Christiana Doucette
If you're passionate about novels-in-verse, like I am, you'll want to know more about my next guest author, Christiana Doucette. Her poetry has been performed on NPR and published in journals including Rattle and The Orchards Poetry Journal. I met her while researching my critical thesis and found her amazing website, where she generously offers information and support to poets and writers. I emailed her a question, which she answered straight away. After that, I knew I had to ask her to be featured on Teazurs Blog!
I'm so thankful she said yes!! And I know you will be too.
Hello, Christiana,
It's nice to have you here. I reached out to you because of your fantastic list of MG novels in verse, and you so kindly and quickly responded. I am curious, how did you create this list? Why did you and how do you use it to further your writing?
Thanks so much for having me on to interview. I’m excited to share more about my favorite story form!I started the middle grade verse novel list [linked to the most recent exhaustive list—I’ll be sharing an update of this in April] because there was very little information about what MG verse novels looked like in terms of average word count or style. And the form fascinates me. I wanted to know more. So I started gathering a list of all the titles I could find. The earliest one on the list is from 1990. Of course, there have been stories in verse since Beowulf and The Odyssey. And there have been short stories in rhyme for children, too. But novels-in-verse in the middle grade age range seem to be a relatively new development.
Once I assembled my list, I started reading as many titles as I could. Every now and then, I found a title that appeared to be miscategorized. Like a 16-year-old protagonist, or one where only chapters start with a little poem quotation. I think the list has become more and more accurate as I’ve continued to work on it.
Jessica Vitalis likes to say that reading 100 books in the genre/form/age range you’re writing for is a bit like taking a masterclass in the genre. I agree with her. With verse novels you see such variety in how the page can be used to tell stories.
Many of my readers are aspiring writers. As an author, why do you choose to write verse? What does verse let you say, or not say, that prose won't allow you to get away with?
Verse offers so much to the reader.
Verse brings readers into the breath
of the character
in a way prose cannot.
I love how verse incorporates turns. When writing a verse novel, those moments of tension, or seeing the beginning image in a new light, can become building blocks of emotion and movement that I find thrilling. And then there’s rhythm and rhyme. I know not all verse novels use them, but I love books like Kwame Alexander’s Booked that include those elements. I just did an elementary school poetry reading last week, and one of the boys told me “When you start reading it’s like you’re casting a spell.” Poetry can do that. It pulls listeners in by weaving sound and image into something irresistible.
When you're drafting a verse, what usually comes first for you – an image, a line, an emotion, or a story question?
Oh my goodness, it depends on the day. With my first verse novel, I’d read a biography that intrigued me. Then I read everything I could about the woman. And then her voice as a girl just poured out of me. It was voice first.
With my current WIP the concept developed first. The voice came slower. But the main character is also more shy than the main character of my first story, so I think she might have taken a little to warm up.
For poetry, it truly depends on the day. Sometimes poems grow out of playing with interesting sounds. Sometimes I’m inspired by a moment I’ve experienced. Often I’m drawn in by history, and then want to write from that. Often emotions hit me, and I want to try to capture them in image and action. So I don’t have only one way of approaching verse. The biggest thing for me is setting time that I will be writing.
How do you know when a moment deserves white space instead of an explanation?
Trial and error. I go back and forth on these moments a lot. And I’m very grateful for critique partners who encourage me one way or the other.
You love to chat about craft – What's a verse novel misconception you wish writers or editors would unlearn?
Verse novel is neither pure poetry nor prose. It’s a hybrid of the two. A poem is usually written in such a way that the reader can pick up the book, read the poem, set it down, and go on. Verse novels demand more. They need an internal engine propelling them forward. When you get to the end of a poem in a verse novel you shouldn’t want to set the book down. You should feel compelled to read what’s happening next. At the same time they hold the propulsion of fiction, they are not just prose broken up. They should include poetic elements. Images, white space, sometimes rhythm, or rhyme. Over all this, emotion and space. In my opinion the strongest verse novels are aware of how they’re inhabiting the breath of the reader. They use strong transformative imagery to propel the narrative forward while simultaneously intensifying emotional connections. They utilize poetic elements, and make solid use of line breaks, turns, and poetic leaps to elevate the story.
