Princeton Teen Book Bash
download a complete booklist of books in the PPL collection of Book Bash authors |
Saturday May 5, 2007 Noon - 5:00 p.m. in the Albert E. Hinds Community Plaza (next to the library) Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street, Princeton, NJ Featuring authors of notable, popular young adult books. Meet the authors, listen to them read from their work, and buy signed copies of their books. This is a rain or shine event. |
Read all about it in the Princeton Packet: "Reading Rules"
Author Reading Schedule:
Eireann Corrigan 12:10-12:20 p.m.
Eireann Corrigan first began writing rap songs for the family pet, a sheepdog named Chauncey. Growing up as the youngest of five children in suburban NJ, Eireann attended Rutgers Preparatory School, Sarah Lawrence College, and then received her Master’s degree at NYU. Her graduate school thesis became her first book—a poetry memoir called You Remind Me of You. Her second book, a novel in poems called Splintering, was named an ALA Best Book and won the Garden State Teen Book Award. Most recently, Eireann published Ordinary Ghosts, her first book written in prose. It tells the story of Emil Simon, a high school junior who finds a master key to his elite prep school among his missing brother’s things. Once Emil starts sneaking into school at night, he unravels the mysteries surrounding his brother’s disappearance and meets a faculty daughter who has secrets of her own.
Having returned to Rutgers Prep seven years ago to teach writing and literature, Eireann will marry a man she first dated as a freshman in high school next October.
More about Eireann Corrigan and her books, including songs from a soundtrack for Ordinary Ghosts written and recorded by the band Odette Magritte.
Sarah Beth Durst 12:20-12:30 p.m.
Sarah Beth Durst grew up in Northboro, MA, a town in central Massachusetts which (she claims) was temporarily transformed into a fairy tale kingdom for several days in 1986. These events later inspired her novel, Into the Wild, as well as her paralyzing fear of glass footwear.
At age 10, she decided she wanted to become a writer. Her first story was a cross between the Wizard of Oz and G.I. Joe. With lions. She wrote a lot more after that without lions, including a stageplay for her senior thesis at Princeton University. Not a single lion in that. But there were dragons. Yes, in a stageplay.
She then spent a year living and writing in Cambridge, England, until the walls of her flat molded from all the rain and she decided to move back to the Northeast. Sarah currently lives in Stony Brook, NY, with her husband, their daughter, and their cat Perni, whose name was Copernicus until they discovered that he was a girl cat.
More about Sarah Beth Durst and her books
Daniel Ehrenhaft 12:30-12:40 p.m.
Daniel Ehrenhaft is the author of the Delacorte Press novel The Last Dog on Earth and the novel 10 Things To Do Before I Die:
Ted Burger is your average New York teenager. He hangs out at Circle Eat Diner everyday, he worships the band Shakes the Clown, he has a totally cute girlfriend, and he’s in love with his best friend’s girlfriend. Ok, so not entirely average. But life is about to get even stranger on the first day of spring break, the day he eats the FINAL batch of fries from a pissed off fry-cook who has just been fired. Turns out, the fries that Ted has consumed have been poisoned with a concoction that causes death within 24 hours. Ted’s friends want to take him to the hospital, but Ted views his impending death sentence as an opportunity to finally break out of his normal routine. With gusto, Ted decides he must complete the list of 10 things his friends created for him before they knew he was dying. And so the craziest day of his life begins…
Daniel Ehrenhaft was the recipient of the 2003 Edgar Allan Poe Award for the young adult novels The Wessex Papers, Volumes 1 through 3. Daniel resides in Brooklyn with his wife.
More about Daniel Ehrenhaft and his books
Emily Franklin (not scheduled to read)
Emily Franklin is the author of two novels for adults, The Girls' Almanac and Liner Notes as well as a critically-acclaimed seven book fiction series for teens, The Principles of Love. Forthcoming in September 2007 from Delacorte/Knopf is a Young Adult novel, The Other Half of Me, and another series from Penguin, Chalet Girls. Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe and the Mississippi Review as well as in the anthologies Some Kind of Wonderful: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes and When I Was a Loser: True Stories of (Barely) Surviving High School by Today's Top Writers. She lives near Boston with her husband and their young children.
