#author spotlight
The Author Spotlight Questions and Answers is here with a new addition - this time we have a post from Simon Kewin, who is talking about his new book ENGN, and life in the English countryside.
https://curiosityquills.com/column-posts/simon-kewin/
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Olivia Gaines and The Happily Ever After
If you’ve been paying attention to me recently, you would have noticed my recent binge of Olivia Gaines’ Modern Mail Order Brides series. Her books can be characterised by how quick people are to accept romance in even the most unusual of situations. However, the thing I feel that Gaines does well is the Happily Ever After.
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By K-Fai Steele
A Normal Pig is a picture book about a pig named Pip. Pip considers herself to be a “pretty normal pig” who “does normal stuff.” But when a new pig shows up at her school and makes fun of Pip’s lunch, her identity—and sense of normalcy—is turned upside down.
A Normal Pig is somewhat autobiographical: I grew up in a town with little diversity and my parents are of different ethnicities. If physically standing out wasn’t enough, no one else had the same seemingly unpronounceable names as me and my brothers, and I have yet to meet another person who shares any of our names. There was little else I wanted as a kid than to pass as normal; I wanted a normal name, a normal house, and normal parents who had normal
well-paying jobs and drove nice normal cars. I internalized and accepted that I was not typical, a reality that was reinforced regularly by my school and my community.
One specific thing that I wanted to show Pip experiencing in A Normal Pig are microaggressions; the subtle, and often unintended ways that people who don’t fit into a community’s dominant paradigm are discriminated against. In Pip’s world she experiences microaggressions when her classmate loudly makes fun of her “weird” food, and later when her band teacher asks if her mom is her babysitter. These small comments reinforce stereotypes and have cumulative
effect; they identify someone as an outsider and tell them in many different ways that they don’t belong.
MakingA Normal Pig gave me the opportunity as an author-illustrator to directly challenge and dissect the concept of normal. I write in order to understand, and much of my process in making this picture book involved asking questions like: what is normal? Who gets to decide what normal means? Being one of the “only ones” in your community can be a deeply lonely and fraught experience; you may spend a lot of your energy coping, and you may lack the tools to challenge systems. My writing process started with reflecting on my own childhood experiences, then talking to friends and colleagues who had similar experiences and learning and reading a lot about people’s everyday experiences with discrimination, from critical race theory to short stories. The exciting thing is that I now get the opportunity to contribute back.
I think there’s a correlation between the immediacy of the themes in A Normal Pig to my drawing style and line (I used watercolor and ink). I’ve been told that my line carries boldness, humor, and sincerity. I use humor in visual and written storytelling as a tool to describe character responses to traumatic experiences, because that’s how I’ve personally processed similar experiences: they can be sad, funny, and awkward all at once.
I hope that many things about A Normal Pig resonate with readers! And specifically, I hope that readers use Pip’s story to question the very concept of the term “normal” and how that term can be used to include or exclude or split the world up into binaries that are deeply unnecessary and limited in regard to the richness of individual experience. Questioning things and getting opportunities to see the world from a different perspective can give you freedom and power, and that’s where we find Pip—and her friends—at the end of A Normal Pig: “weirdly enough, feeling pretty normal.”
K-Fai Steele is an author-illustrator who grew up in a house built in the 1700s with a printing press her father bought from a magician. She is currently a Brown Handler Writer in Residence at the San Francisco Public Library and is the 2019 James Marshall Fellow at the University of Connecticut. A Normal Pig is her author-illustrator debut with Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins Childrens. K-Fai lives in San Francisco.
EXCITING NEWS: BLOW YOUR HOUSE DOWN IS OUT April 6!
Blow Your House Down is a powerful testimony about the ways our culture seeks to cage women in traditional narratives of self-sacrifice and erasure. Frangello uses her personal story to examine the place of women in contemporary society: the violence they experience, the rage they suppress, the ways their bodies often reveal what they cannot say aloud, and finally, what it means to transgress “being good” in order to save your own life.
