“It took me 20 to 25 years to write a book that anybody wanted to print,” Flake said during her Nov. 8 appearance at the Martin Luther King Library on Columbus’ Near East Side. “You would never say, ‘I can be a great football player in six months,’ right? It would take a while. It’s the same thing for this kind of business. I do a lot of rewriting. You write, rewrite.”

By CHRIS BOURNEA

Staff Writer

COLUMBUS OHIO -- Author Sharon Flake, who has written seven novels exploring issues facing African-American teens, visited Columbus last week. Flake spoke to readers young and old during a series of appearances Nov. 8-10 at Columbus public libraries.

A native of Philadelphia, Flake, 55, said she didn’t start writing until she was in college. She didn’t publish her first novel, “The Skin I’m In,” until she was 40.

“It took me 20 to 25 years to write a book that anybody wanted to print,” Flake said during her Nov. 8 appearance at the Martin Luther King Library on Columbus’ Near East Side. “You would never say, ‘I can be a great football player in six months,’ right? It would take a while. It’s the same thing for this kind of business. I do a lot of rewriting. You write, rewrite.”

Flake, who now lives in Pittsburgh, said she focuses on telling positive stories about the inner city.

“Sometimes people say, ‘Why do you write about the inner city?’ Because I love it,” Flake said. “We don’t hear that too often. We always hear that people want to run away from it. I hope that people get the sense that I celebrate it. It doesn’t mean that people don’t have challenges.”

Flake has written seven novels about the challenges faced by young people in middle and high school. Her first novel, “The Skin I’m In,” continues to generate responses from readers of all ages around the world 14 years after its release.

“The Skin I’m In” tells the story of a teenager named Maleeka Madison who is teased and sometimes shunned by her classmates because of her dark complexion. Flake said readers of many different races and nationalities have written to her to let her know they identify with Maleeka’s struggle. The book has been translated into several languages and has more than 1 million copies in print.

“The interesting think about the book, I tell people, is it’s like ‘Harry Potter’ without all the money, in terms of readership,” Flake said. “One book can serve many purposes.”

Flake’s most recent book is “You Don’t Even Know Me,” a collection of short stories and poems that explore the feelings and experiences of young men. Flake said she was inspired to write the book because there are not many stories told from the perspective of young men of color.

“I’ve always tried to look and see what issues I think probably need to be talked about, that might not be talked about,” she said. “I’ve always had this love for the underdog or people that were not being treated fairly.”

Flake said most of her ideas for books come from her interest in helping inner-city youth. She said she recently overcame a long bout with writer’s block while working on a challenging novel that took her five years to write. The book, titled “Takedown,” is about a girl who is on her school’s wrestling team, has difficulty reading and is in love with a disabled young man.

“During the course of that book, I really was persuaded that it was going to be my last novel,” Flake said. “For young people, when you hit a wall, sometimes all you can do is keep pressing through the wall, even if the bricks are falling on your head.”

Flake said she encourages young people who love books and reading to prepare for careers in the publishing industry, whether as a writer, an editor, a publisher or a marketing executive.

“For young people who want to write, I would encourage you to think about going into this industry where you write about young people, where you write about children,” she said. “Because you really do get to impact people for a lifetime.”