the press kit for Looking for Jack Kerouac

“Looking for Jack Kerouac”
by Barbara Shoup
Aug. 12, 2014
Lacewing Books
BarbaraShoup.com
Barbara Shoup
@BarbShoup
Barbara Shoup
Barbara Shoup
www.JKSCommunications.com . Marissa Curnutte . 347-574-3136 . marissa@jkscommunications.com
JKSCommunications
A literary publicity firm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Marissa Curnutte
347.574.3136
marissa@jkscommunications.com
BEAT ICON JACK KEROUAC PLAYS NOTEWORTHY ROLE IN
AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR BARBARA SHOUP’S EIGHTH BOOK
A new young adult novel about self-discovery, “Looking for Jack Kerouac” releases August 12
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Author Barbara Shoup’s newest young adult novel, “Looking for Jack
Kerouac” (August 12, Lacewing Books), whisked her away on an fascinating journey where legends
came to life more than 1,000 miles away from her hometown.
With the help of a grant from the Indiana Arts Commission, Shoup
embarked on a road trip that took her from central Indiana to St.
Petersburg, Fla., the same adventure taken by the characters in her latest
book. In “Looking for Jack Kerouac,” Paul Carpetti picks up a copy of
“On the Road” by legendary beat novelist Jack Kerouac during a class
trip in New York City. The book has a dramatic impact on Paul,
changing his whole outlook on life. But when he returns home from the
city, his world crumbles. It’s 1964, and Paul is dealing with the death of
his mother. He needs to get away.
Paul hops in a car with his friend, Duke, and doesn’t look back. The two
land in Florida where Paul finds Kerouac, who turns out to be nothing
like the author he idolized. But, in the end, the writer helps Paul in his
journey to self-discovery in an unexpected way.
“Looking for Jack Kerouac” is a coming-of-age tale with heart. Relying on notes she jotted down on
her way to Florida’s Gulf Coast, as well as extensive research on Kerouac’s life, Shoup writes with
intensity, passion and poignant reflection.
Shoup is the author seven other novels, including a School Library Journal Best Adult Book for Young
Adults, “Vermeer’s Daughter,” and two others – “Wish You Were Here” and “Stranded in Harmony” –
selected as American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults.
She is the executive director of the Indiana Writers Center and the co-author of “Novel Ideas:
Contemporary Authors Share the Creative Process” (2000) and “Story Matters: Contemporary Short
Story Writers Share the Creative Process (2006).”
##
www.JKSCommunications.com . Marissa Curnutte . 347-574-3136 . marissa@jkscommunications.com
Meet Barbara Shoup
To say Barbara Shoup is passionate
about writing would be an
understatement. The award-winning
author has been recognized with
multiple honors for her work, and in
August, she will release her eighth
novel “Looking for Jack Kerouac”
with Lacewing Books, the young
adult imprint of Engine Books.
Shoup is the author of seven other
novels, including “Night Watch”
(1982), “Wish You Were Here” (1994/2008), “Stranded in Harmony” (1997/2001),
“Faithful Women” (1999), “Vermeer’s Daughter” (2003/2014), “Everything You Want”
(2008) and “An American Tune” (2012). She is the executive director of the Indiana
Writers Center and the co-author of “Novel Ideas: Contemporary Authors Share the
Creative Process” (2000) and “Story Matters: Contemporary Short Story Writers Share
the Creative Process (2006).”
Shoup graduated from Indiana University in Bloomington with a bachelor’s degree in
elementary education and master’s degree in secondary education. She taught creative
writing to high school students for more than twenty years.
Shoup’s short fiction, poetry, essays and interviews have appeared in numerous small
magazines, as well as in The Writer and The New York Times travel section. Her young
adult novels, “Wish You Were Here” and “Stranded in Harmony” were selected as
American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults. “Vermeer’s Daughter”
was a School Library Journal Best Adult Book for Young Adults.
Shoup is the recipient of numerous grants from the Indiana Arts Council, two creative
renewal grants from the Arts Council of Indianapolis, the 2006 PEN Phyllis Reynolds
Naylor Working Writer Fellowship and the 2012 Eugene and Marilyn Glick Regional
Indiana Author Award.
Shoup has lived in Indiana all her life. She is married with two daughters and two
grandchildren.
www.JKSCommunications.com . Marissa Curnutte . 347-574-3136 . marissa@jkscommunications.com
Praise for Barbara Shoup’s Writing
“Wish You Were Here” (1994/2008, Hyperion Books for
Children/FLUX)
“This one is a classic, pure and simple…Consider this beach blanket reading of the
smartest kind.” – Colleen Mondor, Bookslut
“Beautifully written…a touching, thought-provoking, and very candid coming-of-age tale.”
