An Interview with an Author: Nancy E. Head
It’s Author Thursday on my blog! Today, meet Christian author Nancy E. Head.
Nancy is the author of Restoring the Shattered: Illustrating Christ’s Love Through the Church in One Accord, as well as the unpublished Jude and the Magic Birds.
A member of Christian Women Speakers (https://www.womenspeakers.com/united-states/altoona/speaker/nancy-e-head), Nancy is an English Instructor for middle school, high school, Advanced Placement, and college.
She graduated from Penn State with a B.A. English, Phi Beta Kappa, with highest distinction, and achieved her M.A. in English from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
She is a United States Armed Forces mother and a Distinguished Toastmaster. She is on the county and state Republican Committee and served as an English as a Foreign Language teacher for two summers in China. She is also a wife, mother of five, grandmother of ten, and great-grandmother of two.
Learn more about Nancy through the links at the end of this interview.
—By Jessica Brodie
JB: Tell us about yourself and your faith journey.
Nancy: As a teenager, I knew believing in God was important. I also knew I sinned. So I asked Christ to save me. But I wasn’t quite on the right track in my new faith. A year after I finished high school, I became an expectant mother and a hurried bride.
Over the next 10 years or so, we welcomed five children. When my older children were still small, I became involved in my church and in the local pro-life community. I wanted other mothers in the situation I had experienced to give life to their babies and avoid the pain of knowing they had refused their own children.
Mere months after the fifth child’s birth, the cracked foundation my husband and I had built upon fell apart. We separated.
Community enveloped us with love, mentoring, provision, and encouragement. The result of their efforts was to lead us out of poverty—from dependence to independence. The journey took years.
I want to encourage others to avoid the path I took as a teen or to get back on the right track if they aren’t. And I especially want to show those who can help how to effectively assist people from dependence to independence—how to help lift people out of poverty.
JB: When did you know you wanted to become a writer?
Nancy: Shortly after I graduated from college, I got a job writing and delivering local news stories for a news/talk radio station. I realized that many of the skills I’d developed in school translated very easily to radio news. Later on, I worked for a local newspaper then I changed careers to education. Now I was teaching young students how to write.
My husband would often ask me when I would finally write a book. A turning point came when I mentioned to a friend that I was considering writing a book.
“Of course, you should write,” she said. “You’re a writer.”
JB: How does your faith influence your writing?
Nancy: Faith can’t help but permeate every aspect of our lives, just as Christ touches every part of us when we commit ourselves to Him. What comes into us must also proceed from us—for some in conversation—for others in the written word.
JB: When did this particular story first stir in your heart?
Nancy: The seeds of Restoring the Shattered began when one of my children became Catholic. I began to realize that my own evangelical tradition often misunderstands many Catholic doctrines. And that Catholics often misunderstand evangelical believers. While there are authentic differences in our faith traditions, it is the distortions through misunderstanding that often prevent us from ministering to those in need more effectively than we do.
Jude and the Magic Birds began when one of my granddaughters had to write a book of 100 words for school. She invented the character of a little girl who had a button collection, lost her favorite button, and searched until she found it. After she published the book as an assignment, we worked to develop the narrative voice, shifted the perspective to a previously secondary character, and expanded the adventures our characters experienced. Now the book reaches out to audiences of middle-schoolers who face challenges such as attention deficit, grief, bullying, handicaps, and the absence of a parent.
JB: Do you have other books coming out in the future?
Nancy: It’s harder now that I’ve returned to teaching full time. But I’m editing Jude and the Magic Birds with the help of my middle-school students who provide useful feedback as we work through one or two chapters every week. These students are excited to know that I’m planning to attend the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference this fall to pitch the book to agents and editors—and that they have become part of this process.
Now, several of them are inspired to write and share their work with the class.
Even though finding time to word craft is a bigger challenge now, I still love the feeling of having an idea grab ahold of me—and not let go until the writing is done.
JB: What do I hope for readers to take away from your book?
Nancy: I hope readers take from Restoring the Shattered a greater understanding of fellow Christ followers who practice their faith differently and apply it to working to help those in their communities who are in need.
I hope readers take from Jude and the Magic Birds that friendship is worth self-sacrifice, that it’s hard to know someone else’s troubles until you become their friend, and that you can’t rush life. You just have to let it unfold.
Check out Nancy online:
Website: https://www.nancyehead.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nancyehead/
Twitter: @nancyehead
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancy-e-head-99437112/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/nancye3277/