Marcella Pixley: Writing Is More Like Channeling

Marcella Pixley is the award winning author of five novels for children. Her most recent novel. Trowbridge Road was a Junior Library Guild Selection. It was long listed for the National Book award and was a finalist in both the Golden Dome and Massachusetts Book Award. Trowbridge Road was named a best book of 2020  by Shelf Awareness, Reading Group Choices and Mighty Girls. Neshama is her first novel in verse. Marcella's earlier poetry has been widely published in literary journals such as Lilith Magazine, Feminist Studies, Poet Lore, and Prairie Schooner. Follow her on X (Twitter), Bluesky, Facebook, and Instagram.

In this interview, Marcella discusses the lifelong strange dreams that helped inspire hew new middle-grade novel, Neshama, her hope for readers, and more.

Name: Marcella Pixley
Literary agent: Victoria Wells Arms at HG Literary
Book title: Neshama
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Release date: May 15, 2025
Genre/category: Middle-grade contemporary fiction; horror and fantasy
Previous titles: Trowbridge Road (Candlewick, 2020), Ready to Fall (FSG, 2017), Without Tess (FSG, 2011) Freak (FSG 2007)
Elevator pitch: No one believes it when 11-year-old Anna Fleischman begins to communicate with the spirits of her ancestors—no one, that is, except Bubbe, who has always treasured Anna's shayna neshama, her beautiful soul. But when Anna visits Bubbe in her house by the sea, and a restless ghost steps out of the shadows to ask for help, Anna will have to to take matters into her own hands by revealing long buried family secrets and embracing her own complex and proud identity before it is too late.

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For as long as I can remember, I have had strange dreams where the ghosts of loved ones have come to visit me. Sometimes they want to assure me that they are OK. Other times, they ask that I pass on a message to friends and family who miss them. I have never been certain whether these dreams are ghostly visitations or whether they are just figments of my writers’ imagination creating stories for itself. Either way, I always pass on the message just in case it is true.

When I began writing Neshama, I imagined what it would like for a quiet, imaginative, 11-year-old girl like Anna to discover that she could write poetry with the spirits of her ancestors. What would they say to her about who they were and what they left behind? What would they miss most about having hands, voices, and heartbeats? How would they express their American and Jewish identities? In the very early stages of my writing process, I pretended to be Anna with her ghost journal, allowing the ancestors to tell their own stories.

My first glimmer of the project that eventually became Neshama was actually an idea for a picture book about a little girl and her grandmother picking up shards of pottery at low tide where each shard contained a memory. I played with that idea for a while in 2021, but the picture book seemed too nuanced and quiet for such a young audience. Eventually this idea for a picture book became the scene in Neshama where Anna and Bubbe are picking up pottery shards down by the dock. Then I began playing with ghost poems that included the pottery shards. Who touched those pieces of blue willow? What stories lived in those tiny fragments? It was not until 2023 that the idea of creating a novel in verse about a girl who could speak to ghosts finally began to develop and I began to weave the ghost poems together into the novel-in-verse that became Neshama.

The writing process was filled with constant surprises. Every word in every poem was a surprise. I am not the kind of author who plots out the story ahead of time. For me, writing is more like channeling—which I suppose is fitting for a ghost story like Neshama. It always felt like my characters were the ones in control. They were the ones who revealed themselves to me, communicating what they needed in order to change and grow and resolve their conflicts. The biggest surprises had to do with the ghost poems. Every poem written in the voices of Anna’s ghosts was a source of wonder for me because I imagined that they were the ones moving my hands to type—inhabiting me as they inhabited her, demanding her attention.

I have so much gratitude for my agent, Victoria Wells Arms from HG Literary and my editors Liz Bicknell and Ainslie Campbell from Candlewick Press for sheparding me through the publishing process. I had so many learning moments, but one that seems most important to mention right now occurred in conjunction with the rise of antisemitism following the October 7attack in Israel and then the aftermath during the heartbreaking ongoing conflict in Gaza. I had been hearing about how hard it has been for other Jewish authors to find a safe haven for their work. I became worried about the Jewish content in Neshama and wondered about bringing a book into the world in 2025 that had a foreign, Hebrew word as its title. I was afraid that people would turn away from it.

I remember asking Liz Bicknell how Candlewick would feel about championing a book that talked openly about Jewish prayer, culture, and language during a time of conflict, and wondered if I should “tone down” some of the scenes where Anna embraces her Jewish heritage. Liz told me that Candlewick Press has had a long and proud history of being a champion for diverse voices. She told me that not only should I not “tone down” those scenes, but that I should embrace them, celebrate them and explore them further. She assured me that Neshama was the perfect title for my book about a girl’s journey to express her Jewish identity. Every author deserves to have an editor that believes in the beauty and bravery of their voice. I have been so lucky to have that ally in Candlewick.

I hope Neshama will inspire readers to explore their own complex identities by writing their own ghost poems. This book is about intergenerational trauma and what can happen to a family when people choose to turn away from their own ethnic heritage in order to fit in to assimilated American culture. Imagine what would happen if your ancestors who came to this country first could talk to you about the bravery it took to express their identity. Imagine what kinds of wisdom they would have for you. What would they say about revenge? What would they say about forgiveness? What would they say about being all of who you are?

If I could share one piece of advice with other writers it would be to believe with all of your heart, with all of your neshama, that this world needs your stories. The things about you that are the most strange: the inconsistencies, quirks, traumas, diffiuclties, differences, disabilities, complexities—the stories inside you that still feel raw and confusing or painful like wounds—those are the stories the world needs most. We are lucky because as writers, we have the opportunity to heal ourselves. And in healing ourselves, we also have the opportunity to heal the world. Judaism has an idea called Tikkun Olam, which refers to a human being’s responsibility to make the world a better place. Take heart and don’t give up. If you need some cheerleading, contact me. I will remind you that what you have to say is important.