Novels in verse are emotional – What is your best way to get emotion on the page that resonates with your readers?
I struggle with “best” questions. I’ll share a couple things that have significantly helped me along:
I love including objective correlative elements. This is where there’s an object that the author imbues with special symbolism and meaning. In my current WIP, one of these is a locket with photos of the main character’s whole family before the war. Her father died in the early years of the war years ago. And her brother is now being called up. And that locket symbolizes how her family was once whole. But she’s going to have to willingly give up one of those photos within her character arc. I need that sacrifice to hurt, so she often expresses emotions by how she interacts with the locket. She holds it tight in her hand. She opens it or refuses to open it when seeing how they were once whole and happy is too much to bear. The locket transforms alongside her.
A second objective correlative in the story is a couple packets of seeds her father bought her right before going to war. They planned to plant them together. When he was killed, she buried them in a jar believing she was at fault for wishing he’d come home. As her belief about how much control she has over bad events happening changes, how she interacts with that jar changes. And near the end when she needs more strength, she digs up the jar, and finds that her father had left her a message written on the seed packets all those years ago. A message she needs right at that moment.
Many novels-in-verse expand this objective correlative concept into a systemic image system. A wonderful example of this is the way Football is used throughout National Book Award novel-in-verse Kareem Between. The author uses football language and description throughout the book, whether the main character is playing football, or interacting with family, or dealing with bullying. It’s a masterclass in image system. Jamie Sumner uses the Godfather swim of Lake Tahoe in Deep Water in a similar transformative way. Of course it doesn’t have to be a sport. No Matter the Distance, the dolphin’s health it tied to the main character’s journey. In The Extraordinary Orbit of Alex Ramirez it’s space. It’s the Forest’s Heart in Spark, and lighthouses in Ruptured. Amber McBride sprinkles rocks and their properties throughout Onyx & Beyond. Meg Eden Kuyatt builds an entire haunted house that parallels the haunting of the family by trauma in past generations treatment of neurodiversity in The Girl in the Walls and blends that with art in a way that blows my mind. If the objective correlative imbues an object with emotional power, an image system amplifies it.
If the objective correlative imbues an object
with emotional power,
an image system amplifies it.
Secondly, I love using scene and sequel. Just like there is a particular sequence for descriptive words—for example we say “the big green shed” not “the green big shed” —there is a particular sequence for how we experience emotion. I had these written on a post-it note attached to my laptop for months, because I need the reminder of the sequence. It goes MC makes a CHOICE in pursuit of a GOAL SET. MC faces CONFLICT resulting in GOAL DENIED. At that point MC feels physical elements of EMOTION over the goal (ex. a prick of shame, a flash of anger, fear running fingers up her back, etc…), that physical element of the emotion is followed by DEBATE with herself over what she’s going to do. Finally MC makes her DECISION, either choosing a new goal, or a different path to the goal. This is followed by ACTION which starts the whole sequence over again, that MC CHOICE at the beginning of the whole cycle. I always try to do a revision pass that is purely focused on checking for consistent scene & sequel. You can read a great article on this here, here, and here.
If I gave you a megaphone and the whole world would listen – what's one sentence you'd shout?
Right now?
Due process protects everyone!
If you’re just looking for book related stuff though:
READ POETRY TO YOUR KIDS!
Some of your poetry was recently published in a Hurricane Helene Anthology, "Affirmations of the Powerless" - please explain what an anthology is for my newbie writers. And how did writing about Helene help you heal? What do you hope others feel when they read your work?
An anthology is usually a collection of stories and/or poems and/or art around a particular theme that’s all been compiled into one book. I live in upstate SC, and for us, Helene was the hundred-year-flood. Nothing compared to the thousand-year-flood of our neighbors forty minutes north. We had a tree come down on our roof. It did not puncture all the way through, just ripped off gutters and such. But next door, more than half a dozen oaks so enormous all three of my daughters and I couldn’t link arms around them came down. The first crashed straight into the living room where our neighbors were sheltering next door. When we couldn’t stop the water downstairs, and the trees kept falling, we left the house mid-storm to run across the street to our neighbor whose house was on higher ground, with fewer trees. I wrote “Affirmations of the Powerless” at the end of the second week after Helene. For months, I was writing a Helene poem or two or three per week. Because that’s what just kept coming out. Some are processing intense emotion. Others feel more healing. There’s one published by The Roanoke Rambler called “The Science of Falling Things” that felt particularly healing to write.
