Barr book a great read

St. Albert fans of young adult fiction are about to be in for a treat with the release of a new title. St. Albert Catholic High School grad Lauren Barr has just put out her first book called New City and it’s a page-turner not just for its intended audience.

The post-apocalyptic story is set in a civilization wiped out by a sickness. Two sisters, Evie and Kit, are forced to leave their home in search of food, better shelter, and other survivors. Of course, troubled times mean that no such journey would ever be easy.

The pace is excellent, the plot is riveting, and the characters feel real, even if they exist in a dystopian wasteland. What’s more, Barr writes with assuredness, something that probably came from her years as a journalist and a lifelong writer. New City is both literate and populist, something that should help it appeal to a broad range of readers, both women and men, young and old alike.

The Gazette interviewed Barr via email from her home in Geneva, Switzerland. The Q & A revolved around the YA genre, the struggles of being a new author, and what the future really holds for her.

Scott Hayes: Is Young Adult typically the kind of book that you find yourself reading? If not, why venture into this territory? Is it because YA has seen a resurgence lately, or is it because you're most interested in reaching that audience?

Lauren Barr: “While I try to be as varied as possible when it comes to the fiction that I read, YA is a genre that I often come back to. It makes me so happy to see such a strong resurgence of the genre – I consider it like a “gateway” genre to create lifelong readers. It’s exciting to see so many kids and teens really getting into books.”

“I used to work at the St. Albert Public Library at the summer reading program and it was always great to find those books that would capture a young person’s imagination. I’m a little bit jealous that this resurgence didn’t happen when I was a teen, and I didn’t have access to all these fantastically written books until now.”

“What I really love about YA books is there is almost always an underlying feeling of hope and optimism, no matter how dark the subject matter. Even when situations are complicated or tragic, there is a right thing to do, which the hero usually does. They are feel-good books, and at the end of the day I’m a sucker for happy endings.”

“Sometimes I feel that adult novels focus almost too much on showing the dark, gritty side of life, the human failings and mistakes that are all too realistic. Reading too much of this can be depressing.”

SH: Do YA books have to have that futuristic/dystopian/sci-fi element in order to be successful, or is that just what interests you as the writer?

LB: “I don’t think a dystopian or sci-fi element is necessary to make YA books successful, but it sure is fun to write. I love the fact that sci-fi is seeing such popularity today. At the heart of it, it’s one of the most creative genres to write. You get to create an entire world from scratch and aren’t held back by the rules of reality. That’s one of the aspects I enjoyed the most about writing New City – the fact that the universe there was entirely mine.”

SH: I understand that you've got the sequels already on the go. Is that another given with YA books?

LB: “I would like to say no, but that does seem to be the way with YA novels, doesn’t it? In fact, New City was originally written without a sequel in mind, and had a different ending. But through several rewrites, I found my characters developing into more complicated people and all of a sudden the ending I had planned didn’t make any sense.”

“I finally called up my editor and told her I thought I’d have to change the ending and she agreed – the characters had outgrown a more simplistic ending. And that opened up the story to continue on. I went back and forth whether I should write a sequel, but eventually decided I wanted to see where the story would go.”

SH: What led to you being an author? You said that you were a reporter before. Where/when? Were you always working on personal pet projects like this?

LB: “I became a writer in a roundabout way and have tried several careers already. I was a lawyer before I was a journalist, but I wanted to write for a living and decided to go back to school in journalism. After that I worked at the Calgary Sun, writing about home design and dĂ©cor of all things.”

“After a maternity leave I decided I would prefer to work freelance from home while caring for my child (now children!), a goal that has been put on hold when my family moved to Geneva last year. So for the moment my writing is entirely my own, which is kind of great.”

“Writing has always been a part of my life, and I’ve always had either stories or novels that I’m working on. New City was the first novel I decided to take to the next level and publish. New City was a special project for me from the beginning. My father [prominent St. Albert architect Stephen Barr] passed away very suddenly several years ago, and I started writing as a form of catharsis, a way to deal with the grief. I wrote a rather dark short story to begin with, which became the foundation for New City.”

SH: How satisfying is it to see your book hit the light of day? How long a struggle was it? What facilitated/hindered its progress?

LB: “Was it ever nice to publish my book. It took about five years from start to finish to get New City ready for publishing, and six rewrites. It can be exhausting and tedious, but well worth it in the end. I feel that all the hard work paid off, as I am so happy with the end result – it is the novel that I always meant to write.”