Storytelling and Safe Places

An Interview with Printz Honor-Winning Writer Lisa Fipps

Authors

  • Kevin B. Kienholz Emporia State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.62704/

Keywords:

young adult literature, Lisa Fipps, safe spaces, storytelling

Abstract

Author Lisa Fipps appeared as the featured speaker at the Literature Festival held on the campus of Washburn University in fall 2022. During this interview, discussion ranged from the impact of winning a Printz Honor to the influence of her background in libraries and journalism to the challenges and benefits of writing for an audience of young readers. The interview focuses on the prominent role of safe places and storytelling in Fipps’ debut verse novel Starfish (2021); following the interview, the article explores these same themes in her second verse novel And Then, Boom! (2024). In her books and in this interview, Fipps explores the reasons why young people need to count on having safe spaces in their lives to help them deal with a difficult and challenging world, and she explores the important role that storytelling can hold in the lives of her protagonists as well as her young readers. 

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Author Biography

  • Kevin B. Kienholz, Emporia State University

    Kevin Kienholz is a professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Emporia State University, where he works primarily with preservice middle and high school English teachers. He joined the faculty at ESU in 2000 after having taught English for seven years in his home state of Oklahoma. He can be reached at kkienhol@emporia.edu.

Kansas English, vol. 106

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Published

2025-07-15

Issue

Vol. 106 (2025)

Section

Interviews

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Storytelling and Safe Places: An Interview with Printz Honor-Winning Writer Lisa Fipps. (2025). Kansas English, 106. https://doi.org/10.62704/