– Book List
“…Shoup demonstrates a rare understanding of the pivotal role friendship plays in the lives
of young adults – or anyone.” – The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Blue Ribbon Book, Bulletin for the Center for Children’s Books (1994)
American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults (1995)
Midland Society of Authors Children’s Book Award finalist (1995)
Elliot Rosewater Award for Young Adult Literature nominee (1995)
Best Young Adult Books, Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) (1995)
South Carolina Young Adult Book Award nominee (1996-97)
VOYA, Perfect Tens (2001)
In a poll by the Children’s Book Council, a project of the ALA-CBC Joint Commission, “Wish You
Were Here” was chosen by librarians, teachers, parents and kids as the book they would most like to see
reissued. It was reissued by FLUX in 2009.
“Stranded in Harmony” (1997/2001, Hyperion Books for Children,
Guild Press)
“Shoup is able to amplify with clarity the stirrings of a young man’s soul.” –Chicago
Tribune
“…readers will appreciate the book’s heartening awareness of two important facts:
crossing over the threshold is hard and there is something better beyond it.” – The Bulletin
of the Center for Children’s Books
“In a highly believable manner, this compelling and highly textured novel weaves together yearnings for
freedom, family friction, political issues of the '60s, and personal traumas…Shoup respects her readers'
intelligence by not offering any easy outs or cardboard villains.” – School Library Journal
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults (1998)
Great Lakes Book Award for Young Adult Fiction finalist (1998)
Children’s Literature Choice List (1998)
Eliot Rosewater Award for Young Adult Literature nominee (1999)
International Reading Association, Young Adults’ Choice List (1999)
Montgomery County MD “Character List” (1999)
South Carolina Young Adult Book Award nominee (1999-2000)
Public Library of Cincinnati, Great Books for Young Adults
Chicago Public Library, Featured Reading List: Teen Edition
www.JKSCommunications.com . Marissa Curnutte . 347-574-3136 . marissa@jkscommunications.com
“Vermeer’s Daughter” (2003/2014, Guild Press/Ebook)
“Vermeer and his ever-increasing family live in his mother-in-law's house in the
Papist corner of Delft. Tanneke, the cook, prepares broodjes and hutsepot, and
poses for her master. His patron, Van Ruijven, eagerly awaits each commissioned
work. Verifiable information about the artist's home life is sketchy, so Shoup has
fleshed it out into a warm, compelling story, creating a loving, but chaotic
household for her narrator, a fictional middle daughter, Carelina. Aware of her stern
grandmother's preference for her sisters, lovely Maria and pious Elizabeth, Carelina
slips out of the house to visit her adored father in his studio. As she learns to grind pigments and peers
through his magical camera obscura, she listens to him discussing philosophy and religion with the
great men of his time. She puzzles over the ideas, but is more concerned with the people who make up
her world. When she has a surprise encounter with an old friend of her father's, she discovers the artist
within herself. In this book, the smells and tastes of delicious Dutch food, the bustle and excitement of
the Grand Market Square, and the luminous glory of Vermeer's masterpieces are brought vividly to
life.” – School Library Journal
•
•
Best Adult Books for High School Students, School Library Journal (2003)
YA Top 40 Fiction Titles, Pennsylvania School Librarian’s Association (2003)
“Everything You Want” (2008, FLUX)
“Just thinking about how money would change everything is an intriguing place for
a story to begin, especially in the hands of a skilled writer.” – Claire Rosser,
KLIATT
“At heart, and in the best possible meaning of the term, this is a coming of age
story…‘Everything You Want’ is everything that I want, as a reader, in a young
adult novel. Highly recommended.” Jen Robinson, Jen Robinson’s Book Page
“…a surprisingly moving portrait of a young woman's efforts to find and accept herself.” – Booklist
“An American Tune” (2012, Breakaway Books, Indiana University
Press)
“‘An American Tune’ is about the ‘60s, but it's about now, too. It's about a mother
finding herself in her daughter, for better and for worse, and it's about generations
of women forever realizing that even though we try our best to prevent them, our
children were born to make their own mistakes. Nora will become your honest-toGod best friend because she reminds us of where we've been, what we're doing, and
what we are looking for.” – Margaret McMullan, author of “In My Mother's
House” and “When Warhol Was Still Alive”
www.JKSCommunications.com . Marissa Curnutte . 347-574-3136 . marissa@jkscommunications.com
Book Details for
“Looking for Jack Kerouac”
Paperback, $14.95
ISBN: 978-1938126475
Young Adult, 184 pages
Lacewing Books, Aug. 12, 2014
When Paul Carpetti discovers “On the Road” in Greenwich Village while on a class trip
to New York City, the world suddenly cracks open and he sees that life could be more
than the college degree his mother is determined for him to achieve, a good job and,
eventually, marriage to his girlfriend, Kathy. But upon his return, his mother is
diagnosed with terminal cancer and his world falls apart.
