An Interview with Léna Roy and Charlotte Jones Voiklis on Becoming Madeleine

A Wrinkle in Time is one of those magical books that stays with you for a lifetime. Now that it’s about to be made into a major motion picture directed by Ava DuVernay, this classic is more popular than ever! Now imagine if the author, Madeleine L’Engle, was your grandmother! Léna Roy and Charlotte Jones Voiklis got to experience just that and their new biography, Becoming Madeleine, explores the life and writings of this legendary author. We got to ask them our burning questions, from what their grandmother was really like, to what scene was left out of the final manuscript.
Can you tell us a little bit about your grandmother’s life? Something we might be surprised to learn?  
Léna Roy: She wanted to be a playwright before she turned to writing novels full time! While she always knew she wanted to be a writer, she experimented with different genres. In high school, she wrote lots of poetry. In college, short stories. And when she moved to New York, she was writing plays.
Charlotte Jones Voiklis: And though she is best known for her novels, she still wrote poetry and short stories and plays into adulthood. Also, she played a dastardly mean game of table tennis.
What was it like to have her as a grandmother? (It seems like the coolest thing ever!) 
LR: Yes! And instead of the proverbial baking and knitting, we had Shakespeare, hiking and stargazing!

CJV: We didn’t know our paternal grandparents at all, so she and our grandfather Hugh Franklin (an actor who was on the soap opera All My Children) were what we thought grandparents were.
Can you give us any behind-the-scenes insight about the book A Wrinkle in Time? 
CJV: She famously said that the characters Mrs Which, Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who just popped into her head, and they probably did, but the concepts and themes had been brewing for a long time. As part of our research for our book Becoming Madeleine, we read some of her journals and discovered references to the tesseract and how the sonnet is a metaphor for free will, both important to a book she wrote ten years later..
LR: It had a difficult time finding a publisher, and she almost gave up. Once it was finally accepted for publication, she cut a lot, including a scene with a musical number!
Do you remember the first time you read it?
LR: It was the book that catapulted me into reading full-length novels! In the beginning of first or second grade, my teacher read part of the first chapter aloud to us. I was so riveted that I immediately walked down the few blocks to my grandmother’s apartment, grabbed the book and curled up on a bed and didn’t stop reading! I reread it multiple times as a kid and now I still read it once a year.
CJV: I don’t. It just seems to have always been part of me. But I, too, turn to it and her other books again and again. I manage her social media presence and there’s always a quote that seems to be perfect for the current moment.
Did she inspire you to write books yourself?
LR: I always wrote and was constantly inspired by Gran to stretch my imagination as a kid, but I couldn’t take myself seriously as a writer until well into my adulthood. How could I follow in her very large footsteps? I had to realize that there was no way I could match her footprints, and nor would she want me to. She wanted me to be unequivocally myself, and that’s why I am constantly exploring, and also why I teach!
CJV: I never wanted to write a book! It looked too hard, and like teaching, something you had to really be called to and want to do, need to do, if you are going to do it right. But we had a wonderful time working together, and it was hard work, but it was fun, too.
Why did you and your sister decide to write this biography now?
CJV: She loved celebrating her birthday, and in November 2018 is her centenary. We wanted to do something special for her, and had been thinking ahead and were talking to her publisher about a book. And then the news about the movie broke and it pushed us into high gear!
LR: I always wanted to write about her earlier years, but was hesitant to be the one “voice” who weaved together the narrative of her life. Different perspectives are important! I knew that if I was to do anything, it had to be with Charlotte, and that yes, other people could write about Gran, but that we together had a unique perspective and could tell her story in a way that nobody else could.
Are you excited for the movie? Do you think your grandmother would be surprised that all these years later her book is more popular than ever? 
CJV: We are very excited! It’s introducing A Wrinkle in Time to a new generation of readers and it looks like it will be wonderful. I think our grandmother would be amazed and awed and humbled to realize that she wrote a book that has continued to be so powerfully meaningful to readers over all this time.
LR:  She would be starry-eyed to know that the book has inspired so many other artists!
CJV: Yes, she always marveled at how a work of art has a life of its own. And it was important to her that readers be able to engage with and interpret her work. There are five current adaptations available to schools and community theatres.
LR: The book will always be the book, no matter how many changes other interpretations and adaptations make! The exciting thing about movie adaptations is the extreme collaborative effort involved, creating something “new” and visually exciting from something tried and true.
Becoming Madeleine is on B&N bookshelves now!