>> In memory of Dick Robinson
and sponsored by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. [ Music ] >> Kacen Callender: Hi, welcome
to the National Book Festival. I'm Kacen Callender. I'm the author of King
and the Dragonflies, and I use they/them,
and he/him pronouns. The book is about 12-year-old
King whose brother has unfortunately, just passed
away, and King is struggling with the grief of his
brother, along with his family. They feel very torn
apart by grief. King is also struggling
with the fact that just before his brother
passed away, he told King to keep a secret about himself, which was his own
sexual identity. So King is struggling with
all of this, and meanwhile, his former best friend, Sandy
Sanders, has just disappeared and King finds Sandy
hiding in his backyard. So King and Sandy
escape into the bayou of their rural Louisiana town to
escape the pressures of society from the outside, dealing with
homophobia, dealing with abuse that Sandy was struggling
with with his own father. I struggle a lot with fear. I have always struggled a lot
with fear because of the way that I think society
has kind of treated me from the time I was a young age. It makes me feel like I'm not
quite worthy just as I am. So I think that because
of that fear, it can really affect me feeling
comfortable in my own skin and feeling like it's
okay to just be myself, no matter what other
people are going to think, and that's what King struggles
with throughout the book, not only with his sexuality,
but it's just the fear of how people are
going to react to him. He feels like he really
has to suppress himself. And I realized throughout --
in the book, and also just kind of in the aftereffects of having
written it, and thinking back on the story that fear can
really close ourselves of and we block ourselves
from being our true selves, first of all, but
also even from feeling like you can connect
with other people. So I think that reading the
book and kind of learning more about how fear can -- has
affected each and every one of us, but it also can affect
us from not wanting to connect with others because we're so
afraid of how others are going to react to us can
help us heal that fear, and hopefully open ourselves to
other's stories and allow others to connect to ours, too. So I think it's okay
to be afraid. I think that if we're
honest with ourselves, a lot of us are afraid so
much throughout the day, throughout our lives,
and it's impossible to just release that fear. So I don't think -- I feel like saying bravery means
you're not afraid is almost like a shaming of that feeling. But I think that the journey of
looking at love instead of fear, looking to love to know
that we're worthy of love, regardless of what others think,
that others are worthy of love, regardless of our fear makes us
want to say that we are better than them or that
we are more worthy. I think that that has a lot
to do with fear, as well, those sorts of attitudes
and how we treat others. Because I'm not sure that
King actually ever overcomes his fear. I think that that's
something that we all live with throughout our lives. I think that he comes to accept
pieces of himself with love, more love than he had before. What's funny is that King and the Dragonflies actually
did not take very much effort, and I say that carefully
because it is so difficult to write books, but this
was the easiest one for me. I think that that was a part
of the process because I think that this book really
felt like it was a dream. I'm very into dreams. I'm very into dream-ology
and dreams symbol, symbology. From the time I was young, I would have all these
dream interpretation books, and writing it really did
feel like I had sat down and sometimes I would kind
of like look around and like, I feel like I wasn't actually
writing, and I would have to reread things that had felt like they disappeared
on the page. And I say all this because
what's interesting is that -- so King believes that his
brother, when he passed away, turned into a dragonfly. And King himself kind of wonders
in the beginning of the book, well, why a dragonfly? Why not a panther or a
wolf, or something cool? And I myself really didn't have
an answer because, like I said, it just felt like a dream
and it just kind of whooshed out of me as I was writing. So at the end, I looked up what
do dragonflies mean in dreams and spirituality, and it
-- the dragon fly means, it symbolizes death and it
symbolizes the transformation of a person into a manifestation
in the spirit world. So I kind of got
shivers when I read that, because that is Khalid. It's literally Khalid
and his transformation into the spirit world as he's
there continuing to guide King. For me, the process, I
think, was really feeling like I wasn't even
writing this story. I do have a lot of beliefs
about writing and where does -- where do our stories come from? It really felt like the
story was given to me, which was something I
was really grateful for, and my only job was being
a tool and just kind of like letting it
get out to the page. And I feel like those are one of
the best stories I've written. Sometimes, when I have writer's
block and I'm there kind of like, struggling with the
story and trying to make it into the best that it can
be, and it's something that takes like, years and
years to write, and you know, I'm like, "oh, it's so
difficult to write". Sometimes, I feel like that's when the story is not
always going to be its best because it's not really
just whooshing through me in the same way that King
and the Dragonflies did. If I get stuck, I stop writing. I think that that's some -- to
do, because it's like a -- oh. It's like, writer's
block, you really -- there's almost like a
desperation, sometimes. For me, anyways. So kind of like, just
force my way through, and I think that that
can make it worse. Because again, if I'm trying
to open myself to these stories that are going to come
to me, then focusing on what I think might
be the answer and not really paying attention
or listening to the story as it tries to come into
me means I'm not getting the answer. That is the actual
answer, I'm just trying to force it to happen. So I stop writing. I love to work on my -- about
five projects at a time, so I just go to another
project that isn't in a place where I feel like I
have writer's block, and I just keep writing
until the answer to the previous project
comes to me. The message that I would
give younger readers, I would say that you
are worthy of love. A lot of society does
not want you to believe that you're worthy
of love, but you are, and if you love yourself
in the way that people don't want you to,
if you stop believing the lies that are told where you're
not beautiful enough, and you're not smart enough, or
you're just not enough exactly as you are, then you will
begin to discover a real power where it doesn't matter what
anyone thinks and you won't be so afraid to exist in the world,
and you will celebrate yourself in a way that will almost be
like a beacon of light to people who will appreciate you
for you are will see you. Look around you and take
what is happening around you, your [inaudible] and pull
it directly into the book and let it translate, even if you're not actually
in the Louisiana. I took a lot from the setting
of where I am in St. Thomas in the United States
Virgin Islands, and I transported everything
that I've felt, and heard, and smelled, and tasted, everything that makes my
physical reality feel real, and just put directly
into the scene, no matter where the
scene actually is. So in St. Thomas, there's
like these swampy lands where mosquitos just are
everywhere, like knocking you in the face with every step, and
I put that into King's story. And with Mardi Gras,
there's a carnival, a similar carnival
called J'ouvert, and I took my experiences
from when I was young and transported it into King's
experiences at Mardi Gras. I think that adults tend to
want to protect children, again, because of fear. But these are things
that children and young readers are already
dealing with, and even more so today than when
I was a child. I saw people struggling with
racism, with anti-queerness, with abuse, with grief
from losing siblings and family members,
so of course, if this is something young
readers are struggling with in real life, it's
something that they're able to read about and it's something
that they're able to learn about as they're reading, even if they have not
experienced it themselves, which can be just as important
because it allows them to see the world
in a different lens than they might not have before. [ Music ]