Set in 1964, “Looking for Jack Kerouac” tells the story of how Paul’s dreams of a
different life and his grief at the loss of his mother set him on a road trip with his rowdy
friend, Duke, that includes a wild night on Music Row in Nashville, an all-too-real
glimpse of glimpse of racism; and an encounter with a voluptuous mermaid named
Lorelei – landing him in St. Petersburg, where he finds real friendship and, in time, Jack
Kerouac. By then a ruined man, living with his mother, Kerouac is nothing like the
person Paul has traveled so far to meet.
Yet, in the end, it is Kerouac who gives him the key that opens up the next phase of his
life.
www.JKSCommunications.com . Marissa Curnutte . 347-574-3136 . marissa@jkscommunications.com
Q&A with Barbara Shoup
Where did the idea for “Looking for Jack Kerouac” come from?
A friend and fellow writer told me about his idea for a screenplay called “Looking for Jack
Kerouac” with similar story line. I thought it sounded like a terrific idea for a young adult novel and
said, joking, “If you ever decide you don’t want to do the screenplay, could I have the idea?” A few
years later, he said, “Remember that Kerouac idea? I’m not going to do it, so you can have it if you
want it.” “Cool,” I said. “Thanks!” But it was just an idea and I had a hard time finding a way to make
it my own.
Then, sadly, one of my sisters died of brain cancer. Not long after her death, an image of her
behind the counter of a diner floated into my mind’s eye. There was Ginny! One of the most painful
things about my sister’s illness and death was watching her two teenage sons go through it and, after I
found Ginny (and the idea that I could, in a way, bring my sister back to life through her), it occurred to
me that Paul might have had the same experience as my oldest nephew. At which point the book
became about a whole lot more than a road trip for me. It was a way of processing my own grief about
my sister and trying to better understand what losing their mother had been like for her boys.
What are the differences between the real Jack Kerouac and the man portrayed in your book?
My personal understanding of the real Jack Kerouac came from reading everything he’d
written, as well as reading biographies and memoirs by those who knew him, which revealed a
complexity that humanized the icon he’s become. He was brilliant, driven, ambitious in his work. He
was arrogant, difficult, reckless, rebellious; generous, tender, sad, kind, wrecked. He was drop-dead
handsome; he was shy with women. He was free-wheeling and adventurous; he spent most of his life
off the road living with his mother, who did factory work to support him. He was obsessed with
baseball and, to his death, played a baseball card game he invented when he was a boy. He admired the
tenets of Buddhism and worked to synthesize him with his Catholic beliefs, but by the end of his life
he’d reverted to Catholic beliefs so conservative that some called them medieval. He craved and hated
the fame that came his way. He died of alcoholism at the age of 47, while sharing a small, cramped
house with his mother in St. Petersburg, Florida.
I tried to make my fictional Kerouac as close as I could to what I understood the real to have
been. It was important to me that readers see him not as the icon, but as a man whose life had not
turned out happily, but whose generosity in acknowledging a sadness surrounding an early loss in his
own life could make a real difference to a young man trying to find his path. I also wanted to paint a
realistic picture about the writing life and what the price of fame can be.
How did you immerse yourself into the life of Jack Kerouac?
I did a lot of research on Jack Kerouac, his circle of friends, New York in the ‘50s, and the ‘50s,
generally. I listened to music Kerouac listened to. Also, thanks to a grant, I took Paul and Duke’s road
trip from Indiana to St. Petersburg, Fla., noting interesting details along the way and jotting down ideas
for the story that popped up because of what I saw. Once in St. Petersburg, I found the house where
Kerouac had lived with his mother and explored parts of the city where I knew he’d hung out, and I
began to see him there.
I also read widely about 1964, which was a pivotal year for numerous issues, including the
immediate aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, civil rights and the war in Vietnam.
www.JKSCommunications.com . Marissa Curnutte . 347-574-3136 . marissa@jkscommunications.com
Q&A PAGE 2
What was it like seeing Jack Kerouac’s home in person?
It made me sad and brought a visceral understanding of how small and shabby Kerouac’s life
ultimately became. But it also brought the thrill I always feel when I have the good fortune to be able to
step into the world I’m writing about. He lived there. He stood where I stood, walked up the path to the
front door, opened it, went in. There was the window of his front bedroom, through which the sound of
his typewriter could be heard on warm evenings. His cats had skulked in shrubbery beneath it. The
huge tree in the narrow dividing strip between the sidewalk and front yard must have been a sapling
then.
Visiting the setting of a work in progress always generates new ideas for plot and scene—not
necessarily only at the moment you’re there. They enter the mix in your mind, waiting to pop up when
you need them. I take a lot of photos, which I use to refresh my memory about small details. These,
too, suggest new possibilities. Writing the scene near the end of the book, in which Paul goes to Jack’s
house alone, at night, grew from seeing the house, the window from which Paul could hear Jack typing.
