Living Many Lives by Jane Kelley

 

Mr. Mole (me!) and Mr. Rat (my dear friend Wendy Lueker)

My writing journey began in the theater. I wanted to experience more than seemed possible to a girl growing up in the Midwest. And so I was in every play in high school. I participated in Forensics competitions. I studied acting at Northwestern University. I did an acting apprenticeship at Actors Theatre of Louisville. I performed throughout the Midwest with the Chicago Free Street Theater. 

Somewhere along the way, I figured out that there were limits to acting. Mainly in getting cast! Ah, but in writing, the only limit to what I could embody was MY IMAGINATION.

Living many lives doesn't mean speaking for someone who can and should be speaking for themselves. It means considering other ways to be. Richer, poorer, in sickness, and in health -- well, you get the idea.

We are all individuals. Unique products of nature and nurture. But we can -- if we make the effort -- try to imagine what it is like to be someone else.

And if my imagination fails, then I can READ my way into another experience. 

Jane Kelley is the author of many middle-grade novels -- including one in which she got to imagine being an African Gray Parrot.