“In this searing memoir…Frangello charts the spectacular highs and devastating lows of her midlife with extraordinary candor…This unapologetic account both moves and fascinates.” –Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Searingly honest and compulsively readable…uncompromisingly fearless in its candor, this memoir/feminist manifesto isa powerful account of a woman’s self-acceptance that deserves a place among the best literary memoirs of the last decade. Frangello’s groundbreaking testimony sets itself apart.”–Library Journal, starred review
“My bet for breakout of the year. The Chicagoan’s memoir takes on gender expectations and marital affairs in such a brutal, lacerating candor wonder who should play her in the movie.” –ChicagoTribune, Most Anticipated Book of 2021
“Raw, red-hot memoir…In this gutsy, dramatic feminist manifesto, Frangello recounts the cost of eschewing security to choose the utter necessity of love, of being more tomorrow than she is today.” –Booklist
Find this captivating memoir on Chicago Review of Books’ Must-Read list for April! https://chireviewofbooks.com/2021/04/01/12-must-read-books-for-april/
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Author Spotlight: Jeff Young
Today’s #AuthorSpotlight guest is Jeff Young! He’s a bookseller, avid reader, Renfaire fan, and an author of all kinds of SF&F and he’s sharing #writingTips and writerly musings with us today.
a bookseller, avid reader, Renfaire fan, and an author of all kinds of SF&F
Readers, let’s give a good, hearty welcome to this week’s guest!
He is a bookseller first and a writer second – although he wouldn’t mind a reversal of fortune. An award-winning author who has contributed to a number of anthologies, he’s also edited the TV Gods and TV Gods –Summer Programming anthologies and is the…
Author Spotlight: Rich Blecher
Today’s #AuthorSpotlight guest is Rich Blecher! He’s retired military and wanted to share the many stories in his mind with others.
He’s sharing #writingtips and more!
retired military who wanted to share the many stories in his mind with others
Readers, let’s give a good, hearty welcome to this week’s guest!
Rich Blecher grew up with ADHD before ADHD was known. After a youthful struggle through school to concentrate on his studies, he never captured an interest in reading. This followed him until he was forty when his son asked him to read “Ender’s Game.” He…
Author Spotlight: Jeffrey Kippel
Today’s #AuthorSpotlight guest is Jeffrey Kippel! He’s a mentor, coach, speaker, ambassador for #rethinkFIT, & author and he’s sharing #writingtips and more!
Mentor, coach, speaker, ambassador for #rethinkFIT, & author
Readers, let’s give a good, hearty welcome to this week’s guest!
Jeffrey Kippel is the author of the book The Ridiculous Adventures of Serbinand. He is also an Ambassador for the rethinkFIT initiative which is all about spreading the message that being FIT goes beyond just strength and appearance, that it also includes mental,…
Author Spotlight: Dante Medema
This week’s #authorSpotlight guest is Dante Medema! She’s an author who makes readers cry over Bob Ross, Pop Rocks, and grief kissing. Today, she’s sharing #writingtips and more.
an author who makes readers cry over Bob Ross, Pop Rocks, and grief kissing
Readers, let’s give a good, hearty welcome to this week’s guest!
Dante Medema is an author of books for young readers. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska with her husband, four daughters, and rooms full of alien memorabilia—and books, of course. When she’s not writing, she dabbles in baking, decorating, painting, sewing,…
Author Spotlight: Anat Eliraz
This week’s #AuthorSpotlight guest is Anat Aliraz! She’s a mother of four, neonatal and children’s physiotherapist, who also practices martial arts and somewhere in between finds time to write! Today, she’s sharing #writingtips and more!
a mother of four, neonatal and children’s physiotherapist, who also practices martial arts and somewhere in between finds time to write!
Readers, let’s give a good, hearty welcome to this week’s guest!
Anat Eliraz was born in Israel but spent a few years of her childhood in Singapore, where her love for fantasy started. She describes her life as being quite normal, even though she has driven a…
Author Spotlight: Isra Sravenheart
This week’s #authorSpotlight guest is Isra Sravenheart - a USA Today & Amazon No1 Best-Seller! She’s a Dark Fantasy Fairytale Fanatic - starring dragons and villains.
#writingTips #amwriting #fantasy #dragons #paranormalRomance #villains
a USA Today & Amazon No1 Best-Seller! She’s a Dark Fantasy Fairytale Fanatic – starring dragons and villains
Readers, let’s give a good, hearty welcome to this week’s guest!
Isra Sravenheart is an eccentric author whose heart resides with the dark fantasy but also the paranormal genres. Cats and coffee are her main interests.
She’s also a pretty badass witch and often envisions new adventures…
Author Spotlight: Raven Oak
This week’s #AuthorSpotlight guest is Raven Oak! A bestselling speculative fiction author, Raven Oak is a writer first, gamer second, and everything else falls somewhere in the middle.
She’s sharing #writingTips and writerly musings.
bestselling speculative fiction author Raven Oak is a writer first, gamer second, and everything else falls somewhere in the middle
Readers, let’s give a good, hearty welcome to this week’s guest!
Multi-international award-winning speculative fiction author Raven Oak is best known for Amaskan’s Blood (2016 Ozma Fantasy Award Winner, Epic Awards Finalist, & Reader’s Choice Award Winner),…
