A Love Affair with Words: An Interview with Gayle Brandeis
by Dewi L. Faulkner
The first time you see your child hunched over a little notebook or scrap of construction paper, tongue firmly fixed in the corner of her mouth, her little knuckles turning white from the death grip she has on her pencil or crayon, it’s hard not to imagine a budding Jane Austen or Toni Morrison. Sure, all she has written so far is: m3 txy 5np ooly, but you’re certain if you could just crack the code, it would be brilliant. You imagine her first glowing book review; the prestigious awards; that acknowledgement page in the back of her first novel that clearly states that none of her success would be possible without her amazing, unbelievably supportive family …
For parents of award-winning author and poet Gayle Brandeis, the above was no pie-in-the-sky fantasy. At the tender age of three the future Bellwether Prize winner picked up a newspaper and, after looking it over for a few moments, asked her parents if they were aware that President Nixon had "pluhbitis" (phlebitis). By four, Ms. Brandeis had composed her first poem: "Blow, little wind/Blow the trees, little wind/Blow the seas, little wind/Blow me until I am free, little wind."
So what’s the secret? I caught up with Gayle recently to ask her about her childhood and how she fell in love with reading and writing. I also asked about her own children (Arin and Hannah, both in their teens), and how she introduced them to the written word. Her responses provided wonderful insight into the private world of an author who has truly had a lifelong love affair with words.