More about Emily Franklin and her books
Mariah Fredericks 12:50-1:00 p.m.
Mariah Fredericks was born in New York City and educated at Vassar. Mariah has been reading tarot cards since she was a teenager, and while she knows that it is lame to believe in fortune-telling, her readings keep coming true, so she keeps doing them. She has even written a tarot guide called The Smart Girl's Guide to Tarot (under the pseudonym "Emmi Fredericks"). Mariah Fredericks lives with her husband and Basset Hound in Queens.
More about Mariah Fredericks and her books
E.R. Frank 12:40-12:50 p.m.
E. R. Frank is the author of two highly praised novels for Atheneum: America and Friction. Her first novel was Life Is Funny, winner of the Teen People Book Club NEXT Award for YA Fiction and was also a top-ten ALA 2001 Quick Pick. Her new novel, Wrecked, came out in April 2007.
In addition to being writer, E. R. Frank is also a clinical social worker and psychotherapist.
She works with adults and adolescents and specializes in trauma.
More about E.R. Frank and her books
Robin Friedman 1:00-1:10 p.m.
Robin Friedman was born in Israel and came to the United States when she was five. She lived first in Brooklyn, then Staten Island, and finally, Marlboro, New Jersey, where she graduated from high school and learned to make Big Macs at the local McDonald's. She still lives in New Jersey, and believe it or not, has never once been tempted to reveal the secret sauce recipe. Robin wanted to be a writer since she was little — I wrote tons of stories when I was younger about talking squirrels and girls with pigtails — and sold them to my guitar teacher for 50 cents. Unfortunately, when I stopped taking guitar lessons, this market dried up.
Robin's novels include: The Girlfriend Project, The Silent Witness, and How I Survived My Summer Vacation.
More about Robin Friedman and her books
K.L Going 1:10-1:20 p.m.
K.L. Going is the award winning author of books for children and teens. Her first novel, Fat Kid Rules the World was named a Michael Printz honor book by the American Library Association, as well as one of the Best Books for Young Adults from the past decade. Her second novel, The Liberation of Gabriel King, was chosen as a notable book by the International Reading Association and a Booksense pick by independent booksellers. Her third novel, Saint Iggy was published in September of 2006 to starred reviews. Her books are available as audio books and have sold in the UK, Japan, Korea, and Italy. KL also published a short story in the "Face" issue of Rush Hour, edited by Michael Cart.
She lives and writes full-time in Glen Spey, NY.
More about K.L. Going and her books
Mary Hogan 1:20-1:30 p.m.
Mary's newest novel is called Perfect Girl.
Isn't freshman year hard enough without:
A) Suddenly falling in love with your best friend, Perry--literally the boy next door.
B) Meeting a new girl at school who is PERFECT.
C) Seeing that Perry has also laid eyes on PERFECT GIRL and can't look away??
Aargh! Ruthie Bayer has no idea how to become a girlfriend, when all her life she's been a friend. And she doesn't have much time to find out. In desperation, she calls the one person who can help her...and the one person who is guaranteed to turn her life upside down. Perfect Girl is a love story...and much more. It shows how things are not always what they seem, how often grown-ups act like kids, how love can surprise you, and how finding yourself may only be a matter of opening your eyes and really looking.
Mary Hogan is also the author of The Serious Kiss.
She lives in New York City with her husband Bod and dog Axel.
More about Mary Hogan and her books
Thu-Huong Ha 1:30-1:40 p.m.
Thu-Huong Ha is a teenage author who writes for a teenage audience; her first novel, entitled Hail Caesar, was published in February 2007. You can find it in stores now. Ha is now a student at Princeton University.
More about Thu-Huong Ha and her book
Maureen Johnson 1:40-1:50 p.m.
Maureen Johnson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. "I decided to be born during a massive snowstorm. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. I am an only child, which means that I know how to play Candyland by myself," says Maureen.
