A Conversation with Publications Director Molly McGrath

How did you come to be involved in The Telling Room? What drew you in?

After years as a book editor and educator in Boston, I found myself teaching English and History at Waynflete School in 2006, when Telling Room founder Susan Conley came to do a professional development writing workshop for educators. She told us about a fledgling creative writing organization that she and a few others were forming. Later that year, I heard about The Telling’s Room’s first funded project in Portland Public Schools. I volunteered to be a writing coach and worked alongside one of the students who became the authors of the book, I Remember Warm Rain.

A few months after this, Susan Conley and Gibson Fay-LeBlanc asked me to join the staff and I did! It was an opportunity to do the best possible work I could ever imagine: build a creative nonprofit organization from scratch, work alongside kids and teens on writing, and share their poems and stories. In those early days, many of Portland’s now well-established creative nonprofits were just starting up, and it was exciting to join forces with the creative people in our community, especially Maine’s youth. 

You’ve held many roles at The Telling Room over the years, and always been an advocate for young authors and their books. What have been some of the most memorable highlights of your time with The Telling Room?

I’m the person in our midst who knows our youth not always by their names, but by the titles of their stories and poems. So maybe the biggest highlights are of the book launches, witnessing writers transform into authors. I’ve also loved writing in the wilderness, inventing new programs like Young Emerging Authors and Young Writers & Leaders with youth who inspired them, and working with creative people (youth who are now in their 30s!) who have become lifelong friends. I won’t soon forget Slant, our storytelling series for adults, or the joy it’s been to create books like The Story I Want to Tell, Little Bird’s Flock, the Young Emerging Authors series of books, and the annual anthologies with Publishing Workshop. And the staff. Telling Room gold.

What would you like folks to know about Pink Eraser Press?

I’ve been creating and editing books for twenty-five years, and I absolutely love it. Pink Eraser Press is my publishing company, and as its owner and editorial director I’m excited to get to operate it full time. As a community partner of The Telling Room, I'll continue to make its youth-authored books as Pink Eraser Press, alongside long-time designers Andrew Griswold and Ashley Halsey. Together, Andrew, Ashley, and I have made all 200 and counting Telling Room books. We’ve made other books together as well—for schools, organizations, publishers, and individual authors of all ages. 

What are your hopes for the future of The Telling Room’s books?

Another 200 books! But also other types of publications…podcasts, huge street murals, poems on bus passes, flash fiction in vending machines…whatever Telling Room youth dream up. I’m excited for the next generation’s ideas and I hope future publications continue to come from what the youth authors and editors want to see and read. My favorite publication projects at The Telling Room are the youth-led ones. Also, Maine has some extraordinary people. I hope they keep reading youth writing and coming to more book launches too. 

Is there any particular punctuation mark that you identify with? Why? 

I love this question! No one’s ever asked me this before. I guess I’m fond of the question mark. I just read that it’s from the 5th century, and in the 8th century it was known as a lightning flash. Questions form from strikes of wonder, don’t they? The full stop, comma, em dash, tittle, and pilcrow are great as well. Maybe my best editing friend is the pilcrow, the paragraph symbol in Microsoft Word, which shows all of the tiny and important formatting marks in a manuscript.

Of course it’s impossible to choose from the many books and amazing authors over the years, but is there a quote or phrase, or book that you’d like to share with everyone? 

I do have some favorite Telling Room reads! I’d be happy if everyone read The Story I Want to Tell (the interviews in the back too), The Road to Terrencefield, A Season for Building Houses, A New Land (and its incredible podcast and great stuff for educators), Between Two Rivers, and Yellow Apocalypse.