They had names but not faces. Their dismembered body parts were identified but not their dreams and hopes. Even a century later, the world seemed to care more about their mysterious killer, Jack the Ripper, than it did about his known victims. It was that injustice, those five women, who kept me slogging through the bloody, confusing annals of his crimes. In 2003, the assignment I had taken on as a whim—to write a book about these notorious serial killings in 1888 London—acquired personal meaning for me. I wanted to acknowledge the humanity of prostitutes Mary Ann (Polly) Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly. I wanted their lives and deaths to have as much and more meaning for strangers than that of their murderer, whatever his twisted motives or real identity.

And so, in 2004, my Jack the Ripper became only the second book then in print to contain this letter written by Polly Nichols to her father in May, 1888. The 44 year-old woman, just four months sober, was so happy in her new job as a housecleaner. She wanted to share news with her family, and wrote:

You will be glad to know that I am settled in my new place, and going all right up to now . . . . It is a grand place inside, with trees and gardens back and front . . . . They are very nice people, and I have not got too much to do. I hope you are all right, and the boy [her son] has got work. So good bye for the present. From yours truly, Polly.

Answer soon, please, and let me know how you are.

Polly Nichols did not hold onto this job, though. On August 31, 1888, she became the Ripper’s first known victim. Middle-aged Annie Chapman, who had tried and failed to earn a living by selling flowers and crocheting, became his second. Forty-five year old Elizabeth Stride, a Swedish immigrant born Elisabeth Gustafsdotter, was the third woman he butchered.

Catherine Eddowes, who at age 44 still cried when she met her respectably married sister and said, “I wish I was like you,” became the Ripper’s fourth victim. Mary Jane Kelly, still light-hearted enough at age 25 to sing and smile as she walked through her neighborhood, was the fifth woman he slaughtered. These are some of the details I was able to include in the book, after working hard to convince my editor that such information did not “ruin its suspense or mystery” focus! Unfortunately, the editorial budget did not extend far enough to include the only pre-mortuary photo we have of any of these women. That formal studio portrait of Annie Chapman and her husband is, though, now accessible online. Just google “Annie Chapman images.” The portrait’s sepia tones set it apart from the black-and-white mortuary photos and newspaper sketches surrounding it.

In a violence-filled world, we remain fascinated by what motivates crime. One new book I blogged about recently in my CLN column Gone Graphic is Derf Backderf’s memoir, My Friend Dahmer. Backderf went to high school with Jeffrey Dahmer, who became a notorious 20th century serial killer. He murdered for the first time around their high school graduation, which concludes the memoir. I was relieved and reassured to see that Backderf’s End Notes contain a detailed, respectful account of Steven Hicks, the 19 year-old concert-goer who became Dahmer’s first victim. Readers hear from the Hicks family, too. This emphasis is appropriate and long overdue. As many survivors of recent acts of terror have remarked, theirs are the stories to memorialize, not just those of their attackers. This viewpoint inspired my writing of Jack the Ripper.

Learn more about Natalie Rosinsky

When I began to write for young people, I knew I wanted to write about girls, ordinary girls, strong young women embarking on journeys to discover who they are and where they belong, surviving extraordinary circumstances with courage and grace. Because my characters’ situations differ and because their stories are set in vastly different time periods, I had to invent specific, individual ways for them to discover and exhibit their strength.

The Polish orphan in Rodzina has unique challenges unknown to the medieval girls in my first two books (Catherine Called Birdy and The Midwife’s Apprentice). Rodzina is sent west from Chicago on an orphan train in search of a new family. She is angry about her losses, pessimistic about her chances, and desperate for opportunities. As a girl orphan, her future is limited. Boys are more in demand because they can work on the farm. Training schools will not teach her a trade, but would expect her to do laundry and wash dishes. As she approaches womanhood, she is seen by some as merely a strong, wide-hipped body made for bearing children.

When I began to imagine Rodzina, I faced the issue of female beauty—or lack thereof. I know girls and women come in all sizes, but up until Rodzina, all my girls had been small and thin. I think I thought it made them more vulnerable and their struggles more poignant. But Rodzina, the sturdy, stubborn Polish orphan, is not small and thin. She was nearly as tall as Papa, who had been very tall, and round as Mama, who was very round. I did not want to make her beautiful but I wanted to have a good reason for her to accept her appearance: I had not grown up wanting what I did not already have, except for one thing. I wanted to be pretty. When I told Mama, Mama said, ‘Pretty is as pretty does, Rodzina.’ Auntie Manya said, ‘What is this pretty? You got big hands, strong back, good teeth. What more you want?’ Papa just smiled and said, ‘You are better than pretty. You look like me.’

Although she was unwilling at first to board the orphan train, Rodzina is determined not to be taken by just anyone but to find a home that suits her: A man and a woman dressed in shiny black stopped in front of me. They were tall and skinny as broomsticks with cold squinty eyes and lips that looked like they hadn’t smiled since Abraham Lincoln got his first long pants. On no, I said to myself, I am not going anywhere with you. You look like you’d step on kittens. I stuck out my tongue and off they went, the Broomstick Twins, to give some other orphan nightmares. Rodzina’s situation and problems may be different from Birdy’s or Alyce’s, but her strength, her resilience, her stubbornness, and her courage are the same.

Learn more about Karen Cushman

When I was first published, I was delighted to find that schools were interested in having me visit and teach students about the writing process. But there was one big problem: I wasn’t trained as a teacher, and I certainly wasn’t sure how to teach writing.

Sure, I’d taken writing classes in high school and college. And maybe they’d made me a better writer. But they hadn’t prepared me for looking into the eyes of a 4th grader who was adamantly protesting: “I can’t write a story”—and then show him in the space of a forty-minute class visit that he could.

Fortunately I was able to accept that to become a writing teacher, I first had a whole lot to learn.

I made an early decision to focus on story-writing, the writing arena I most enjoyed myself. Narrowing down my focus helped make the process more manageable. Then I sat down and asked myself: What, in my experience, made for a great story? What did I see as the most important story ingredients, and how could I explain them in terms even a 1st-grader could understand? Not surprisingly, reminding myself about the basics also proved to be helpful in my own writing.

I was also fortunate enough to have a chance to work briefly with storyteller/performer extraordinaire Heidi Grosch, who helped me find the “fun” in the writing foundations I’d identified. She gave me some great ways of thinking about how I could make story-writing friendly and approachable enough to get past the resistance that a portion of kids in every classroom were telling me they had.

But more than anything, it was the chance to experiment with my theories in the classroom “laboratories” that I continued to visit that really refined my ideas. It was easy to tell what not only helped students understand story-writing, but also made them truly enjoy story-writing. My writing students taught me, visit by visit, how to be a better writing teacher.

And classroom teachers gave me great feedback too, pointing out what they liked and where I could improve. It was high praise indeed when they started turning to me and saying, “Nobody taught me to teach writing like this. Where can I learn more?” When I’d heard the question enough, it occurred to me that we had come full circle: I had started this whole process as a writer, and now it was time to write down what I’d learned so that teachers and students could read it in a book even when I couldn’t be in their classroom in person.

That’s how You Can Write a Story: A Story-Writing Recipe for Kids had its start: I cooked up the book, but it’s ever so much tastier because it’s been thoroughly kid-tested!

Learn more about Lisa Bullard