What is your favorite Jack Kerouac book?
“Visions of Gerard,” a fictional meditation on the loss of Kerouac’s saintly older brother, whose
death from rheumatic fever at the age of nine profoundly affected the way Kerouac saw the world and
was the cornerstone of his work, in which he so often struggled to find balance between exultation and
sorrow. The book triggered my fictional Kerouac’s response when Paul tells him about his mother’s
death: “And you will never get over [the loss of your mother]. It’s not meant for us to get over that kind
of sadness.” It unlocked a door inside Paul that gave him entry into the next part of his life, in which
the grief could find a proportionate place to settle inside him. As I wrote the scene, I felt the grief I felt
about my sister’s death settle inside me.
“Looking for Jack Kerouac” is set in 1964. In what ways will modern young adults relate to the
characters in your book?
1964 was a turbulent year in which Americans dealt with grief and confusion in the aftermath of
the Kennedy assassination that happened late 1963, increasing racial conflict, and the escalation of the
war in Vietnam. It was the year that “ordinary” kids began to question the moral stance of our country
on these and other issues that would play out for the rest of their lives. Kids today are not only living
the consequences of those times but questioning current political decisions that have created a new kind
of segregation in our communities and involved us in wars that many consider senseless and immoral.
Human nature doesn’t change, really. Reading about the past helps people of all ages understand this,
while at the same time encouraging them to consider ways they can make their own small worlds a
little better.
Even though “Looking for Jack Kerouac” is billed as a young adult novel, it seems like adults
would also enjoy this book – and you’ve won awards in the past for writing crossover stories.
Was that your intention?
2014 is the 50th anniversary of the high school class of 1964. All over the country, Baby
Boomers will be gathering at class reunions, talking about what it was like when they were young,
wondering how in the world they got from 18 to 68. Looking for Jack Kerouac is not only a book that
introduces an exciting era of change to young people, but vividly brings it back to those who lived and
remembered it. Adults of all ages who appreciate a good coming of age story will also enjoy the novel.
www.JKSCommunications.com . Marissa Curnutte . 347-574-3136 . marissa@jkscommunications.com
Q&A PAGE 3
How do hope the stories you write help young adults as they struggle to understand themselves
and the world they live in?
Many years ago, I visited a high school class that had read my book, Stranded in Harmony. A
lively discussion ensued about the fact that the main character had had sexual relations with his
girlfriend, who he feared might be pregnant. Some students appreciated the honesty with which I
approached this part of adolescent life. Others felt that fictional teen characters shouldn’t have sex
because this implied that having sex before marriage was acceptable. A few were okay with the sexual
relationship, but felt that the main character’s girlfriend should have been pregnant as punishment for
the immoral act. Near the end of class, a girl in the back of the room raised her hand. “I’m pregnant,”
she said. “This book helped me understand the way my boyfriend acted when I told him.” The bell
rang. She was gone. It totally blew me away! It’s what we hope for, writing novels for people of any
age—that it makes a difference to them, somehow.
You studied education at Indiana University and now you’re the head of the Indiana Writers
Center. Tell us more about the role that teaching plays in your life.
I’ve been teaching writing, one way or another, for more than 40 years. I taught creative writing
to high school students for 20 years, which I loved, and I continue to visit high school classes to talk
about writing and the writing life. As the executive director of the Indiana Writers Center, I teach
people of all ages – from kindergarteners to people in their 90s. Writing and teaching are inseparable to
me.
Everyone’s life is a story and writing that story is a great gift to yourself and others – whether
you do it through fiction or simply writing down what you remember for family and friends. Working
with the Indiana Writers Center has made me fully understand the truth and power in my belief that
everyone has a story worth telling.
You’ve interviewed nearly 50 novelists and short story writers about the creative process for
your books, “Novel Ideas” and “Story Matters.” What was the most important lesson you
learned from them?
One of my favorite quotes about writing comes from Iris Murdoch’s “The Black Prince”: “I
live, I live with a continuous sense of failure. I am always defeated, always. Every book is the wreck of
a perfect idea. The years pass and one has only one life. If one has a thing to do one must do it and keep
on and on and on trying to do it better.” I know. It sounds so…negative. But the first time I read it I
was so relieved because it made me realize that I was not alone in the way I felt about my work. There
is joy in the process, of course. But it is also a huge and often daunting emotional challenge to write
well. Interviewing all those authors whose work I admired made me feel part of a community of serious
writers who try and fail and try again (and again) to say something real about what it’s like to be
human.
www.JKSCommunications.com . Marissa Curnutte . 347-574-3136 . marissa@jkscommunications.com