It was the late 1990s, and Kate DiCamillo was discouraged about ever having a writing career. Working as a “book picker” fulfilling orders at the Bookmen distribution company in Minneapolis, she had accumulated more than 450 rejections for her short stories and other writing. She was tired; her legs ached from standing all day. She belonged to a writers group where award-winning children’s author Jane Resh Thomas believed in her. But nothing was happening.
Then came the phone call that changed her life.
“I took the call in my boss’s office on the third floor of the Bookmen, among the remainders,” DiCamillo recalled during a conversation from her home in Minneapolis’s Linden Hills neighborhood. “They told me they wanted to publish ‘Because of Winn-Dixie.’ I couldn’t believe it.”
Minnesota author Kate DiCamillo celebrates the 25th anniversary of her novel “Because of Winn-Dixie” Aug. 19, 2025, at The Riverview Theater in Minneapolis. The event includes showing of the film based on the much-loved novel. (Courtesy of Dina Kantor)
She learned her manuscript had been found by a young editor in a pile on the desk of someone on maternity leave and the editor fell in love with the book.
DiCamillo’s tender/humorous story is about Opal Buloni, a lonely, motherless girl living with her father in a small Florida town who befriends a smelly, dirty dog she names Winn-Dixie after the grocery store where they meet. As the unlikely pair roams the streets getting to know people, Opal creates her own community.
When the book was published, DiCamillo couldn’t have known it would become a beloved story. It won an American Library Association Newbery Honor, a remarkable achievement for a debut author, and was made into a film starring Jeff Daniels, Cecily Tyson and Eva Marie Saint.
DiCamillo is celebrating the 25th anniversary of “Winn-Dixie” on Aug. 19 at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis, presented by St. Paul’s Red Balloon Bookshop. Tickets include a paperback edition of either “Because of Winn-Dixie” or “Ferris,” a story about Ferris Wilkey’s summer before fifth grade when his little sister wants to become an outlaw, his Uncle Ted is writing the history of the world in the basement, and Grandma is seeing ghosts.
” ‘Ferris’ and ‘Because of Winn-Dixie” are almost bookends of my whole writing life,” DiCamillo says. ” ‘Ferris’ is the first book I wrote that starts with a complete family, with parents in place.”
“Because of Winn-Dixie” led to a career during which DiCamillo has written more than 60 books, with more than 43 million in print. She’s one of six authors to win two Newbery Awards, for “The Tale of Despereaux,” about a mouse who loves a princess, and “Flora & Ulysses,” featuring a squirrel who gains powers after being sucked into a vacuum cleaner.
“The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane,” detailing the adventures of a china rabbit, was produced by Minnesota Opera, and her series about Mercy, a toast-loving pig, was adapted for the stage by Children’s Theatre Company. As if that isn’t enough, DiCamillo is a former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature appointed by the Library of Congress.
DiCamillo, 61, is sort of stunned to be meeting the second, and a few third-generation, readers of “Because of Winn-Dixie.”
“The first time this happened, it was flat-out unbelievable, overwhelming,” she recalls. “I was doing a signing, and a woman told me she was a fourth-grade teacher whose fourth-grade teacher had read it to her. A youngster handed me an old copy, telling me, ‘This was my mother’s book when she was a kid and my grandmother read it to her, and now my mother is reading it to me.’ It was a moment of gratitude for me.”
In the beginning
DiCamillo grew up in a small town in Florida. Her parents — dad an orthodontist and mother a teacher — were divorced, and she lived with her mom.
Their house was filled with books, and young Kate read everything from “The Secret Garden” to “Wuthering Heights.” She majored in English at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where professors told her she had writing talent.
“All through my miserable 20s, I talked about writing, called myself a writer, and sat around wanting to be discovered,” DiCamillo revealed in a 2023 Pioneer Press interview. “At 29, I figured out I wasn’t going to get published unless I wrote something. So I adopted an (athletic) exercise philosophy about it, writing two pages a day. And I still do that.”
DiCamillo was about 30 when she followed a friend to Minnesota, figuring her boyfriend would ask her to marry him if she moved north. That didn’t happen, and this native of the Sunshine State arrived during one of Minnesota’s coldest winters with no job and no socks. She thought she’d freeze to death the first time she had to gas up the car.
Despite the weather, DiCamillo stayed and got a job at the Bookmen, where she learned a lot about the publishing industry and discovered children’s books.
“When I read Christopher Paul Curtis’ 1963 book “The Watsons Go to Birmingham,” I thought I could do something like this, and I started writing ‘Because of Winn-Dixie,’ ” she recalls.
