Minnesota author Kelly Barnhill on learning to write again after traumatic brain injury

CATHY WURZER: So many readers love Minnesota author Kelly Barnhill. Barnhill's known for her gift for sparkling prose, enchanting readers of all ages all around the world. But almost exactly two years ago, the Newbery award winner suffered a serious concussion. The author of The Girl who Drank the Moon, The Ogress and the Orphans, and When Women Were Dragons says she has no memory of what happened that day. She does know she fell somehow and hit the back of her head.

After the accident she realized, to her horror, she had lost her ability to write. And her recovery has been slow. In November, the New York Times published her essay about the experience. She told MPR's Euan Kerr the brain fog caused by the concussion meant it took months to write that piece.

KELLY BARNHILL: To not be able to make a sentence in conversation, to not be able to make a sentence in an email, that email became really, that was really devastating for me. I realized that I couldn't write in cursive anymore. I realized, yeah, I'm still working on that. It is hard. I can't do swipe on my phone. Weird little things like that. And so you don't realize that things that are gone until you are well enough to be able to even think about it, right.

I didn't realize that I had a headache every single day, because I was asleep all the time. These things that you find yourself gravitating towards that you don't realize that it's a coping mechanism, right. And so you don't really know from what you are coping, right. When it became clear to me that writing fiction was not in the cards for me, I gravitated towards index cards, because they were contained.

And there is something wonderful about a sentence. For me, just finding a sentence that pleased me, a sentence that felt good to write out, though, that looked pretty on the card, that felt pretty when I read it out loud. That it felt good-- oh gosh. That it felt good in the mouth. It felt good in the ear. It had good resonance in my chest. And that would-- I would think about it and think about it until I had it, and then I would write it down. And I mostly recycled those, too.

But that was my practice for a really long time.

EUAN KERR: And by recycling, I take it you mean you're putting them in the recycling bin. You're not using--

KELLY BARNHILL: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I used to say I threw them in the trash, but then people thought that I wasn't a recycler. So I can't say that anymore.

[LAUGHS]

I do recycle. It's very important.

[LAUGHS]

EUAN KERR: So somehow, though, you managed to put together this piece, which was in the New York Times. It was published about a month ago.

KELLY BARNHILL: Yeah. Yeah.

EUAN KERR: And it's a remarkable piece.

KELLY BARNHILL: Thanks. I worked really hard on it.

[LAUGHS]

EUAN KERR: And on top of that, they did a really nice presentation with a little bit of that computer animation stuff that they do as well. Very cool.

KELLY BARNHILL: Yeah.

EUAN KERR: And then you let it go into the world. What happened next?

KELLY BARNHILL: I have had so many emails from people. Probably about 600 emails. Some of them have come through the New York Times, some of them have come to me via my publisher. And some of them have come to me via my agent. And sometimes people find my email, I don't know how. And--

EUAN KERR: There are ways.

KELLY BARNHILL: There are ways, I suppose. Some people are just better sleuths than me. And, I mean, one person was a fifth grade teacher. Read the piece to his fifth graders. And they wrote me poems. It was so nice. Oh my gosh, it was nice.

EUAN KERR: Wow.

KELLY BARNHILL: But I have heard from so many people. And they have said, and it is the same thing that they keep saying. Your story is my story. Everything that you experienced, these are things I experienced, too. And I just thought, and also, I have felt so alone with this. And maybe that's a mistake, right, that we make people feel alone in this journey. This journey that is apparently quite common.

[LAUGHS]

So maybe if we can have better language around it. Also, a very common thing that people said to me was, OK, so that truism that after two years there's no healing that happens, that's absolute baloney. Because these are the things that suddenly got better for me after four years or five years or nine years, even. Which is a long time to wait. But whatever. That sounds great. Our brains are amazing in terms of what they can figure out over time.

EUAN KERR: One of the knives which you use in your piece. The wound that you--

KELLY BARNHILL: Oh yeah, yeah.

EUAN KERR: Is the fact that you started introducing yourself saying, I used to be an author.

KELLY BARNHILL: Yeah. Oh, it makes my husband so mad.

EUAN KERR: And he would correct you. And he would correct you. He said, no, you're still an author.

KELLY BARNHILL: Yeah. He's the greatest. Oh my gosh.

EUAN KERR: Well, I hope you're not saying that still. But I'm just wondering where you are on that continuum now.

KELLY BARNHILL: That's a really good question. I mean, for a long time, I wouldn't call myself an author anyway. Particularly--

EUAN KERR: But you've got how many books now?

KELLY BARNHILL: I know, I know. Because it's never a fun conversation, right? You tell people you're an author, and it's just, I don't know.

EUAN KERR: It kills things off, OK.

KELLY BARNHILL: It does.

EUAN KERR: But let's ignore that.

KELLY BARNHILL: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is hard for me to call myself an author, because I don't always feel like it. Despite the fact that these books are out there in the world and doing their thing. And despite the fact that I get these really adorable letters from children often with pictures or with their book report or sometimes emails hoping that I will write their book report.

[LAUGHS]

What is the plot of your book? And also, what are some of the themes?

EUAN KERR: We are so devious, we humans.

KELLY BARNHILL: I know.

EUAN KERR: Even at an early age.

KELLY BARNHILL: Oh, my darling child.

[LAUGHS]

I mean, part of me saying I used to be an author is actually my own way of reclaiming my own narrative and being OK, right. If I don't write another book again, it's OK. I've written a bunch of books. Many of them have done things that I could never have predicted or imagined. And they live outside of me.

I say this all the time that the writer doesn't build the story, the reader builds the story. And sometimes, every once in a while, I get to bear witness to what they're building and what they're making. This thing that exists totally separate from me. That is a remarkable thing. And if this is all I get to write in my life, I feel pretty satisfied with it.

Right when the war in Ukraine began, I got this email from a teacher in Moldova. And her class had read Girl Who Drank the Moon. And--

EUAN KERR: So this is after your injury.

KELLY BARNHILL: This is after my injury. And this was when I was-- I thought for sure, there's just no way. I mean, just even writing this piece for the New York Times was so beyond what I thought I would ever be able to do. And this was when I was really leaning into this. That this is the last chapter of that part of my career. And then what happens next, we'll just have to see.

But I had this teacher from Moldova reach out to me. And because her students had made this little movie of Girl Who Drank the Moon. It was right before the invasion. And we were waiting and hoping that it wasn't going to turn into the thing that it was. And she said, we are watching these armies amass and we are terrified. And we are terrified that we are next.

And all I'm trying to do is give the children stories and to help them to find ways to be OK to use their imaginations and be OK. And I just, I started to cry. And I said, will you please? So I said I watched it, it's wonderful. And will you please send this message to your students? I love you. I love you. I love you.

And my books are my love letters to children and to readers. And it's OK if that's all there is. So really, I don't think of myself as an author, really. I think of myself as just somebody who writes love letters to the world. And that's it.

CATHY WURZER: And that is MPR's Euan Kerr, speaking to Minneapolis writer Kelly Barnhill. You can find a link to the article she wrote on mprnews.org.