Haley, Gail E.

Wright, Christina

Charlotte, North Carolina

J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections and University Archives

2008-04-25

1 audio file (1:21:00) : digital, MP3

sound recording-nonmusical

spoken word

eng

Gail E. Haley was a 68-year-old woman at the time of interview, which took place in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was born in Charlotte in 1939. She was educated at Richmond Professional Institute and the University of Virginia; and was employed as an author, illustrator, and college teacher.

Gail Haley, an author and illustrator of children's literature born in Charlotte, North Carolina, discusses her career in the mid 1990s. In this fourteenth of sixteen interviews, Ms. Haley reflects on her work on Two Bad Boys (1996). Ms. Haley recalls finding the story of the two boys while reading about Cherokee legends and culture. She notes that the tale appears across cultures in various forms, with the boys as representations of two sides of a whole, the civilized man and the natural man, who also fulfill the archetypal role of tricksters within the Cherokee story. Furthermore, Ms. Haley describes the new techniques she created when working on the illustrations for the book, which imitated paintings on parchment and walls. The techniques included tracing her original sketch in permanent marker onto interfacing, a textile used in sewing. She then layered paint onto the interfacing to create a background, on which she painted the final illustration. Additionally, Ms. Haley discusses the colors used in the images which were inspired by traditional Cherokee color schemes. Throughout the interview, Ms. Haley relates her experiences with the Cherokee people while conducting research on their culture and stories, including her experiences with their storytelling traditions. Other themes in this interview include the role of mischief in creation stories, sacrifice in folk literature, animals in storytelling traditions, and traditional Cherokee art.

MP3 access copy created on ingest from WAV preservation master. Interview originally recorded on minidisc and digitized using a Digidesign 003 rack.

Authors
Illustrators
College teachers

Haley, Gail E.

Cherokee literature
Children's literature
Illustrations
Painting
Storytelling

North Carolina--Blowing Rock

Interviews
Oral histories

1990-2010

Interviews with Gail E. Haley

Gail Haley papers, 1842-2005, J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections and University Archives, University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

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audio/mpeg

OH-HA0538