Curious Interview: Ginger Churchill

Cabinet of Curiosities plans to bring you monthly fun and informative interviews. Ginger Churchill, a Cabinet contributor, is honored to be the guinea pig and do our first.

Ginger has five rambunctious children and thus the obligatory sense of adventure, humor and the tendency to lock herself in a closet from time to time on purpose. She is the author of Carmen's Sticky Scab--a ripping good picture book told with depth and sharks and also a Humpty Dumpty Magazine "Choice book" (Tanglewood 2008). Another picture book, Wild Rose's Weaving, is due out this October, also with Tanglewood. Wild Rose's story weaves together themes of creativity, the interplay of art and life, and the important gifts that are handed down through generations of women. Though Carmen and Wild Rose are artistically different, Ginger insists they are inseparable friends.

CABINET: Nature plays an important role in the picture book you have coming out later this year. If you go outside right now and look up--what do you see?

Ginger: Potential...and questions. How deep into space can you actually see out here under the blazing sun? Is a star right in front of me staring back? If I squint just right, could I see it? And how much hope does it take that cottonwood tree to send out these thousands of seeds? Will any of them grow? Potential. And questions.

CABINET: What website (apart from email or Facebook) could you not do without?

Ginger: Easy! My Writing in Depth online writers group. Friends, fun, laughs, tears, success, cyberhugs and writing. Absolutely indispensable.

CABINET: Could you explain to us the relationship between outhouses and spiders?

Ginger: Ha ha! No. I've blocked it out (although I do remember it was a monstrously huge Black Widow spider, and that it visited me more than once). If I manage to break through my psychological barrier, I'll post a link to it on my personal blog.

CABINET: Many of the characters in your stories get in trouble at school. Were you the teacher's pet or a fixture in the principal's office?

Ginger: Wow, that's tougher to answer than you might think. Both actually, but much more the pet than the fixture. In high school the principal kept calling me in to chat about personal issues--hers not mine. And then there was the time my dad gave the vice principal a ticket for running a red light (YES, Mr. Ardema, I KNOW you think it was yellow!!) I was always getting called in for something or other but not usually my behavior.

CABINET: If you could be any superhero or cartoon character, who would you be and why?

Ginger: FIRESTAR! I had the hots for Peter Parker in that afterschool Spider Friends show in the eighties. I used to try and heat up the water from my faucet like Firestar could. I swear it worked a time or two.

CABINET: Thanks, Ginger, for being a good sport and picking which of our many curious questions you wanted to answer and post yourself.

Ginger: Why you're welcome. Pleasure being here with all of you!

CABINET: No, no. OUR pleasure to be here with you, Ginger. OUR pleasure.