fairy tale.

The girl chided herself: not that kind.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

When I was a teenager, my passion was politics. I wanted to go to law school and become a senator or perhaps a supreme court justice—to fight for the issues I cared about and help shape a different world. My teenage self would be quite surprised to see her name on multiple book covers. I don’t even own a gavel.

But in a way, I didn’t stray too terribly far from that idea because, of course, writers are master manipulators. They control what a reader pays attention to and influence what the reader notices, hopes, and feels. A well-written story might change how a reader sees and understands the world. That’s even better than winning an argument or a vote.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Both the beginning and the ending of this novel went through multiple major revisions (as did everything in between—I worked on Girl Reflected in Knife for more than a decade before I figured out how to make it the book I wanted it to be) and, with my editor’s encouragement, I did something radical to the ending, which I won’t spoil here. But I will share the first chapter, which is only three sentences long.

When I found this beginning, multiple years and revisions into the process, I suddenly understood what the story was and could be in a new way. It’s an opening that still thrills me.

1.

Listen.

Be careful the story you tell yourself. It might become the one you believe.

Visit Anica Mrose Rissi's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Anica Mrose Rissi & Arugula.

The Page 69 Test: Anna, Banana, and the Monkey in the Middle.

--Marshal Zeringue