Anything can inspire this author

In a way, Katharine Johnson's writing career was sparked by a dislike of washing dishes.

The Cloquet author recounts how she was always trying to figure out ways to not do the dishes when she was a little girl.

"So when it was my turn one time, I just scooted upstairs and hid from my mother," she said. "I don't know what possessed me, but I said: 'I can't, I'm writing a book.' And lo and behold, she did the dishes for me."

She started, but never finished, that particular mystery novel, and decided years later that she "owed" her mother a book.

Consider that debt paid.

Johnson's most recent offering, "Born in a Red Canoe," is one of four books in the running for a Minnesota Book Award in the Young Adult Fiction category. Winners will be announced May 2 at the awards ceremony in St. Paul.

"Born in a Red Canoe" tells the story of Purslane, who is born while a blazing comet flies overhead, a sign that she will receive supernatural gifts. Instead, her mother dies and she is raised by her father, who is gripped by the past and his own addictions. After he sells her to a farmer, she escapes and begins a magical and perilous journey, where she unearths the lost canoe and unravels the secrets of her birth, her mother and her true identity.

Told in the first person, Purslane's story is filled with wild characters and challenges she must overcome, including a dad who really wasn't a good father, although he was a good storyteller when he wasn't too far gone.

"I never questioned Father on the discrepancy between his stories on how Alcyone came from the Pleiades to marry him and how she had a family here on earth. Given enough time, most of his stories had alternative versions so I just listened politely and looked up as much as I could in my mother's dictionary. Sometimes I found another story there. Deciding which was the true one didn't worry me much most of the time."

Inspiration

Inspiration for her books comes from many places. A childhood memory of her mom waking her to go outside and see a luna moth, or a quirky aunt who became the Bird Woman in "Born in a Red Canoe."

A bear at the bird feeder became the main character of her children's picture book, "The Mukluk Ball."

That book was inspired by a trip to Ely and signs for the real Mukluk Ball.

"I thought, that's a perfect title for a children's book, but I couldn't figure out what story should go with it," she said. "Who wants to go to the Mukluk ball? Kids? Then that fall I looked out the window and there was a bear standing on its hind legs, taking our bird feeder and just shaking the seeds into his mouth. I said, 'That's who wants to go to the Mukluk Ball' and it just all came together from there."

The former Cloquet High School English and Spanish teacher is very comfortable writing about young people. "Sylvie's Silence" is about a girl from the Iron Range - where Johnson grew up - who loses her memory and her voice, and her journey to find her real family and identity. $Sylvie's Silence" has been nominated for a Northeastern Minnesota Book Award.

Johnson is also fascinated by history. She was researching the Sámi people - her ancestors - when inspiration struck.

"One day I just imagined this young woman walking on the tundra," she said. "It's bare and cold and she's alone. I started asking myself questions: Who is she? Why is she there? Where is she going?

"I just started writing things about her. I think I spent about 10 years writing little things for workshops and stuff. And finally my friend said, 'you know, this is a novel.'"

Johnson joined National Novel Writing Month that November, and her historical novel, "The Wind and the Drum" was the result. This story of the Sámi people set on the tundra of 17th-century Sweden and Finland was selected for One Book Northland in 2018.

The writing process

Unlike some writers who have the beginning and end already planned, Johnson doesn't know where a book is going when she starts.

"I just let things happen," she said. "In a class I took from Carol Bly, she said 'if you get really deeply involved in your writing, you will receive gifts.' My gifts are sometimes my characters do surprising things or a character I never expected will pop into the book and become very pivotal. You're really tapping into your right brain for that to happen."

Katharine and her husband, Dale - who taught social studies at CHS - live on a dead-end street off Big Lake Road on the Fond du Lac Reservation near Cloquet. They get lots of animal visitors and not too much traffic.

It's a good place to write ... maybe even a magical place. In the summertime, she likes to walk along the road and think about her latest book.

"In the summertime when the weather is good I walk along the road," Johnson said. "Sometimes my characters walk with me, and I talk to them and find out what's going on in their lives."

Johnson wrote when she was working, but mostly essays and smaller projects. It was like "practice," she said. It wasn't until she retired in 1999 that she found the freedom to become a book author, no longer confined by the structure or timetables of a job.

Johnson said Dale was the one who pushed her to publish her writings. He provides support in other ways too, reading, editing, conversational book promotion, providing moral support during interviews and being "an instigator," she said.

"I've learned that washing dishes and writing are not mutually exclusive," she said. "But fortunately, I have a husband who will wash the breakfast dishes while I head off to the computer room."

Some things never change.