'Sharing voice and emotion'

 

“Choosing the narrator for a first-person story like Downriver is a crucial decision because the voice has to be one the reader wants to listen to, and the voice has to be a match for the emotion you want the story to carry”  – Will Hobbs

 

Hobbs, born in Pittsburgh on this date in 1947, grew up in a military family, moving often.  When his dad was stationed in Alaska, he said he fell in love with mountains, rivers, fishing, baseball, and books.  After college and marriage, he settled in the southwest mountains of Colorado where he began teaching and writing.

 

The author of 20 novels for Tweens and Young Adults, as well as two picture book stories, Hobbs credits his sense of audience to his years of teaching, and his sense of place to writing about places he knows from firsthand experience.

 

Hobbs has said he wants his writing to take young people into the outdoors and engage their sense of wonder.  Many of his novels take place in the Four Corners (the area where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizon and Utah share a border and which has been his home since 1973.)   “I know these mountains, rivers, mesas and canyons well, so it's been natural for me to draw on my own personal experiences here.”

As for putting his reader into the action, he said, “Once you're imagining being the main character, and you're having the conversations and actually being there, the magic in fiction writing takes over.”