By Ana Good

Homewood-based author Charles Ghigna credits his wife, children’s author Debra Holmes Ghigna ’77, for redirecting his career path toward writing for children.

Ghigna said that while he was studying creative writing at Florida State University, he considered himself a “serious, brooding poet.” 

When he received a grant to help start a poet-in-schools program for the State of Alabama, Ghigna remembers driving through Dothan and being inspired to write his poem “The Alabama Wiregrassers,” which eventually would be published in Harper’s Magazine. 

“Then I met my wife and fell in love,” Ghigna said, recalling the moment his path began to change. 

The pair met in the cafeteria at Birmingham-Southern College, where Ghigna had been provided with room and board as part of his grant. “It wasn’t long before she said, ‘You know, you need to lighten up,’” Ghigna said with a laugh. 

At the time, he had been attending conferences, speaking about poetry, and being published in university presses. Ghigna said the material was coming to him “fast and furiously,” inspired by the new-to-him state of Alabama and its change of seasons. 

“Also, I was in love,” he said of his inspirations at the time. 

The person he was in love with, however, his eventual wife, encouraged him to “write something lighter.” 

“I asked her, ‘like what?’ and she said, ‘Something everybody can relate to, like dogs or cats,”’ Ghigna said as he recalled their conversation. 

He soon got to work on what he thought at the time was a “crazy story.” What resulted was four titled works, including “Good Cats, Bad Cats” and “Good Dogs, Bad Dogs,” and a four-book contract with Disney. 

“Well,” he said, “my wife was right.” 

Ghigna said that success prompted him to quit his teaching job and devote his time to writing full time. “I started writing for kids,” he said, “and it was literally like the proverbial cliché – the floodgates opened.” 

To date, the beloved local author, known to many as Father Goose, has written more than 100 books and thousands of poems. His latest, “The Father Goose Treasury of Poetry: 101 Favorite Poems for Children” is set for release on Friday, April 28. Ghigna will begin his book tour in Homewood with a scheduled appearance at The Alabama Booksmith on Thursday, April 27. 

‘It’s Like Breathing’ 

Asked to describe his typical writing process, Ghigna said that question often catches him by surprise. “It’s like breathing,” he said. “There is no process, really, I have no formula. I just do.” 

Ghigna said he will begin playing with an idea that might come to him at any point in the day. “I’m like the little boy who says his prayers before he goes to bed, except I’ll pull out my journals and write about all the days’ events and some highlight might pop up and I’ll think about it a little longer,” he said. “I just see where it takes me and if it generates a little heat, I just keep going.” 

Ghigna often writes in his “treehouse” – looking out the window from the attic of his 100-year-old home, where he’s lived for almost 50 years.  

“I come up here every day,” he said, “and by the time I’m at the top of the stairs I’ll think, ‘What can I get into today?’ I look at the world like that still. I look at things and turn them inside out and upside down. I’ll think, ‘What if?’” 

Life’s Work 

Ghigna invites readers to The Alabama Booksmith at 4 p.m. on April 27 for the first signing of his latest book. He will be at Little Professor Bookshop in Pepper Place at 9:30 a.m. May 13 and at the Homewood Library on May 17 at 4 p.m. 

A full-length version of this story appeared in the Over the Mountain Journal on April 17, 2023