Claire Matturro interviews her Wayward Girl co-author Penny Koepsel

WAYWARD GIRLS is one of our July Bonus Books selected for The International Pulpwood Queen and Timber Guy’s Book Club Official Reading List for July. When I read this story, I couldn’t stop thinking about it - it’s one of those novels that stay with you long after you finish the last page.

I was fortunate to get to know the authors through emails and the more we talked, the more I wanted to know about them and the story behind this powerful novel. The story was too good to keep to myself so I asked if they’d consider submitting an Authors Interviewing Authors piece for Reading Nation Magazine. They took the challenge and knocked it out of the park. I’ve been waiting for the right time to publish this and it’s finally here!

It’s my pleasure to introduce you to Claire Matturro and Penny Koepsel.

Claire Matturro

Penny Koepsel

Claire Matturro interviews her Wayward Girl co-author Penny Koepsel

Claire Matturro, former lawyer and college teacher, and author of seven prior novels, and Penny Koepsel, a psychologist whose short fiction and poetry has been published in literary journals, teamed up to co-author Wayward Girls (Red Adept Publishing 2021). In Wayward Girls, teen girls isolated at a boarding school are targeted by a sexual predator who has labeled them “crazy girls, the ones who lie.” No one believes them—then it’s too late. Years later, as adults, two of the women confront their shared past when they journey back to the school to watch its demolition.

Q: (by Claire) Penny, let me first share a touch of background. We are co-authors of Wayward Girls, a novel which combines women’s fiction/suspense and psychological thriller aspects. You and I are now friends, and yet when we first began to discuss writing Wayward Girls together, we barely knew each other. Please share a bit about how all this came about.

A: (by Penny) Claire, as you know, you and I attended the same girls’ boarding school in Florida, albeit a few years apart. Jesse Mercer, our English professor, was a constant source of support and encouragement. Jesse stoked that flame of creativity for me. We lost contact for decades, but I never forgot him and thanked him in the acknowledgements section of my PhD dissertation. I located Jesse in 2005, emailed him and we remained in communication via emails, phone calls, and cards. During one conversation he mentioned a former student who he thought I had a great deal in common with, that was Claire, who I contacted, and the rest is history. Sadly, Jesse passed away before he knew the impact he made on both of us and Wayward Girls.

Claire and I became friends over the internet, phone, and a few visits to her home in Tallahassee. She and I drove together to a 2011 multi-year school reunion. I shared with her the strange connection between our boarding school, a psychologist in Texas, and a wilderness school where a student died amidst allegations of wide-spread abuse.

At the end of the first night of the reunion, and after a few glasses of wine, we shared that strange connection with former students who were as excited about it as we were. We raised glasses and toasted our decision to write a book about the death of the wilderness school student and to examine fictionally the connection between our school and the Texas school. We chose a setting similar to that of the boarding school we attended, and our creative juices began flowing. Even though it had no name at that point in time, Wayward Girls was in its infancy.

Q: (by Claire) Wayward Girls is set primarily in a remote boarding school in Florida in the 1970s. The book in so many ways is your brainchild, and you were a driving force behind our writing it. In the novel, the primary characters, Camille and Jude, as well as another student, are targeted by a sexual predator and probable pedophile. Please tell us a bit about the evolution of the ideas behind the novel.

A: (by Penny) I always like to preface this by emphasizing that Wayward Girls is a work of fiction, but some of the events were loosely based on actual events experienced by students at private schools, wilderness schools, boot camps, and other facilities who were sent there by parents, guardians, or the courts.

Two years after graduating from the boarding school in Florida, I read a local newspaper article about the death of a female student in a Texas wilderness school. She died from poison. A psychologist who owned and operated the school was arrested in connection with her death. However, the charges were later dropped due to a change in a criminal statute, but the death and other accounts of abuse triggered an extensive investigation, which led to the State closing the school.

I later became friends with a former student from that wilderness school who not only attended the school at the same time as the deceased teen, but who knew her. Over the years this former student has shared some of the abuses they experienced as students at that wilderness school. I visited the isolated area on an old country road in the middle of nowhere to see for myself where the school was located. I got out and walked around the area, closed my eyes, and felt the hair raise on the nape of my neck as I imagined the horror the students felt. Wayward Girls is dedicated to the students at that school, and to the countless and needless others who voices were never heard as they were known as those crazy kids, the ones who lie.

