For Sidura Ludwig, whose short story collection You Are Not What We Expected won the Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature in 2021, the transition to writing for children came about organically. With an undergraduate degree in English and creative writing under her belt, she wanted to study writing at a master’s level, but none of the MFA programs excited her. 

It was at an Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference in 2017 in Tampa Bay, Florida, that Ludwig found all of the sessions she was drawn to were about writing for children and young adults. She struck up a conversation with the admissions director of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, also in attendance, who recommended Ludwig visit the college. 

“I fell in love with everything, the lectures, everything. I was like, ‘Yes, this is where I belong,’” Ludwig recalls. “That’s what led to my decision to do my MFA in children’s literature. Then, it’s like you open one door and it opens other doors. I had a picture book come out in May (Rising, Candlewick Press), and this book coming out in September was my creative thesis.”  

Swan: The Girl Who Grew (Nimbus Publishing, out now) is a reimagining of the childhood of Nova Scotia giantess Anna Swan, who at 12 years old was seven feet tall, and growing. Ludwig found Anna as organically as she found her way to children’s literature. On a family trip to Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, Ludwig found herself in a room dedicated to Anna Swan while visiting the Heritage Centre museum and was immediately struck by the story of the girl born in rural Nova Scotia in 1846. 

“I’m not a tall person. I’m five foot four, but I had reached my full height by the time I was 10 years old. I had that experience of being the biggest girl in the class,” says Ludwig. “I had these fears when I was a kid that I was going to keep growing, and I could connect to the idea of not feeling in control of your body at a young age. I knew when I walked into that room I had to do something with her story. It just took me a while to figure out how I wanted to tell it.”

Ludwig, who didn’t know at first that she was going to write a middle-grade novel, tried her hand at a number of different formats. After doing some research on Swan, she started playing with poems to see how they worked for her. 

“I felt that it was through the verse that I was really able to access the voice of the character, and that was something I had been struggling with in the other formats I tried,” Ludwig says. “Our thoughts don’t come to us in full sentences. They come in fragments. I used my semester off to write an exploratory draft. I sat down every day committed to writing five to 10 poems, and I used the time to research and to write wherever I felt an energy or an interest in Anna’s story, particularly parts I felt other people hadn’t explored.” Chief among those were Anna’s relationships with her grandmother and her sister, which allow readers to see Anna as human.   

Though Ludwig has written poetry throughout her life, she doesn’t consider herself a poet, and Swan is her first novel-in-verse. 

“I like to try different formats and whatever the format is that works for me, that works for the story, I will go with that,” she says. “I loved writing this book. I really loved playing with it. I loved the line breaks, the rhythm. It was a very joyous process.”

It also took Ludwig back to her 10-year-old self, and gave her the opportunity to pour all the things she wishes she could have said then onto the page. 

“I think of all the material I’ve written, this is the one I wrote for me, and this is the book I needed to read when I was younger,” says Ludwig. “I hope it reaches kids who also feel like this is a book they need to read. Maybe there are kids who see themselves in Anna and who can then start to think, how do I find my place? How do I learn to accept who I am and be proud of who I am?”

Photo Credit: Dana Castro