Then, everything in DiCamillo’s life came together quickly. In 1998, she received a $10,000 McKnight Foundation grant, her first short story appeared in a literary magazine, and “Winn-Dixie” was sold. A few years later, she won the Loft’s first award for children’s writing.
A big inspiration for the story of Opal and Winn-Dixie came from DiCamillo’s longing for her dog and Florida.
“At the time, I wasn’t aware of assuaging those longings. The story just came,” she recalls. “In retrospect, I see this is what I was doing. It was a terrible winter and the first prolonged period of my life without access to a dog. What a child like Opal longs for is community and feeling embraced and loved. I think about the dogs and people in my neighborhood interacting. You see how you can make community and, in a weird way, a blueprint about how to be in the world. We need each other and we forget that. Opal’s story shows us what we need and want.”
And then
(Courtesy of Candlewick Press)
After “Winn-Dixie” was sold to Candlewick Press, DiCamillo stayed on for a while at the Bookmen, where bookstore owners and librarians shopped. One day, she mentioned to Michele Cromer-Poire, then co-owner of the Red Balloon Bookshop, that she had a book coming out.
“Michele hosted my first signing at the store, and it was wonderful,” DiCamillo recalls. “They had a cake showing the book cover. That was huge. My best friend I grew up with came and a third-grade teacher told me she never had such an enthusiastic group of kids.”
DiCamillo quickly learned that being a newbie author facing a class of students is not without pitfalls. She vividly remembers her first school visit for “Winn-Dixie:”
“The teacher introduced me as the person who wrote the book and said they were going to talk about the themes. I thought, ‘We are?’ I had no idea about themes, and I was supposed to talk intelligently. The class decided the themes were family, forgiveness and friendship. I raced to my car and wrote it down so I could tell the next class what the themes were.”
That anecdote illustrates DiCamillo’s insistence that she doesn’t worry about the age of her readers or things like themes when she’s writing. She just tells stories.
As DiCamillo’s career took off, she became comfortable talking with her young fans and parents. At just over 5 feet tall, she is almost eye-level to some of the kids, and she takes them and their questions seriously.
“Talking with everybody, answering questions, that’s what I like,” she says. “That’s what I’ll do at the 25th anniversary celebration.”
Holly Weinkauf, owner of the Red Balloon, says DiCamillo’s books are a staple in her store, where she has hosted many events for Kate. She’s watched the magic happen between author and young readers.
“Kate is so good at doing events, so good at responding to the kids,” Weinkauf says. “She thinks about it as being there for them. She listens carefully and always answers with a great sense of humor. The kids know she is for real. She takes it seriously but doesn’t take herself too seriously.”
When it comes to Dicamillo’s writing, Weinkauf is a fan:
“She writes great stories with so much feeling about complex and often difficult topics with care that makes them very accessible. And she writes with the exact amount of words. She really focuses on the heart of the story she is telling. And there is so much hope in her books. We need her gifts.”
And now?
DiCamillo has been as busy as ever lately. The third in her Norendy Tales series, “Lost Evangeline,” has just been published (after “The Puppets of Spelhorst” and “The Hotel Balzaar”). She’s working on a novel and has finished her contribution to a book of loosely-connected fairytales to be published by Candlewick. In April, “Orris and Timble: Lost and Found” was published. It’s the second in an early chapter book trilogy about a rat and an owl who are best friends.
Kate also spends time reading the dozens of letters she gets from young readers. One of the most often-asked questions is whether she will write a sequel to “Because of Winn-Dixie.”
“Much as you can say what you will or won’t do, I don’t think I will ever write a sequel,” she replies. “If I had been at a bigger publisher, I might have been pushed to do it, and I probably would have. Candlewick never did that. They embraced whatever direction I wanted to go. So I tell my readers that things didn’t turn out exactly as Opal wanted, but she is happy, safe, and loved.”
DiCamillo seems a little incredulous when the topic of retirement is raised.
“What does retirement even mean? I don’t know,” she says. “Why would I retire? I want to keep on writing.”
If You Go
What: 25th anniversary celebration for “Because of Winn-Dixie”
When/Where: 5 p.m. Aug. 19, Riverview Theater, 3800 42nd Ave. S., Mpls.
Program: Screening of the 2005 movie based on the book, Q&A with Kate DiCamillo and book signings.
Cost: $20, includes paperback copy of either “Because of Winn-Dixie” or “Ferris”
Ticket information: redballoonbookshop.com
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