Debut Author Panel: Colleen Paeff

Colleen Paeff received a bachelor’s degree in set design for theater from California State University, Fullerton, before becoming a bookseller, preschool teacher, and newspaper columnist. (She never did become a set designer!) Her debut picture book, The Great Stink: How Joseph Bazalgette Solved London’s Poop Pollution Problem (illustrated by Nancy Carpenter), was named a 2022 Robert F. Sibert Informational Fiction Honor Book and won the 2022 Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction Text for Young Readers. 

What were you like as a kid? 

Colleen had a huge imagination as a kid, and like fellow panelist Pamela Harris, Colleen also loved Judy Blume saying, “To this day, every time Judy Blume appears, I start crying.”

When did you start writing?

Colleen got her first idea for a book in college when she was introducing her pet lizard to her dad who then leapt onto his glasses (the lizard did the leaping, not her father). Colleen admits that manuscript is still sitting in a drawer but that is what started her off. 

Between your first college lizard story and your debut book you may have experienced some challenging moments where you wanted to give up, how did you push through? 

Colleen says, “I feel like I did give up many times along the way. I had my family, and raised a child. I’d send a manuscript out and get rejected and then wait five years, and then revise it and send it out again… But the thing that really brought me back to writing seriously, after my daughter moved out for college, was I went to an SCBWI Writers Day and entered one of the contests."

Colleen's lizard story won one of these contests and that gave her the thought that maybe there was something there, it gave her a boost of confidence… "Now when I look back at the editor rejection letters, I received they weren’t really rejection letters—I didn’t realize what a big deal it was for someone to take the time to write something personal—it was actually an invitation to do more.”

Colleen credits trusting herself more than learning a new element of writing craft as the biggest factor in her sales success, and that a big part learning to trust herself came from finally finding her writing community. When Colleen first started to get serious about publishing she sent a request out on the SCBWI message board asking for people who were in the LA area that might want to join a monthly children’s book club. Ann Whitford Paul ended up seeing that post and invited Colleen to a write-in where she met lots of other local children’s book creators.

How did The Great Stink come about?

“How to be a Victorian was a book I was reading as research for another project, and it mentioned something called The Great Stink: When the River Thames was fullllll of sewage, and then, when a heat wave happened, it created this horrible, horrible smell…”

Colleen happened to be going to London and while there visited the Crossness Pumping station that pumped all that stink into a reservoir. Colleen found it all so fascinating. “What I hope readers take away, what I didn’t even realize, is that we still have billions of gallons of raw sewage going into our fresh waterways every year.” 

How has publishing changed your life? 

Colleen still has the same voices in her head saying the same mean things, sadly the publishing deal did not make the voices go away, but she keeps writing anyway. “Writing is so weird, for such a long time you don’t have The Book Deal. And yet you’re still spending so much time writing, working on it, revising, and YOU have to be the one to do it all. Now I feel like I have a team of people who have faith that I can publish a book, too.”

Look for Colleen's second book, Rainbow Truck (co-written with Hina Abidi and illustrated by Saffa Khan) from Chronicle Books in August of 2023 and learn more about her at www.colleenpaeff.com or on Instagram @ColleenPaeff and Twitter @ColleenPaeff.