"At first I was asked to do Mrs Lawrence's story and I didn't do it because I write children's books, so I wrote Stephen's story instead. At the point in the story where he runs a mini marathon, the T-shirt that he wore that day was given to him by his mother. She handed it to me and said 'take this with you while you write the story.' I found that very emotional. There were places when I cried. It was the hardest piece of writing I've ever done.
"Stephen's mum gave me all the information I needed. She's a fantastic woman. She also allowed me to interview his brother and sister. Then I had to sit down and do the hard work. It was very painful. I tried different techniques - like trying to end a chapter on a cliff-hanger but in this case, it didn't work. There weren't any cliff-hangers in Stephen's life. He was just an ordinary schoolboy. So I couldn't use that technique.
"I must have made about four different attempts to write the story. In the end I thought, 'it's not going to work.' I'm going to have to tell this very ordinary story about an ordinary young man living in an ordinary family and one night he died a very extraordinary, violent death. Because you see, Stephen didn't know his killers and his killers didn't know him.
"Young people will have to tell me what they gain from reading it. Those I've spoken to tell me it was wrong, it shouldn't have happened. And they ask why? Why should they hurt him? Why should they want to hurt him? Why does this happen in our society? As an adult sometimes I think we didn't do very well in sorting out society, maybe in the hands of children they would make a better job of it.
"You know, he was such a nice young man. He used to pick his little sister up from school. Some young men are too concerned with their street cred to do this, but Stephen didn't mind. Stephen was confident dignified and very calm, just like his mother. If he hadn't liked people so much he might have run away that day at the bus stop. But he didn't feel afraid when the racists were around. He wouldn't have hurt anybody."
About the team
Verna Wilkins was interviewed by editor Della Hicks-Wilson, 15. The article was published as part of Teen Talk, the Children's Express page in New Nation.