Q: (by Claire) Penny, you are a Licensed Associate Psychologist, and a Licensed Specialist in School Psychology with a Ph.D in Clinical Psychology, and as such, your expertise played into crafting both the characters and the plot. Might you discuss the impact of your profession as a psychologist both as process and inspiration in Wayward Girls?

A: (by Penny) I apologize at the beginning of this because it will be a lengthy section because it encompasses decades, and to abbreviate it lessens the importance of each event, and I cannot do that.

Even as an elementary school student, I was keenly aware of the differences between children, and how they were systematically separated from other students. Special Education was a place back then. Sadly, we never saw those students —not on the playground, not in the cafeteria – never. I never understood why. My mother was on the PTO and I asked her to take me to the orphanage where these students resided. She did, I played with many of them, and sometimes rode their bus with them to the orphanage. I realized that many of them had experienced horrific emotional, sexual, and physical abuses. That has remained with me my entire life. I have always wanted to be a voice for those less fortunate such as my friends at the orphanage.

Fast forward to my career choices. I began writing short stories and poetry in elementary school and fancied myself as a writer someday. In my undergraduate training I had a major in both Psychology and English. As the Sirens in “Odysseus,” they both called my name. Psychology won out, and I earned a MA in Psychology, and a PhD in Clinical Psychology. Before working toward my doctorate, I provided psychological services in community mental health agencies with children and adolescents with serious and persistent mental illnesses. I learned so much from those years and that was the impetus that spurned me toward obtaining my PhD.

Later, during my internship as part of my PhD requirements, I provided services at a children and adolescent foster care organization whose mission is: “We strengthen the lives of children by enhancing their mental health and physical well being.” I provided psychological services for some of the same types of children who attended my elementary school and resided in the orphanage I visited many times.

A cumulation of all the events above broadened my experiences, my awareness, and further reinforced that I wanted to make a positive difference in the lives of children and adolescents, their families, and hopefully a microcosm of difference on society as a whole. I retired as a school psychologist from a large school district and contracted back to try to continue to make a difference. Writing, my other passion, kept reminding me of just how important that was. I continued to write poetry, short stories, and novels (none of those published until Wayward Girls).

Being a voice for those less fortunate and attempting to make a difference in their lives has been a recurring passion and theme throughout my life.

Q (by Claire) We both get asked a lot about how we managed to actually co-write the manuscript, so let’s both talk about that moment. One of the first things we did was figure out how we would divide the work. Since we had two main characters—Jude and Camille–we decided to divide the writing by character. Penny would write the chapters from Camille’s point of view, and I would write those in Jude’s voice. Then we would edit each other’s chapters. As such, Jude is “my” character, and Camille is Penny’s.

This original division fell away because once we fully understood each other’s character, we could write in either voice. Ultimately the resulting book is an amalgam. Yet certain parts remain distinctly either Penny/Camille or Claire/Jude. For example, the chapter where the teens hold a sit-in protest over the expulsion of a student is very much Penny’s chapter, just as the scene where the adult Jude has a PTSD episode when they break into the abandoned school is very much my chapter.

A third character, Wanda Ann, a scholarship student whose wild stories masked a truth that threatened to destroy them all, is a product of our collective imagination. We both seemed to channel Wanda Ann, who was the catalyst to the ultimate fiery climate of the book.

A (by Penny) This is my first novel-length work of fiction, so I have no point of reference. I have authored and/or co-authored research-based articles and a dissertation. Wayward Girls was written from the points of view of Camille and Jude – their descriptions, personalities, strengths, and weaknesses loosely based on ours. Claire is tall and with red hair, as is Jude. Like Camille, I am short, petite with auburn brown hair (or at least it was as it is now gray). Claire and I have similar writing styles, so it soon became the norm for us to suggest corrections or additions to certain passages that the other had written. Even my husband once mentioned that he could not tell when it was Claire writing or when it was me. So, we meshed wonderfully. Thank you, Penny, for sharing so much of the story behind co-authoring Wayward Girls.