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Author Interview: Paolo Bacigalupi

Published March 25, 2011
Image Credit: JT Thomas Photography

Paolo Bacigalupi‘s writing has appeared in High Country News, Salon.com, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. His short fiction been anthologized in various “Year’s Best” collections of short science fiction and fantasy, nominated for two Nebula Awards and four Hugo Awards, and won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best sf short story of the year.

His debut novel The Windup Girl was named by TIME Magazine as one of the ten best novels of 2009, and also won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards. His short story collection Pump Six and Other Stories was a 2008 Locus Award winner for Best Collection and also named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly.

His debut young adult novel, Ship Breaker, about a teenage boy who strips metal from old oil tankers for scrap on a beach on the Gulf of Mexico, won the 2011 Michael L. Printz Award and was a National Book Award Finalist. He currently lives in Western Colorado with his wife and son, where he is working on a new novel.

After reading, and loving both Ship Breaker and Pump Six and Other Stories I was excited to have the opportunity to email the award winner author.

The past six months have been full of good news for you: Ship Breaker has won the Printz and was a finalist for the National Book Award and your book The Alchemist has been nominated for a Nebula.  How do all these successes feel?  Does it ever go to your head? Continue reading Author Interview: Paolo Bacigalupi

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The Hub Tweets of the Week – March 25, 2011

Published March 25, 2011

Here is a list of fun and informative tweets from some of your favorite people in YA Lit:

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Printz Across the Pond

Published March 22, 2011

Recently I had the good fortune to visit Scotland. I had been a graduate student at University of Edinburgh a few years ago, and as an English major I was always surprised by the fact that my British colleagues were impressively familiar with classic American literature…until it came to the books I would mention that I had read in my childhood or adolescence. Mentioning Lois Lowry’s The Giver I was met by blank stares; this so horrified me that I gave my professor a copy. One of the most interesting epiphanies in a year spent thinking about how national identity is formed through literature (this was what I was studying)— was that as we get older, maybe because we gain awareness of the bigger world, we read things from other countries and cultures. But there truly is no substitute for the impact that books make on our brains when we read them as kids or teens. People (even people who read a lot) don’t go back and read teen books that they didn’t grow up with, unless they have a pretty specific reason to.

Armed with this knowledge and my librarian curiosity, I set out on a mission during my last visit to see what had made it into Scottish bookstores for American young adult literature. Here is what I found:

This is Waterstone's, a chain of bookstores similar to Barnes and Noble. I once waited outside this one for 7 hours for the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at midnight.

I headed to Waterstone’s, a chain bookstore that I thought would have a good selection. Just to set the scene, here is the view from where I was standing:

That’s Edinburgh Castle. Isn’t pretty? Now moving on…

Continue reading Printz Across the Pond

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Book Review: You Are Not Here

Published March 22, 2011

From the dying roses on the front of the cover to the small size of the book itself, You Are Not Here by Samantha Schutz is a visually appealing book that will initially catch the eyes of many teens. The jacket summary explains to readers that Annaleah and Brian are two high school students who had a strong relationship with one another, one that could be compared to the characters Romeo and Juliet, since their relationship was both secret and all they needed was each other’s love. The first chapter of You Are Not Here describes Annaleah’s grief while she is next to Brian’s tombstone, which entices readers into wanting to know how he died.

Continue reading Book Review: You Are Not Here

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Interview with the author: Alden Bell

Published March 21, 2011

Alden Bell is a pseudonym for author Joshua Gaylord. His novel The Reapers Are the Angels won a 2011 Alex Award, YALSA’s award for books written for adults that have appeal for teen readers. The Reapers Are the Angels is set twenty-five years after  a zombie apocalypse has decimated North America. It follows fifteen-year old Temple on a road trip of sorts as she flees enemies (both living and undead) and deals with her unhappy past.  Josh agreed to answer some questions about his inspiration and writing process, and his answers are below.

1. First, congratulations on your Alex Award, and for being nominated for a Philip K. Dick Award! The Alex Award is given by YALSA to recognize adult books with appeal for teenage readers. Part of the appeal of The Reapers Are the Angels is Temple, the fifteen-year old protagonist. Why did you choose to feature a teenager as the main character? Do the students you work with as an English teacher influence your writing?

There are a lot of reasons I chose a teenage girl for my protagonist.  Some of my reasons are lofty and overly intellectualized (teenage girlhood as a symbol of incorruptible purity of spirit)—and some are mundane and rather embarrassing (Temple is based, somewhat, on one of my favorite warriors: Buffy).  The fact is that I wanted to see a teenage girl do things that are normally the domain of boys and men.  I’m tired of watching men ride up on their steeds and heroically save the day.  Even though Temple does all the things we might expect a clichéd zombie-killer to do, it’s refreshing for me to see a girl do them.  Sometimes a gender switch is all it takes to transform the ordinary into the unexpected.  As a teacher of rather insulated and well-to-do New Yorkers, I don’t think any of my students contributed much to the character of Temple.  On the other hand, the great thing about teenage girls is that they cannot be over-dramatized.  They are naturally melodramatic.  So Temple’s epic sense of drama is, in certain ways, related to the life-and-death dramas that seem to happen every day in the buzzing minds of my female students.

Continue reading Interview with the author: Alden Bell

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