WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW: MARGARET SANGER’S JOURNEY, a YA biographical novel by J. Albert Mann is officially out in the world today! Hooray!

The story is a fictionalized account of the adolescence of Margaret Sanger, a women’s health advocate and Planned Parenthood founder, who struggles with poverty. According to Kirkus Reviews, “Mann has created a sympathetic character in the rebellious Maggie. . . . An important, readable novel about Sanger, who changed the fate of millions of women through access to contraception.”

To celebrate her book, the author and fellow Vermont College of Fine Arts alumna J. Albert Mann is answering a few questions here on The Magic Mirror.

Happy release day! This is your sixth book now coming out, if you could look back at your debut author version just before your first book came out, what advice would you have given yourself?

It felt like the world was resting on my shoulders the year my first book published. Blogging, social media, school and library events, conferences, festivals, panels…I attempted to do it all. My advice to myself now would be to breathe. Debuting is a bit like the lead up to a wedding—you don’t have to do everything everyone else does. I could have created my own path, done my own thing, take on as much as I felt comfortable with. Today, this is exactly how I handle each of my launches.

Wow. Wise advice — also, are you reading my mind? 🙂

February is #authorlife month. What do you wish people knew about an author’s life?

An author’s life is self-directed, which, besides the actually writing, is what I like best about it. I decide where to spend my time: researching, writing, promotion, teaching, or taking a long walk to think or clear my head.

Do you have a favorite scene in your novel, one that was the most fun to write, one that you still remember with fondness?

My favorite scene in WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW is when Margaret first admits her dream of becoming a doctor out loud. Saying what we want most in the world—what we hope to achieve, or do, or become—can be terrifying. We all want things, but not all of us are brave enough to admit them. Admitting our dreams makes us vulnerable. But I believe it’s an important step on the way to achieving any goal. Margaret admits to her dream of becoming a doctor in front of her brothers outside of school during lunch, and for the first time, she seriously wonders if it’s possible…that a poor girl in 1895 from Upstate New York become a doctor. It turns out, it wasn’t. This hole in the fabric of society—women’s thwarted aspirations—prompted Margaret to change the world. The work she did went on to help so many other women achieve their dreams.

Sounds like a powerful scene!

You are an award-winning poet. How does your poetry inform your prose?

Poetry is the sound of words, their rhythms, even the look of them strung together in a line and the blocks of paragraphs on a page all play an important part in my prose. When I write, I’m consciously feeling the words…the time it takes to type them out, the power of them, the ease of them. This is all followed by the most important step in my writing process, something which I call “ironing.” It’s when I read the entire book out loud over and over again. I need to hear the ups and downs in my characters’ voices and thoughts, feel the shape of the words in my mouth, listen to the length of descriptions, how the chapters move from one to the next. All of these things matter deeply. The elements of poetry can’t be separated from prose.

Spoken like a true poet.

Thank you, Jennifer, again, for being here! Everybody go find her book and give it the welcome this important story deserves!