Madeleine L’Engle, internationally acclaimed storyteller, poet, teacher, speaker and woman of faith, sits in her Upper West Side living room and recalls the early years of rejection by publishers.

How did she find the fortitude to keep writing?

“I was very stubborn,” she says with a smile.

Sometimes, she adds, it seemed impossible to go back to work after a decade of being turned down. But, “I was aiming for the stars,” she explains. “I started out young. As soon as I could hold a pencil I knew I was a writer. I never deflected from that.”

L’Engle is author of more than 60 books, many of which she wrote while working as a volunteer librarian at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. About half of the works are listed as novels for young adults, but this description slights the books’ imaginative and intense melding of physics and theology that brings together time and space travel, pockets of U.S., Latin American and European history, and character delineation of Biblical personalities culminating in a favorite, Oholibama, wife of Noah’s third son Japheth. She has also written several books that are meditative.

In a recent interview while accompanied by her granddaughter, Charlotte Jones, L’Engle shared vignettes of her life and work.

High school: A teacher said an assignment was ‘so good you couldn’t have written it.’ I said, ‘Yes, I did,’ and she said, ‘No, you couldn’t have,’ and I said, ‘I did so, you….”

College: It was better. I was very lucky to be there when the English Department was at its best [at Smith College, Northampton, MA]. The year I took Mary Ellen Chase’s course, she’d had a bad experience with dull students. She decided we were all stupid and gave us some test about Fielding. I wrote an emotional response. It came back with the notation, ‘Take no more tests.’

Workshops: I just made people write. I got some wonderful, vulnerable pieces. When people are writing stories, they are free of themselves to an extent and can write towards the truth. For example, often the assignment I gave was: ‘When did you discover that the grown-up world was false?’

Advice to writers: Listen to your work. It will tell you where to go.

Advice to adults: Read. If it’s controversial, read it immediately. You don’t have to agree but you do have to back up what you say. Like it or don’t. Have a reason. It’s like having a conversation with the author.

Top, Madeleine L’Engle reads to her two granddaughters, Charlotte, left, and Lena in 1976. Bottom, L’Engle and granddaughter Charlotte Jones still get to spend time together today.

Top photo courtesy of CHARLOTTE JONES and bottom photo by AUDREY RAYNER ST. MARK

Advice to teachers: Be so excited about your subject matter for your students, it will catch on.

Success: When I finally got published, I breathed a great sigh of relief. Everything that happened to me changed, from small to important and from big to nothing.

Children: They’re better off now without parental interference. Before technology claimed their attention, it was cocktails. Kids should be free to do their own thing. The best way to get a kid to read a book: Forbid it.

Lending books: I buy two copies of a book, one exclusively for lending.

E-mail: It’s great for recipes.

Mother: If yours isn’t encouraging, there’s always another in the neighborhood, the church, the school, a friend. If there’s no one, you make one up. I once made up an imaginary boyfriend. It worked.

Words: The game ‘Dictionary’ is a wonderful way to learn a lot of them.

Letters: I get kiddie letters all the time. They all get answered. One said, ‘I read your book in bed. I have cancer.’ I called him. We corresponded until he died. It was important not to ignore that child.

God: You’re on your own. God is not going to do it for you. This is what we’re taught in Sunday school. It’s demanding and liberating.

Theology: How many books in past generations have rabbits as protagonists? We foist ourselves onto rabbits; it’s so sad. A late English poet wrote, ‘I hear a sudden cry of pain and look for you everywhere,’ about a rabbit in a trap, and this is our response to a theological hunger. Rabbit books sell. What are we missing when children have to find their theology in rabbit books? One kid showed me some religious texts and then asked me, ‘What do you think of that?’ I said, ‘It’s horrible,’ and he said, ‘Oh, thank God.’

Stories: Love the power of stories, Sufi stories, Jesus stories.

To think about: A friend lost fingers of her right hand building a house. I asked her if it changed her thinking [to write with her left hand]. The answer was yes. She saw everything differently.

Writing: High school students had a classmate who died. I told them to write about it. It was just about their best work. When you write, you write more than you know.

Public speaking: I speak at high schools, once did so at the request of the parents of two adolescent boys. They were sure I would be awful. The kids gave me a standing ovation. What did I tell them? I told them the truth about my early years as a failure and how important those years were.

For more information on Madeleine L’Engle and her works, visit the Web site MadeleineLengle.com.