Interview with David Henry Wilson

Abstract

Interview with David Henry Wilson Riky Stock (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution My name is Riky Stock, and I am the managing director for NorthSouth Books. Founded in Zurich, Switzerland, our small but internationally recognized house has been successfully publishing high-quality children's picturebooks by authors and illustrators from around the world for sixty years. Translations are an integral part of our publishing program, especially translations from German to English. For the past ten years, we have been working with the German-to-English translator David Henry Wilson. He has translated ninety picturebooks for the publishing house NorthSouth Books over the years, and each season there are several translations by David Henry Wilson on our list. These are his forthcoming translations with NorthSouth Books this year: Spring 2021 Little Polar Bear and the Pandas by Hans de Beer Robert and the World's Best Cake by Anne-Kathrin Behl Summer 2021 The Speckled Feather by Johanna Ries What Happens while You Sleep by Anna Russelmann Fall 2021 Einstein—The Fantastic Journey of a Mouse through Space and Time by Torben Kuhlmann Franz-Ferdinand the Dancing Walrus by Marcus Pfister My Mother's Delightful Deaths by Carla Haslbauer In February, 2021, we conducted an interview with David Henry Wilson. David Henry Wilson (b. 1937) is a children's author, playwright, poet, and translator. As an author, he is known for his Jeremy James series, the Superdog series and The Castle of Inside Out. His books have been translated into many languages, including Spanish, German, and French. For many years he lectured at the universities of Bristol (England) and Konstanz (Germany), where he founded and ran the university theater. He is also a translator, and the range of his work covers art history by Werner [End Page 79] Hofmann, travel books by Peter Sager, prose and poetry by Hermann Hesse, children's novels, and picturebooks. Riky Stock (RS): What inspired you to write children's books? David Henry Wilson (DHW): Pure chance! It all started in Germany. The publisher who was handling my plays was asked to commission some English authors to contribute to an anthology of new European stories for children. As I'm (still!) a good European, I wrote The Elephant on Daddy's Car. This became so popular that I was then asked to write a whole book of stories about the main character, Jeremy James, and I had such fun writing them that I went on, and on, and on! And I'd like to mention that Helmut Winter, who approached me in the first place, became a lifelong friend as well as the translator of nearly all my children's books. RS: You mentioned your plays. When and why did you start writing for the theater? DHW: My grandfather ran a concert party during the 1940s, when I was just a small child, and my elder brother and I used to perform sketches or recite funny poems written by my father. I loved the live contact with the audience, and by the time I went to secondary school, I was writing and acting in my own plays. RS: Thank you for the wonderful poem you wrote for us about the little polar bear and the environmental issues he has to face, which we just published in a blog post on our website. When did you turn to writing poetry? What inspired you to do that? DHW: School again. There was a school magazine, which published stories and poems, and we were made to learn poems off by heart for our English lessons. I loved them, and so I had to write my own! I've always had this creative drive. At primary school I was already writing my own stories, including a "novel" which was directly inspired by (cribbed from) Robinson Crusoe! RS: Now, let's talk about David Henry Wilson, the translator. You have been translating books for NorthSouth for many years. When did you first start translating, and what was the first book you translated for NorthSouth? DHW: I'd had to do translation when I was a student, but it became an important part of my life when I was...