Q: What do you mean by “America’s Education Novelist?”

 

A: After I became comfortable with telling people I was a writer, the first question was always “What kind of books do you write?” For a while, I fumbled with half-witted, awkward answers that included words like “teachers,” “students,” “parents,” or whatever. I really learned to hate the question after a while. Then I started telling people to think of me as “the John Grisham of education.” I even started using the term “educational thrillers” instead of “legal thrillers,” but it sounded like I wrote lesson plans involving roller coasters or something. I’m a novelist whose main canvas is education. I don’t write courtroom dramas; I write classroom dramas.