"I was always one of those reading and writing kids. After a little dalliance with astronomy (I had a glow in the dark star chart) and archeology (I had a little shovel), I declared my intention to become a writer at the age of eight or nine or so."
Maureen attended the University of Delaware, home of the Fighting Blue Hens. After college, she moved to New York to study theatrical dramaturgy and writing at Columbia University School of the Arts. "As a graduate student, I held at least a dozen different jobs to pay my way through school," adds Maureen. "These included: working in a haunted house theme restaurant, being a fake employee for a company to make it look like more people worked there than actually did, working on a show in Las Vegas that had live tigers and malfunctioning smoke machines in the same enclosed area, and being an editor."
Marueen's first book, The Key to the Golden Firebird, came out in May 2004. She has also written The Bermudez Triangle, 13 Little Blue Envelopes, and Devilish. Her fifth book, Girl as Sea, will be released in June 2007. Maureen Johnson lives in New York City.
More about Maureen Johnson and her books
Melissa Kantor 1:50-2:00 p.m.
Melissa is the author of three novels for young adults: The Breakup Bible, Confessions of a Not It Girl, and If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where’s My Prince?
Melissa was born in New York City, and knew from a young age that she wanted to be a writer. "When I was in seventh grade, I told people I was going to be a writer. Then in college I got interested in other things, and after I graduated I started teaching, which I love."
But Melissa found herself insipred to try writing again. "Ideas for stories kept popping into my head. One was an image of two girls walking down Montague Street (that’s the main drag in Brooklyn Heights) during their lunch period. They were best friends, only one of the girls was cooler and prettier and more successful with boys than the other one. They were talking about a party they’d been invited to, trying to decide if they wanted to go or not. Finally I decided I had to know what happened to them. Those girls became Jan and Rebecca, and their story is Confessions of a Not It Girl."
Find more information about Melissa Kantor and her books
More about Melissa Kantor and her books
Jennifer Ann Kogler 2:00-2:10 p.m.
Jennifer Anne Kogler, 23, lives in Orange County, California, where she was born and raised. She's wanted to be a writer since she was old enough to hold a pencil. When the first stories she wrote as a youngster became too long, she solved the problem by simply killing off all her characters, a technique she improved upon in her later work. After graduating cum laude with a B.A. in English from Princeton University and delivering a graduation speech with her twin brother Jeremy, she returned home, determined to fulfill her career dream of becoming a fulltime writer.
Taking up residence in her old bedroom she revised the novel that she'd written as her senior thesis at Princeton. She got a job in a local restaurant and realized that her life had become a fully-realized cliché: The waitress/would-be writer. By the end of the summer following graduation Jennie sent her revised manuscript, Ruby Tuesday, off to literary agencies. Within days, she received a phone call from Trident Media Group, offering to represent her and two months later, she had a two-book deal with HarperCollins. Jennie has one sister and six brothers, is a longtime fan of the L.A. Dodgers, and enjoys participating in the annual Kogler Family Christmas low-stakes poker tournament. She is currently at work on her second novel.
More about Jennifer Kogler and her books
Bob Krech 2:10-2:20 p.m.
Bob was born in Trenton, New Jersey and grew up in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. According to Bob, he didn’t catch onto reading and writing until second grade when he discovered comic books. "I became a huge comic book fan starting out with Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, and The Flash, and moving onto the Marverlous World of Marvel with Spiderman, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Dr. Strange, and pretty much everyone else in their stable. Comic books turned me on to reading, writing, and drawing." He began writing things other than comic books in the fourth grade, including spy, horror, adventure, and mystery stories, and kept writing all through the grades, having a blast in junior high and high school, writing mostly satire with friends including crazy stuff for class assignments like a radio play called Planet of the Termites.
Bob attended Rutgers College, and after college got married and began teaching elementary grades and art in New Jersey, Scotland, and Saudi Arabia. Rebound is his first book for young adults, and it was selected by ALA as one of the Best Books for Young Adults in 2007. Bob is also the author of twenty books published by Scholastic Professional Books on the subject of teaching for parents and teachers. Bob and his wife live with son Andrew, who is 16, and a daughter, Faith, who is 14, and a parakeet named Snowflake, in Lawrenceville, NJ. His wife Karen is an ESL teacher in West Windsor-Plainsboro Schools. Bob is the elementary math specialist for the West Windsor-Plainsboro Schools.
