New York Times bestseller Kathleen Glasgow, author of Girl in Pieces and other books, visited WBHS on April 13th, during lunch and 6th period. She answered questions such as the process of starting her career and the difficulties she faced. Kathleen Glasgow will also be attending the BAM festival (Book, Art, and Music festival) and will be participating in the Neurodivergent and Matters of the mind panels. Kathleen Glasgow was chosen to be the visitor out of a list of authors who come to Florida early before the BAM festival to visit schools. 

Kathleen Glasgow first found her interest in writing through poetry and then began writing her novel. Glasgow was prompted to write Girl in Pieces after seeing a 15-year-old girl on the bus with scars like hers. She suffered from self harm and depression and has been in recovery for 16 years. 

Kathleen Glasgow has an MFA in poetry and has also written and co-written 8 novels. She took nine years and 13 drafts to write Girl in Pieces. 

Glasgow’s other book, You’d Be Home Now was inspired by a play called Our Town by Thornton Wilder. You’d Be Home Now took her two years to write. The original U.S. cover of You’d Be Home Now was a girl with buildings behind her and the cover we see now is actually the UK cover but was then changed to the U.S cover as well. 

A student asked how to start writing a book. First, she advised that you write for at least ten minutes a day to build creative muscle memory. Then, Glasgow told everyone to write down a secret on a post-it that you have never told anyone else. That would be the first sentence of whatever you’re trying to write. She said that the writing exercise could be used for any genre, as long as you adapted the starting sentence. Another exercise she introduced was writing a letter to someone but not sending it. 

Overall, the meeting was a great educational opportunity for aspiring writers and she gave very interesting advice on starting a writing career by letting us in on her process of writing. 

“You have a voice, use it to make the world you want to live in”- Kathleen Glasgow.

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