Canton native makes literary debut with highly acclaimed novel for teens

Looking back on her childhood, Kim Marcus says she can’t remember a time when she wasn’t writing.

“I remember writing poems from the time I was little,” said Marcus (née Weiner), a 1984 graduate of Canton High. “I was interested in the sounds, rhythm, rhyme. I used to write poetry in my bedroom late at night as a little kid.”

Kim Marcus

Although Marcus always excelled in writing and English classes throughout her time in the Canton Public Schools, she never envisioned writing as her career.

“I remember my grandmother, in particular, used to write my poems down in a little notebook,” she said. “I thought that was the greatest thing — the closest thing I would get to being published.”

In college she studied psychology and sociology and spent years as a social worker and child therapist. It wasn’t until Marcus had two children of her own that she thought about writing a book of her own.

“I was reading obsessively to my children,” she said. “And I developed an interest in writing my own picture books.”

Marcus dove head-first into this new endeavor, entering a graduate certificate program for writing at Emerson College, joining a local writers’ organization and attending a writing conference. At the conference, Marcus mentioned her background as a child therapist to one editor, and the editor asked if Marcus had considered writing a novel about trauma.

“To me a novel seemed like an ominous task,” Marcus said. “But I decided that if I was going to write one, trauma was a topic that most interested me.”

Now, almost a decade since Marcus first decided to focus on writing, she’s about to be a published author twice over. On April 14, G.P. Putnam’s Sons will publish Scritch-Scratch a Perfect Match, the story of how a lonely dog and a lonely man find each other.

“It uses a lot of wordplay, rhyme and onomatopoeia,” Marcus said. “It will be fun to read aloud.”

But it is Marcus’s teen novel, Exposed, that will mark her entrance into the world of published authors. Exposed, which tells the story of Liz, a 16 year old with a knack for photography, will be available February 22 from Random House Children’s Books.

“She’s very confident in what she sees, what she thinks about people as she looks through the lens,” Marcus said of the main character Liz. “But all that’s called into question when her brother is accused of raping her best friend.”

Liz, therefore, is left to decide whether her friend is a liar or her brother is a rapist.

“It takes a unique look at an all-too-common, horrific occurrence,” Marcus said. “But it looks at rape not through the standard view of the primary victim, but through the splintering effects on the community.”

Marcus was able to draw from her experience as a child therapist and social worker when writing about trauma. But Marcus said she wrote Exposed focusing more on her memories of what it was like to be a teen.

Exposed is due out February 22

“I wanted to tap into those feelings of where do I belong, who do I want to be, what’s important to me,” she said. “I love writing for teens. I remember being a teen more than my 20s and even my 30s. That’s kind of the period of my life that stands out most.”

Marcus started by writing Exposed in prose, but found herself stuck on a number of scenes. A friend suggested she try and write the scenes as quick poems as a writing exercise. It was so successful that Marcus decided to return to her first love, poetry, and wrote the entire novel in free verse.

“Scenes would come to me in snapshots, and poetry let me hone in on them,” Marcus said. “It forced me to find the core of the scene and the best words to describe what I was trying to say.”

Exposed is already garnering much attention in the literary world. Random House made it one of their lead titles for their spring collection and Amazon named it one of the best books for February.

For more information, visit www.kimberlymarcus.com. To meet the author, you can attend Exposed’s launch party at Baker Books (69 State Road, North Dartmouth) on Sunday, March 6, at 2 p.m.

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Posted by Jeffrey Cattel on Feb 16 2011. Filed under Features. Both comments and pings are currently closed.