More about Bob Krech and his book
Marie Lamba 2:20-2:30 p.m.
Marie Lamba’s first young adult novel, What I Meant…, will be published in July 2007 by Random House Children’s Books. She is currently at work on the sequel, What I Said… In What I Meant… 15-year-old Sangeet Jumnal is crazy about a guy, but her dad is from India and won’t let her date until she’s 16, maybe. Her American mom, who usually sticks up for Sang, suddenly thinks her daughter is a liar, a thief and a bulimic. Why? An aunt who has been living with them for the past three months, has been stealing money and food, and setting up Sang to take the blame. Lamba, a freelance writer and editor for 16 years, has more than 100 published articles. Her national magazine credits include Writer's Digest, Your Home and Sports International. With her Indian husband, she has traveled all over India, writing about her experiences for numerous publications such as Garden Design and Bridal Trends. She holds a BA in English and in Literary Art (an individualized major combining writing and fine art) from the University of Pennsylvania.
More about Marie Lamba and her books
E. Lockhart 2:30-2:40 p.m.
Emily Lockhart writes novels for teenagers: The Boyfriend List, The Boy Book and Fly on the Wall, plus the upcoming Dramarama (May 2007).
Find more information on E. Lockhart and her books
David Lubar 2:40-2:50 p.m.
David Lubar grew up in Morristown, NJ. The son of a school librarian, he sold his first short story in 1978, two years after graduating from Rutgers. He's written a wide variety of fiction for teens and young readers, and has more than one million copies of his books in print. His novel, Hidden Talents, was named a Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association. Dunk, a wildly funny young adult novel set on the boardwalk of the Jersey Shore, won the 2004 Young Adult Book Award from the Keystone State Reading Association and was the young adult selection for One Book New Jersey. Lubar’s contemporary coming-of-age novel, Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie, received the 2007 Thumb’s Up Award from the Michigan Library Association and is currently nominated for awards in nine other states. His latest novel, True Talents, a sequel to Hidden Talents, was released in March to rave reviews. Science fiction legend Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game, said, “True Talents is exactly the book you give to boys who are usually reluctant to read anything. But it's also a terrific book for anybody who loves a terrific adventure story.”
His third short story collection, The Curse of the Campfire Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales, will hit the shelves in September. David Lubar has also designed and programmed many video games, including Home Alone, River Raid 2, and Frogger 2, but he'd much rather spend his time writing books and hanging out with teachers, librarians, and young readers. He lives in Nazareth, Pennsylvania with his wife, daughter, and a trio of felines.
More information on David Lubar and his books
Carolyn MacCullough 2:50-3:00
Carolyn MacCullough was born and raised in Connecticut, and had a drama-free childhood and this is what probably caused her to fall in love with books at an early age. According to Carolyn, she spent every possible minute reading; she was one of those kids who read under the covers with a flashlight and during any length of car trip. She always wanted to be a writer. However, she also wanted to be: a) a veterinarian, b) a ballerina, c) a pilot, and d) a princess in a tower. Over time though, she discovered that: a) she couldn’t deal with the idea of science classes, b) she was a little too clumsy, c) she had a love/hate relationship with heights (mainly she loved them when she was on the ground), and d) there wasn’t much call for princesses in towers. Meanwhile, she was always scribbling things down: odes to the dogwood tree in her front yard, poems about her sisters, stories about dragons, and yes, princesses in towers. Fast forward...in May 2002, she graduated from the New School and shortly afterward, to her delight and shock, she managed to sell her first novel, Falling Through Darkness to Roaring Brook Press. Since then she published two more books, Stealing Henry and Drawing the Ocean. Currently, she teaches creative writing at Gotham Writers and a summer creative writing class at The New School. She spends the rest of her time writing, and reading books that she wishes she had written!