But, I highly recommend Had I a Dove, the anthology that includes my “Affirmations of the Powerless.” Hilda Downer, poet laureate for High Country has assembled a powerful collection. Proceeds from the book support ongoing Hurricane Helene relief efforts. And it’s still needed!
Your work features intellect and heart – what has surprised you most about yourself as a writer?
I think the community of writers most surprised me. I think I saw writing as a very solitary thing to start. But it’s created so many wonderful years long friendships now.
I chat with my friend Ranjeeta [If Elephants Could Talk] in Dubai every week, and we set goals. Each week I catch up with other middle grade authors in the MG Hub Discord group, and check-in with my MGpies support group (a sub group of MG Hub). Three years ago I launched #MGHubPitch as part of a celebration of how long MG Hub had existed. And it’s grown every year. Now I’m interning for literary agent Kaitlyn Sanchez, and loving it. So many new opportunities for friendship and mutual love of stories!
And I find my critique partners so important to my writing process. I want critiques that point out how I can make my work stronger. And I have that support.
For writers new to novels in verse, what's one playful experiment you'd recommend to help guide them and fall in love with this form?
Challenge 1: read as many NIV as possible! Here’s a list of a bunch of them from 2024-2026. Write down objective correlatives you notice. Is there a full image system in play?
Challenge 2: There’s so much fascinating experimentation going on right now. Like the mixed media elements like news articles and cookie recipes in Kate Messner’s The Problem with Heroes. Write down 3 mixed-media elements that might work as hermit crab style poem for your story.
Challenge 3: Think about your own main character. What is an object that has special emotional connection to him/her. If they don’t have one, make one up. How can that object transform over the story as the character’s emotional arc progresses? List how the object appears at the beginning, at the midpoint, at all’s lost, and at the finale.
I'm in my VCFA MFA program, and I am studying how verse novelists create whole worlds in this form. What advice do you have to writers who want to create strong, immersive settings in this form?
It’s ok to start with the bones of a story. I like to think of a verse novel like sitting down at a canvas. Maybe your first draft is just outlining the basics. Maybe you’re just working on a little corner of the canvas today. Maybe you have the work mostly done, but you’re adding depth in different shadows and highlights. I usually call my first drafts my trash draft. I know it’s going to change as I continue to flesh out this story, and that’s ok. Often there are a couple poems during early drafting that become cornerstones to a project. Rajani Larocca talks about this happening with her Red White and Whole. I’ve found for myself that those anchor poems tend to reveal the image system my poem’s going to lean into. Often, those are the images that appear again and again through the story arc, transforming alongside my character.
I also want to mention voice. In a verse novel, the poetic line sits in our breath. You’re breathing along with the character as you read. And that pacing can shift and change in a way that I find kinesthetically immersive.
Since I most often write historical fiction, I also pour a lot of research into my writing. Elements of that become part of the immersive setting.
We learned about writing rituals this past residency – do you have any that you follow, and if so, how have they helped you stay focused?
Every Tuesday, I go out with two local writing friends. We go to a coffee shop where we order tea. And then we do two or three 30-minute sprints, broken up with catching up with each other from the past week. Having that regular date helps me when I have a particularly busy week. I know I will have that time to write.
At home, I often have a particular chair I sit in while I write. I like to brew a cup of Earl Grey tea with some vanilla creamer, and drink that as I write.
You are a mentor to young poets. What have you learned about the craft by reading their works? Or seeing poetry through new eyes?
I am regularly blown away by the images kids come up with in their poetry. When I’ve workshopped poetry with kids, I like to start with a snowflake exploration first.
I have them pick
the focus of their poem
and put it at the center
of a piece of paper.
Then we go through the five senses and how those senses interact with the chosen focus. I try to go at least three layers into that. Say we go with sound. Maybe they’re writing about catching fireflies. Maybe they say there’s wind that sounds like a whisper. We might go deeper on that. What else makes that whisper sound? Blinds rolling up to sunshine… flipping through a book… classmates behind their hands as they look sideways at you? Each of those has a different emotional connection. You can see how that pulls them into more concrete descriptions of the focus they’ve chosen.
