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Q & A with Deborah Wiles
Deborah Wiles, author of the Aurora County trilogy, is using the term "documentary novel" to describe her latest release, Countdown, a work of historical fiction set in 1960s Maryland.
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PW Talks with Hilary Spurling
In Pearl Buck in China (reviewed on p. 100), Hilary Spurling examines the interplay of Buck's Chinese upbringing (as the daughter of missionaries) and her writing.
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PW Talks with Sophie Hannah
Det. Sgt. Charlotte “Charlie” Zailer and Det. Constable Simon Waterhouse investigate another bizarre crime in British author Sophie Hannah's The Dead Lie Down. How do you balance Charlie and Simon's police work and the inner lives of the other characters? I wanted to blend two genres that I love: the police procedural, with recurring detective characters, and the...
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Cooking the Books with Angela Miller
Literary agent Angela Miller represents some of the biggest names in food, including Mark Bittman, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and Marcus Samuelsson. But helping cooks get book deals isn't her only job; Miller also owns Consider Bardwell Farm, a Vermont cheese farm that's drawn national acclaim. In Hay Fever: How Chasing a Dream on a Vermont Farm Changed My Life, she talks about balancing her two day jobs.
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Q & A with Megan Whalen Turner
A Conspiracy of Kings is Megan Whalen Turner's fourth book in the series that began with The Thief, a 1997 Newbery Honor winner. Bookshelf caught up with Turner in California, where her husband's job has taken the family for a sabbatical year.
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PW Talks with Peter Beinart
"I wrote the book to try to understand why, on the eve of the Iraq War, I believed things that, in retrospect, were hubristic."
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Cooking with Love in the Garden State
A Real Housewife of New Jersey promises delicious—and healthy—Italian recipes in her new book, Skinny Italian.
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War of Emotion
Sebastian Junger's War is bound to inspire comparisons to Michael Herr's classic war memoir, Dispatches. Both authors were in war zones as magazine journalists, Herr for Esquire in the jungles of Vietnam in the 1960s and Junger for Vanity Fair in the rugged Korengal Valley in eastern Afghanistan in 2008.
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A Different Sort of Road Novel
Before his novel Nobody's Angel was picked up by Hard Case Crime, Clark, also the author of Shamus Award—nominated Westerfield's Chain, self-published it and sold 5,000 copies to passengers in his Chicago cab.
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Less Foot Binding, More Rock
Iraq War vet Ellie Cooper finds herself caught up in a vast conspiracy against the Chinese government in Rock Paper Tiger, Lisa Brackmann's dynamite debut.
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Q & A with David Pogue
David Pogue is the personal technology columnist for the New York Times, and is a tech contributor to both CBS News and CNBC. He has authored a number of technology books, including the Missing Manual series of computer guides. Pogue has just written his first children's novel, for middle-grade readers, and he spoke with Bookshelf about it.
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Keeping Secrets
"Any secrets that people take pains to hide can be explosive and therefore dangerous. I do think there's a host of seemingly fine reasons to keep secrets, until you realize it's the pretense that's the burden."
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You Can Always Clean the Sheets
"I started out writing with such furrowed brow, like I was trying to write the way I thought writers wrote."
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A Nigerian Sorceress Makes Her Way
Nnedi Okorafor’s gentle demeanor is so disarming that it’s impossible not to relax in her company. The Chicago State University professor has a sweet smile, three graduate degrees, numerous awards and prize nominations for her writing, and a razor-sharp mind that is changing the face of speculative fiction.
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Q & A with Kathryn Erskine
Kathryn Erskine's second novel, Mockingbird, sprang from the intersection of two life-changing events—a daughter diagnosed with Asperger's, and the April 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech near Erskine's home in Charlottesville, Va.
Q: Your daughter, Fiona, has Asperger's Syndrome. When did you decide you wanted to write a novel about a character with that condition?
A: I had been jotting down notes, mulling over the idea of a main character who had Asperger's almost as an exercise—trying to see the world through her eyes, but I didn't have a compelling plot.
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Becoming Mexican
"The idea of ethnicity is a little weird for me because, for a number of years, I believed that my biological father was Native American. I'm a Mexican, but a Mexican is not all that I am."
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Matt Thorn Talks About Publishing Manga
The director of Fantagraphics' new manga line, Matt Thorn, talks about his relationship with shojo manga pioneer, Moto Hagio, and the importance of high-quality translations to a new generation of American manga readers.
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Why I Write...
A momentous event in my seventh year started me on a lifelong passion: my grandmother gave me a typewriter. I began to write to understand what I was living.
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Rick Riordan's Big Year
With two new trilogies launching this year, Percy Jackson author Rick Riordan stands likely to boost his already (ahem) Olympian output—and sales. Disney-Hyperion will release one million copies of The Red Pyramid, first in his Kane Chronicles series inspired by ancient Egyptian magic. An as-yet-unnamed Percy Jackson spin-off will follow, which will combine familiar characters with some new half-human, half-Greek-god kids.
Until now, Riordan has stuck to one book a year. "I've set myself a challenge of putting out two books a year so the readers don't have to wait longer than a year for either series," said Riordan. "That's a pretty big jump for me." -
Q&A with Deb Caletti
Deb Caletti knows she was "meant to be holed up in my room wearing my pjs and talking to my imaginary friends." And, even though becoming a young adult author wasn't part of her original plan, her complex stories about distressed families and complicated romances have certainly connected with teen readers—and critics. Her book Honey, Baby, Sweetheart was named a finalist for a National Book Award in 2004. Here, Caletti talks with Bookshelf about what it's like to write after winning such an honor, the inspiration behind her newest novel, The Six Rules of Maybe, and the actual rules she chooses to live by.
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