More about Carolyn MacCullough and her books
Leslie Margolis 3:00-3:10
Leslie Margolis grew up in Los Angeles, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. Before writing Fix and Price of Admission, she studied social anthropology at the London School of Economics. Her focus at that time was the Latin American peasantry, which somehow led to her current field of study, the elusive North American teenager.
Leslie now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and Aunt Blanche, her six-toed genius dog.
More information on Leslie Margolis and her books
Wendy Mass 3:10-3:20
Wendy Mass is the award-winning author of five novels for young people including A Mango-Shaped Space, which was awarded the first Schneider Family Book Award by the American Library Association, Leap Day, and the Twice Upon a Time fairy tale series. A Mango Shaped Space is alsopart of the New Jersey Battle for the Book competition. Her latest book, Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life, earned a starred review in Publisher's Weekly and is a lead title in next fall's Scholastic Book Fair. Her next book, Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall, will be published in September, 2007. Wendy wrote the treatment for an episode of the television show Monk, entitled "Mr. Monk Goes to the Theatre," which aired during Monk's second season.
Wendy tells people her hobbies are hiking and photography, but really they're collecting candy bar wrappers and searching for buried treasure with her metal detector. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and their twins.
More information about Wendy Mass and her books
Megan McCafferty 3:20-3:30
Megan McCafferty is the author of Sloppy Firsts, (Crown, 2001), an ALA Top 10 Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, an ALA Popular Paperback, and a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. Its sequel, Second Helpings (Three Rivers, 2003) was also selected to the NYPL list, and was a Booklist Editor's Pick for one of the best novels of 2003. Charmed Thirds went on sale April 11th and was an instant New York Times bestseller. Fourth Comings goes on sale August 14th, 2007.
Megan also edited a short story anthology called SIXTEEN: Stories About That Sweet and Bitter Birthday (Three Rivers, 2004). Her work has been translated into ten languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Turkish and Hungarian. Megan lives in New Jersey.
More information about Megan McCafferty and her books
Patricia McCormick 3:30-3:40
Patricia McCormick, a 2006 finalist for the National Book Award, is the author of three prize-winning books for young adults: Sold, a deeply moving account of sexual trafficking; My Brother's Keeper, a realistic view of teenage substance abuse and Cut, an intimate portrait of one teenager's struggle with self-injury. Her books have been translated into several languages; Cut has sold nearly 500,000 copies. Sold was named by Publisher's Weekly as one othe Best 100 Books of the Year and was selected by the American Library Association as one of the Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults in 2006. McCormick was named a New York Foundation on the Arts fellow in 2004. She is currently working on a book that explores the grief of a 15 year old girl whose brother was killed in the war in Iraq. McCormick is a graduate of Columbia University School of Journalism. She lives in Manhattan.
More information about Patricia McCormick and her books
Blake Nelson 3:40-3:50 p.m.
Blake Nelson grew up in Portland, Oregon. His first love was books but he spent several years in his teens and twenties playing in bands. Blake's first writing job was at Details magazine, where he wrote short humor pieces on the slacker lifestyle. His fiction remained unpublished until Sassy Magazine (cool girl magazine from the 90s) began publishing excerpts from his first novel. In 2003 he decided to try a Young Adult novel, (a book specifically for teens) and wrote The New Rules of High School. Since then he has published five YA novels: New Rules, Rockstar Superstar, Prom Anonymous, Gender Blender, and Paranoid Park. His books have won numerous awards and continue to be translated around the world. A TV movie for Gender Blender is currently in development at Nickelodeon. Paranoid Park has been made into a film by Gus Van Sant, its release date is December 2007. His new book, a science fiction teen novel is called: They Came From Below comes out in July 2007. Blake Nelson lives with his wife in Brooklyn, NY.
More information on Blake Nelson and his books
Ann Rinaldi 3:50-4:00
Award winning writer, Ann Rinaldi, most known for her historical fiction, has authored over a dozen young adult novels. Ann first became interested in studying American history when her son became active in Revolutionary War re-enactments when he was in high school. Writing historical fiction has since then become a passion for Ann Rinaldi. She spends a great deal of time researching the historical periods in which her novels take place to insure the accuracy of the settings and draws from her own life experiences to develop the realism of her characters. The conflicts which her protagonists face reflect concerns common to young adults, past and present.