It’s guided, but only in the way that loosening the soil of a garden before planting in the spring is guided. They have their own seeds inside, and no one grows the same plant. There’s always variation. I remember sitting there reading the poetry of a six-year-old who described the neighborhood cat as an accordion (She needed help getting that word, but described the instrument from Lady and the Tramp). My mind was blown.
Will you be at any poetry slams? Readings or signings where my readers can meet and greet you?
I regularly go to Poets Live events in Greenville, SC. They meet at local coffee shops on the first Friday of each month. That’s probably the most consistent place you can find me. I also plan to be at the Appalachian Studies Conference in a couple week. I’m going as an aide for Kendra Winchester of Read Appalachia. You can also find my poetry this March at the Verse & Visual ekphrastic show I am part of this year. I’m regularly present online during Rattle’s Monday evening interviews. And often read on the curated prompt lines for the show. But I don’t know whether my poem is selected for that week until the day before. So if that interests you, maybe follow my Facebook Page, or BlueSky, or Instagram. I try to share there when I’m reading.
What's next for your writing journey? What will we see coming from you in 2026?
I have several poems coming out. My agent continues to submit my work to publishers. We have rhyming picture book out on sub right now, and I’m working on finishing up edits on my current NIV WIP. This summer, I’m hoping to work on a co-written verse novel. I’m also currently interning for literary agent Kaitlyn Sanchez, and may be looking for an opening at a literary agency for the next step in that career.
How does it feel, and how did it come about to have your poetry set to music or read aloud on NPR?
Little Christiana who listened to NPR with her dad in the car in the evening sat speechless hearing her words featured in GRAMMY nominated classical composer Mark Buller’s art song on NPR. I’ve known Mark since college, and when COVID shut things down, I was regularly sharing poetry I composed on my private profile. He messaged me to ask if he could set my short poem as one of his Quarantine Miniatures. Mine is #4 of 75 art songs he composed during lockdowns. One of his spectacular soprano friends recorded the music, and then when his work was profiled the song with my poem was chosen to be featured! I was thrilled. And I have to say that that encouragement gave me the confidence boost I needed to start regularly sending poems out to Literary magazines and journals. Seventy plus published poems later, here we are. Thanks for the encouragement, Mark!
What are your favorite cozy objects that you have that help you write, ground, or enjoy poetry even more?
Writing: Earl Grey tea with vanilla creamer, my cozy, fluffy white bathrobe that makes me look like an abominable snowman, and this playlist. I didn’t create the playlist, but when someone suggested it, I tried it out and turns out I adore it.
Reading Aloud: I like to have on either a spinner ring, or have a little smooth rock, or this metal token from a museum in/on my hand. I think it’s one spot to direct any excess energy.
What's the weirdest or oddest thing you'd like to write a poem about?
I’m not sure I have a weirdest thing I’d like to write about. I have a bunch of historical events I’d love to shape stories around eventually. And I do keep a “Story Seeds” Google sheet with all my picture book/novel-in-verse ideas so I can reference it. I have a story in prose I’m about 10 pages into drafting that blends a Shakespeare story with a common proverb in an Appalachian setting and involves tea. And I love that idea. But it’s a lot longer than a single poem. And… it’s prose. Oh. I do have down to eventually write a quick rhyming story about a poetic pterodctyl’s pair o’ dactyl. It might end up purely for my own joy.
Is there anything you'd love my readers to know?
I love school visits! If you’re a teacher anywhere within an hour or two from upstate South Carolina, and you’re looking for a visiting poet, let me know!
If you’re an agent whose agency has or is going to have an opening soon, I’d love to chat with you! I’m currently interning for Kaitlyn Sanchez, and am keeping an eye out for a space an agenting/associate agenting position.
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Wowza! Christiana, thank you for such an amazing, generous, and deeply craft-filled conversation. I feel like I just took a master class in verse while drinking tea with you in a cafe. Your practical and personal advice about scene and sequel is going to be taped to my computer. I'm so grateful you shared your time, wisdom, and your big, giving, and caring heart with us.
Reading this interview reminds me of why I love the novel verse form so much. It's all about the breath....plus a few more tools and techniques.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
And let us know what happens next...
