Dawn Quigley: Aanii! Boozhoo! Hello everybody. My name is Dawn Quigley and I am the author of Apple in the Middle. I was inspired to write Apple in the Middle when I started thinking about my two girls and that they would never have an opportunity like I did to spend the summers up on the Turtle Mountain Reservation up in North Dakota. But I wanted to recreate what it was like up there to really feel as a Native person of mixed heritage. That you belong, and that you're not the odd ball actually up there. You fit in with everybody because there's so many different unique ways of being Native American.

The process for writing Apple in the Middle was really no process because it was the first book that I ever had written. And so what I did is I just started writing and I got to about 15 pages in. I live in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area and there is this fantastic writing community here. And so I was able to take a few classes and it was really encouraging just to be around other writers. So I could actually see them talking about their process and them actually having finished books. What I did is I just committed to writing two pages a day, six days a week. And sometimes those two pages would just fly by and sometimes it was excruciating, but pretty soon you write two pages a day and then you have a chapter and then you have a book.

I was really hoping that young readers would take away from Apple in the Middle the fact that so many of us, growing up, lived in the middle, whether it be in the middle of two or three households that you were moving back and forth living in between. For me, it's living at the far off suburbs, but yet working and teaching in the city. So I always felt like I was in the middle of two cities. Then more importantly, there's so many of our Native students, but really a lot of our students are young teenagers who are multi-racial, which is amazing and it's such a rich contribution to the schools and educational system, but yet a lot of times with that -- I know I did -- you feel like you're in the middle and you feel like you maybe have to choose one of your identities or another.

I'm going to read an excerpt of Apple in the Middle:

I can't help but compare my life to a giant game of keep-away . . . with me always being in the middle running back and forth between two things, never quite catching anything. Well, I call it the Ping-Pong effect because you're the ball, and nobody ever wants you in their space. Have you ever felt like that? Never really belonging anywhere, but trying your darndest to run between two lives only to find you're always stuck in the middle?

Well, that's the Reader's Digest. The short summary of my life: Apple in the Middle. Did I tell you that I'm Apple? Yes, my name is the same as a fruit. How I got that name is coming later. I promise. I'm nothing, if not honest. My whole life I've always felt like a character in Star Wars. Surrounding me wherever I go is this invisible force field. It's an invisible bubble that coats me and, when I walk around, it keeps people from getting close to me. I can be in a crowded room, like right now, but there's this force field. When I walk to the left, people shuffle away and conversations stop. When I veer to the right, folks nod politely and make room for the unseen energy they feel as I passed. It's not only a physical separation, but also an emotional one. Have you ever felt that way? That even a few people, whether large or small, that no one can really see you. You think it'd be cool to have a super power to be invisible, but I'd do anything just to be noticed.