Jenny Howard (MFA in Creative Writing)

When Jenny Howard graduated from the University of Southern California, she had her sights set on dramatic writing: theater, screenwriting, maybe a musical or two. Fiction wasn’t exactly the plan. But somewhere between undergrad and now, she found her way to novels. Howard went on to earn her MFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University, where she was awarded one of the program’s very first creative writing fellowships, and has spent the last decade writing books, teaching at Chapman and the Orange County School of the Arts, and raising four children. Her debut middle-grade novel, Transylvania County, is out this July.

The book came to Howard through what she describes as “an unusual channel.” After her young adult debut When I was Summer came out in 2019, she took on a ghostwriting project for a Hollywood production company – a middle-grade novel that ended up landing on the desk of Pete Harris, head of publishing at Temple Hill. He reached out through her agent with a one-page concept for what would eventually become Transylvania County, and what followed was a years-long collaborative process unlike anything Howard had done before. She wrote sample pages. They developed an outline together. She sold the book on 100 pages and a pitch, then went back and wrote (and rewrote) the whole thing. Four times, start to finish.

“I enjoyed every step of it,” she said.

At the center of the story is Dig Roamer, a kid who’s spent his whole life being told he isn’t enough – too much trouble, not enough potential. Howard is careful about how she frames this. She doesn’t want Dig to have fully internalized the story others have told about him, because that would be too sad. What she wants instead is to watch him find his way out of the box everyone has tried to put him in. “I want kids to learn how to rewrite their own stories,” she said. “If a teacher doesn’t think you’re good enough, if a peer, a bully, a friend – sometimes people put us in a box, and we have to find our way out.” The adventure, the mystery, the spooky stuff, and magical characters are all a delivery mechanism for that core message.

The middle-grade audience wasn’t always where Howard expected to land. She wrote young adult for years, then spent her MFA writing literary fiction for adults. But when the ghostwriting gig dropped her into middle grade territory, something clicked. She had a file of childhood story ideas she’d been holding onto, and suddenly they all made sense. “It was a lightning bolt moment,” she said. “Why have I not been doing this all along?”

Teaching creative writing at Chapman, Howard says, did something specific for her own work: it taught her to get her ego out of the way. Watching students struggle to take feedback, to let go of lines they loved, made her hyperaware of how much precious attachment can hold a writer back. Now, she says, she can get a revision letter from her editor at Macmillan asking her to rethink a character and just do it. Rewrite the book. Eight weeks. No hurt feelings. “It’s just about the work,” she said.

The work itself happens in extraordinary conditions. Howard is currently mothering four children, ages seven, five, two, and (at the time of our interview) three weeks old. She writes in the early mornings at the YMCA near her house. Up at 4:45 a.m., out the door before the rest of the world, laptop open at a bistro table in the hallway by 6 a.m. “People who go to work out that early in the morning are not there to chat,” she said, “which suits me perfectly.” She estimates she can write for two to three focused hours before heading home to be fully present with her kids – and has found, counterintuitively, that the constraints of motherhood have made her more productive, not less. The second Transylvania County book, already written and currently in copy edits for a July 2027 release, was written almost entirely in those early morning YMCA sessions.

There’s also a third project in the works that hasn’t been announced yet, and Howard mentioned she’s already started writing something new during her maternity leave, because, as she put it, if she doesn’t write consistently, she doesn’t feel like herself.

Transylvania County publishes on July 21st from Macmillan. You can find more about Jenny Howard and her work at jennyhowardwrites.com.