More information about Ann Rinaldi and her books
Kieran Scott 4:00-4:10
Kieran Scott grew up in Northern New Jersey and attended Pascack Hills High School, where she was a non-blonde cheerleader as well as a member of the choir, drama club, literary magazine and yearbook staff. A graduate of Rutgers University, Kieran grew up in Montvale, NJ and now lives with her husband Matt in Westwood, just a few towns away. She is currently working on her next novel, Geek Magnet, which will be available from G.P. Putnam & Sons in 2008.
More information on Kieran and her books
T.K Welsh 4:20-4:30
T.K. Welsh is the author of several Young Adult novels, including The Unresolved (August - 2006) and Resurrection Men (April - 2007), both from Dutton/Penguin. Horn Book Magazine called The Unresolved, "A decidedly unconventional ghost story ... (and) a tightly wound novel." Ranked one of the Top Ten Children's Books of 2006 by the Washington Post, The Unresolved has been named an Association of Jewish Libraries 2007 Notable Book for Teens by the Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee, which recognized only six works in Jewish teen literature this year. The novel was nominated for the 2006 Cybils literary awards, and for the 2007 Best Books for Young Adults (BBYA) by the American Library Association. It's currently featured as one of the Best Teen Books of the Year 2006 at BarnesAndNoble.com. He is currently working on a sequel to Gospel Truths called The God Machine, a religious thriller to be published by Bantam in 2008. In addition to being a novelist, T.K. Welsh was an early Internet pioneer, and he founded the world’s first interactive advertising agency back in 1984.
T.K. Welsh is an avid fly-fisherman and scuba diver. The single, stay-at-home father of a six-year-old girl, the author currently resides in Hopewell Township, New Jersey, near Princeton. Besides working full-time as a novelist, he continues to consult from time to time in the world of interactive advertising.
More information about T.K. Welsh and his books
Ned Vizzini 4:10-4:20
Ned Vizzini is the author of "It's Kind of a Funny Story" ("insightful and utterly authentic" --New York Times Book Review), "Be More Chill", and "Teen Angst? Naaah".... His work has been honored by the American Library Association, BookSense, and the New York Public Library and has been translated into five languages (forthcoming in Chinese).
He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
More information about Ned Vizzini and his books
Maryrose Wood 4:30-4:40
Maryrose grew up on Long Island, moved to New York City at age 17 to study acting at NYU, then dropped out of college to be in the chorus of a Broadway musical — which flopped. Lean and action-packed years of acting, directing, and
making drunk people laugh at comedy clubs followed. Becoming a writer seemed an astonishingly easy way out of this Dickensian existence, and not a moment too soon. Her first novel for young adults, Sex, Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love, was published in 2006 and hailed as “an uproariously funny debut” (Booklist), “irresistible” (Cleveland Plain Dealer), and “an effervescent delight” (Common Sense Media). Why I Let My Hair Grow Out was released in March ’07,
Maryrose’s next book will be My Life: The Musical, a tale of two theatre-obsessed teens who go to hilarious lengths to see their favorite Broadway show over and over again. In the kind of life-imitating-art-imitating-life twist one could only find in a musical, Maryrose had to invent a fictional Broadway show for the characters in her novel to be obsessed with.
She lives with her two children. Their mischievous antics prevent her from getting an excessive amount of work done, thus keeping her life hilariously in balance. They live in New York, with a small, feisty, red-headed dog. In her spare time, Maryrose is a highly enthusiastic but only sporadically successful gardener. This year she intends to plant foxgloves and other plants known to attract faeries. She is also busy writing a sequel to Why I Let My Hair Grow Out, which will definitively answer that age-old question: Why are there no female leprechauns?
More information about Maryrose Wood and her books
For more information about this program, please email:
Susan Conlon at sconlon@princetonlibrary.org
Allison Santos at asantos@princetonlibrary.org
This Princeton Teen Book Bash iss upported by: Barnes & Noble and Packet Publications:
