PORTLAND — Monica Wood, a novelist and fiction writer best known for her award-winning “When We Were the Kennedys: A Memoir from Mexico, Maine,” has now written the script for a play that will make a five-week run beginning April 21 at the Portland Stage Company.

The play, “Papermaker,” is based on her earlier novel, “Ernie’s Ark.” It takes place in fictional Abbott Falls, Maine, and is about two families that collide during a strike at the local paper mill. One is the chief executive officer’s family, the other a striking worker’s.

“They haven’t even started marketing the play and I’ve heard from all kinds of people from ‘the hometown’ that they plan to come down to see it, so I’m excited about that,” said Wood, adding, “I’ve always been a theater buff, my whole life. And I see a lot of theater. I spend all my money on books and play tickets.’

The play is her first effort after writing five novels. How did the idea for a play evolve?

“When I was on tour for the memoir (“When We Were the Kennedys”), it was much more extensive than I expected it was going to be because the book really caught on nationally. So I was out on the road, off and on, for almost two years, reading here or there and everywhere.

“What I thought I would be doing was working on a new novel, and I do in fact have another new novel (“The Morning Chorus”) coming out next year. But during that book tour, I only had dribs and drabs of time, and for a novel you need big stretches of time. And I found that an hour here and an hour there was really conducive to writing scenes,” Wood said.

“I never felt I was finished with the characters in Ernie’s Ark, which is a book of mine that came out in 2002. What it is is linked stories about three different families in a little paper mill town that’s on strike. So there was this one character who was the CEO of the mill, the owner of the whole thing, that I never felt I was quite finished with. And so I kinda just started with him. And it just became a play,” she said.

Wood said the two main characters are the man who owns Atlantic Paper Co. and the other is a striking millworker. And it’s these two families that unexpectedly collide face to face, in the play, through circumstances she won’t reveal here.

“All of my characters are flawed and multi-dimensional, so nobody is one thing. It’s not a labor versus management play at all. It’s about two families in different kinds of a crisis.”

Wood said writing a play was much easier for her for than writing a novel.

“For one thing, I love to write dialogue. That’s the only fun I really ever have writing. And in a play, that’s all you get. That’s all you have is dialogue to tell the story. You have no narration, no description. Everything has to come through with what people say. It’s a challenge, but it’s also dialogue that’s my favorite thing. So it was a lot of fun to write,” she said.

“Papermaker” has had two staged readings, she said. The play began with a staged reading at Mad Horse Theater in South Portland, and then was work-shopped at Portland Stage Company in May 2014.

“You have actors who, they’re just standing at music stands just reading the script to an audience,” Wood said. “The idea is so the playwright can gauge how well the play is working and get feedback from both the audience and the actors, which is so valuable.”

On Tuesday, Wood will be among a group of 15 people who received permission to tour the Catalyst mill in Rumford. Also in the group will be six actors, three from New York, as well as director Sally Wood (no relation) and the production manager.

“Papermaker” will open April 21 and close May 24 at Portland Stage Company, 25 Forest Ave. in Portland.

For more information on how to get tickets, which range from $37 to $47, visit www. portlandstage.org/show/papermaker/ [email protected].