In 2013, Kim Zarins was looking for authors to teach a workshop on writing fantasy for children and teens, part of a California State University summer arts program she was organizing. “I had two qualifications,” Ms. Zarins, a professor of English at Cal State, Sacramento, recalled in a phone interview. “You had to be an excellent writer and a generous teacher.”
Kathleen Duey, a prolific children’s book author, was a clear choice, Ms. Zarins said.
Ms. Duey wrote more than 75 books for children, middle-grade and young adult readers. “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron,” a novelization of the DreamWorks film of the same title, made the New York Times best-seller list in 2002.
Another of her books, “Skin Hunger: A Resurrection of Magic,” a fantasy novel and the first in a planned trilogy, was a finalist for a National Book Award in the young people’s literature category in 2007.
And as a teacher, she made a lasting impression. “One student said for the longest time that she had one of Kathleen’s words of wisdom on her desktop: ‘Every artist of every kind takes a leap,’” Ms. Zarins said. “That’s what she did for my students. She showed them how to leap.”
Ms. Duey died of cardiac arrest on June 26 at her home in Fallbrook, Calif. She was 69. She had struggled with dementia in recent years, said Karen A. Bale, a novelist who was Ms. Duey’s close friend and collaborator.
A member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Ms. Duey, with her long red hair and gift of gab, was a beloved presence at the group’s conferences. An avid gardener, she would bring her editor, Ellen Krieger, avocados plucked from her backyard.
Ms. Duey gained a reputation within the organization as someone who lent her time and talent to aspiring writers, said Bruce Coville, a fellow author of children’s literature. He got to know Ms. Duey in the 1980s, when she was the one starting out and in need of a confidence boost.
“She didn’t yet understand how incredibly talented she was,” he said.
Ms. Krieger, who was Ms. Duey’s editor at Avon books in the early 1990s, said in an interview that Ms. Duey had taken her work “incredibly seriously,” even when publishing paperback originals like “Double Yuck Magic” and “Mr. Stumpguss Is a Third Grader,” a chapter book about an adult visitor to an elementary school classroom who turns out to be illiterate.
“It was not ephemera,” Ms. Krieger said. “Her writing meant everything to her.”
Kathleen Elaine Peery was born on Oct. 8, 1950, in Sayre, Okla., to William Ralph Peery, a geologist, and Mary Eileen (Finlay) Peery, a homemaker. The family relocated to Fort Collins, Col., where Ms. Duey graduated from Fort Collins High School. She attended the University of Colorado for a year but dropped out, Ms. Bale said.
The two women met in 1985 at a book reading Ms. Bale gave in Fallbrook, an agricultural community north of San Diego. By then, Ms. Duey and her husband, Steven Duey, had settled there, and Ms. Duey was beginning her career in earnest.
“She said: ‘Hey, I’m a writer, too. Would you mind calling me?’” Ms. Bale recalled. “We talked almost every day on the phone for three years before we met in person. Because she didn’t drive.”
Ms. Bale asked Ms. Duey to edit her novels, and starting in the late 1990s the women collaborated on a middle-grade series, “Survival.” Each book was set amid a historical catastrophe, like the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
“She was very passionate that children have access to books and reading materials,” Ms. Bale said. “She just wanted everyone to enjoy reading.”
Ms. Duey poured her creative energy into the “Resurrection of Magic” trilogy for years. It is a complex story set in two worlds: In one, magic has been banned; in the other, in the future, magic is controlled by the wealthy. Like the Harry Potter series (though Ms. Duey had conceived the idea years before the world knew of Hogwarts), the story features a magic academy and a lead character with extrasensory powers, though the tone is darker.
In praising the first of the series, “Skin Hunger,” Kirkus Reviews wrote, “This double-narrative fantasy begins slowly but deepens into a potent and affecting story of struggle.”
Ms. Krieger edited that book and its follow-up, “Sacred Scars,” while working again with Ms. Duey, this time at Simon & Schuster, which published the books.
“It’s a tragedy that she never completed the third book,” Ms. Krieger said. Ms. Duey had completed a first draft, she said, but her cognitive decline had prevented her from submitting a finished manuscript.
Ms. Duey’s marriage ended in divorce. Her survivors include her partner of 30 years, Richard Cusick, and a son, Garrett Duey. Another son, Seth Duey, died in 2002.
Speaking of Ms. Duey’s legacy, Mr. Coville said: “There’s her writing, which grew and grew and is very fine. But there is also the long-term impact of her teaching and mentoring.”
August 06, 2020 at 04:52AM
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Kathleen Duey, a Mentoring Children’s Book Author, Dies at 69 - The New York Times
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