On March 16, 2021, I sat down with Dr. Jennifer Miskec to conduct an interview over Zoom. She is my Children’s Literature professor, and she is very passionate about her subject matter, which is why I chose her as my interviewee. My main goal was to find out more about her career: what got her into it, what it’s like, and how she would advise others who wish to pursue it.
LM: What initially got you interested in literature?
JM: I was a reader from a very young age. My mom always was a big reader, and she and I would read to each other, and as I got a little older, she would go to the library and get books, and I would start reading all of her books that she got at the library, and she would often read the books I brought home from school. That’s what got me into literature in the first place. It was just something we did at my house. I liked children’s literature, and I liked mysteries and young adult literature as a hobby, and that got me into wanting to study it.
LM: What draws you to children’s literature and YA literature specifically?
JM: It was something I enjoyed reading. My mom always liked it as well. We both always read children’s and young adult literature, even when I got older, and I always was really drawn to it. When I would find an author I liked, I would read everything that person had written. When I was in high school and having to read the classics, on my own time, I would still go and read children’s and young adult literature.When I was in graduate school, I met professors who reminded me that I could study children’s and young adult literature professionally, and once I knew that was a thing, then, you know, why not take the thing that you love doing in your free time and turn it into your profession? That seems like a no-brainer.
LM: It seems like your mom had a lot of influence in all this.
JM: She’s cool, yeah. My dad had a pretty serious learning disability in terms of reading. It wasn’t dyslexia, but it’s something similar. So he never was a reader because reading was really, really hard for him. I mean, he can read, but he just wasn’t a person who read for fun. So my mom and I would often be reading, and he was watching sports or playing cards or something. He had different hobbies. But my mom and I are a lot alike. We can disappear into a book for hours at a time, and people can be calling our name, and we don’t hear them.
LM: What is one of your fondest memories of your time teaching here at Longwood?
JM: There are always students who are very memorable. Sometimes, those students are memorable just because they have a good attitude, and they’re fun to have in class, and I learn from them. Sometimes, they’re students who’ve taken many classes with me so I really get to know them, or we might go to a conference together, or we might study abroad together, so we might have a kind of outside-the-classroom relationship. That’s many experiences, but those are the things that I probably will always remember. It’s just those special students that were funny or interesting or interested in the classes. So it’s not really a memorable experience singularly, but it’s the thing that I think is most memorable about teaching at Longwood.
LM: I’d love to hear some of your stories about these memorable students.
JM: Well, one student I always think about is a student I had who probably graduated ten years ago. Her name was Amy McGregor, and she was such a good student. She was smart and loved being in the classroom, and she was just so easy to like, and she was a real leader. She and I started working on a special project together; her mother is deaf, and so we were looking at deaf characters in children’s literature. We ended up taking that project to an international children’s literature conference. She delivered this paper to a room of fifty people with such ease and grace. Afterwards, during the question and answer period, all these scholars were asking her serious questions. It was such a really cool moment. First of all, I’m so excited to see her succeed and be taken seriously, cause that’s my goal for my students, always. But I also felt very proud. She didn’t need me. She just needed a reason to be good. I just led her in that direction and gave her an opportunity to, but she was good regardless of who she worked with. That’s a good memory.
LM: On your Longwood teacher profile, it said you spent time in Croatia as a 2019 Fulbright scholar. What was that like?
JM: Well, that was a dream come true! So Fulbright is an American organization that’s about making connections between American scholars to scholars around the world. When you apply for Fulbright, it’s very competitive. If you earn the position, it’s because the country you wanna work in also wants to work with you. I made it through the first round on the American side, they presented it to Croatia, Croatia wanted me too, and so I was able to go and live in Croatia for eight months, and the Fulbright organization paid for it. I taught a children’s literature class at the University of Zagreb, and I did a number of presentations all around the country. It was so much fun. I met really cool people, I went to a couple conferences, and I really got to know some of the small towns and some of the coastal towns. I just got to immerse myself in the culture in a way that really allowed me to better understand this country that I loved. My family’s Croatian, so I have always loved Croatia. To be able to go and live there for eight months…it’s magical. It was really, really great. I would do it again.
LM: Do you think you would ever consider writing a book of your own?
JM: No, I don’t think I actually will. I feel like getting into writing as a professional is really hard. You sometimes have to be at the right place at the right time. It seems that there are so many good writers who never get any attention, and there are so many crappy writers who have connections, and so it’s just such a corrupt game. I don’t know if I ever actually wanna get into it. But Chris and I, my husband, he and I have both kinda dabbled in fiction, just for fun, but we don’t really have any dreams of taking it anywhere. We have good ideas for stories, but we’re not really serious enough to sit down and write it. So probably not.
LM: What advice would you have for someone interested in your field?
JM: The first step is making sure that you know the kind of literature you want to study. If you know you wanna study children’s literature, there are particular programs that specialize in children’s literature. My best advice would be to think long and hard about the kind of literature you wanna study. The other big bit of advice is, when you do know which way you wanna go, especially if you’re gonna study literature, go to a school that offers assistanceships. Make sure that you have a really good funding source, because going into debt to study literature isn’t very responsible. I would advise people to make fiscally responsible decisions. So that is the advice I would give.
In conclusion, what started out as a childhood love of literature eventually grew into a deep fascination with it that set Dr. Miskec on her current career path. Since then, she’s been at Longwood University, making memories with memorable students while turning the thing she loves into her profession. While she will probably never step foot in the writing world herself, she’s found happiness and satisfaction where she is, and she’s proud in the knowledge that she’s helping her students discover the joys of children’s and young adult literature.
About Dr. Jennifer Miskec:
Dr. Miskec is an English professor at Longwood University who specializes in children’s and young adult literature. Her courses include Children’s Literature, Young Adult Literature, Diversity in Literature for Young Readers, and Special Topics in Young Adult Literature. In 2019, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Croatia. She currently lives in Virginia with her family.