Haley, Gail E.

Wright, Christina

Charlotte, North Carolina

J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections and University Archives

2007-05-25

1 audio file (1:09:13) : digital, MP3

sound recording-nonmusical

spoken word

eng

Gail E. Haley was a 67-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, recounts her career during the late 1980s and early 1990s. In this ninth of sixteen interviews, Ms. Haley recalls her work on A Sea Tale (1990). Ms. Haley relates how her creation of A Sea Tale was motivated by an evening when she heard a voice telling, but not completing, a compelling story. Ms. Haley decided to finish it and began workshopping the story with students of various ages before producing the final version of the tale. Additionally, Ms. Haley discusses various inspirations for the text and compares it to other stories of mermaids including Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. Ms. Haley continues with a description of the techniques used in creating the illustrations, which included linoleum cuts, white ink, rubber stamps, and color separation. She also relates some of the challenges encountered with these styles, such as the difficulty of aligning colors with white ink and the use of border lines to prevent color bleeding. While discussing her technique, Ms. Haley recounts how snorkeling and visiting aquariums inspired her underwater illustrations. Other themes in this interview include stories Ms. Haley would still like to tell, Jungian themes in A Sea Tale, mermaids, and materialism in the modern world.

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.

Children's literature
Color separation
Illustrations
Linoleum block-printing
Mermaids in literature

North Carolina--Blowing Rock

Interviews
Oral histories

1980-2010

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-HA0534