Meeting Alma Flor Ada

If you love to write and you have met an author, you know the thrill it brings. It's like being a music lover and watching your favorite artist not in a concert, but in the studio. I listened to a radio DJ speaking after a live performance of Melissa Etheridge in the studio and the sensation he got from it, the chill with every note groaned with her head laid back, even the feeling of her spit against his arm.

Well, listening to an author speak about the craft of writing isn't quite so raw as what I just described, I think, but the inspiration and wonder is still there.

There is something about an author that sparkles with a humble glow... that mundane wisdom, that intuitive curiosity. These are qualities I certainly saw in Alma Flor Ada, children's story and folktale writer.

She happened to be the grandmother of a student in a writing class I volunteered in this past week. The teacher was thrilled to hear the news, as an avid reader and a fan of Ada. I admit that I had never heard of her before, but the response of the children to the mention of her book "The Gold Coin" stirred interest in me.

It was by a slim chance that she was able to visit at all, having come from the airport after a trip to Brazil just when her granddaughter asked her to drop by the class. Alma arrived with her daughter to the classroom, and I thought they were there merely to observe.

Do you know the story of "The Gold Coin"? Like I said, I hadn't heard of her nor her stories before, but as quickly arrived to the end of her brief description of the story, as if it were nothing, the lesson hit me suddenly like a hiccup. A good hiccup. How fascinating. I would hate to ruin the story for you if you haven't read it already, so I will leave it to you to do yourself.

She refused applause. She smiled constantly. She spoke with intense honesty. When she explained how her story came to her, she described how the lesson hit her herself with enough force to bring tears to her eyes. She cried as she drove home, she wrote the story immediately upon arrival, and she fell asleep. She dreamed of her story and was again saddened when she awoke, lamenting the dissolution of a glorious vision. However, she spied the papers she had truly written the night before and regained hope. The story hardly required revision, and it was published to great success.

Alma also shared with us her book of childhood stories "Where the Flame Trees Bloom (Allá donde florecen los framboyanes)", reading only a few lines at which the teacher sighed peacefully.

She was eager for questions, composed and full of roundabout answers. To a student inquiry concerning the length of time it took for her to complete books, she began with the quick jotting of "The Gold Coin," then mentioned her current two-year project: her memoir, which began as a one-book production, then three books, then back to one (the complexity of her memoir led to her turn to self-publishing).

Her willingness to connect with students and share her love for writing was captivating, though she seemed like a simple woman with short, grey hair, a silken scarf, and soft features. Introducing such a pleasant and fascinating author to a class of students full of potential is rare and yet all too powerful.