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Saturday, February 26, 2011

Top Ten: YA Authors

There are certain authors that I will just snap up their books, even if I don't know what they're about, just because their name is on the cover. These are my top ten YA authors.

10. Heather Brewer


Heather Brewer was not your typical teen growing up. She wore black, danced under full moons and devoured every book in sight.
She hasn’t changed much.
Today, Heather can be found writing in her funky, black Happy Bunny jammie pants, dancing under the full moon, devouring every book in sight, and attending renaissance faire in costume (and in character).

When Heather's not writing, dressing up, dancing and reading, she's answering email, which she LOVES to get. You can email Heather by using the contact form on the right. But before you do, make sure you check the FAQ to see if your question has been answered there. Unfortunately, Auntie Heather cannot respond to all emails, as doing so would take up valuable writing time (and we wouldn't want that, would we?), but you can always reach her by commenting on her blog or her MySpace, or by following her on Twitter. You can also contact her by snail-mail at Auntie Heather Brewer 12685 Dorsett Road #317 Maryland Heights, MO 63043.




Website
Twitter
Blog
I’ve always been a bit “outside the box” and when I started writing I didn’t deviate from that plan. Flaunting conventional wisdom, I self-published my first three books in an effort to learn how publishing actually works. I learned a lot, including such arcane skills as how to calculate a book’s spine size and typeset a manuscript.

After spending a couple years honing my skills, I sold my Time Rovers® Series to Dragon Moon Press in 2005. That series (SOJOURN, VIRTUAL EVIL and MADMAN’S DANCE) was nominated for fifteen awards and has won twelve to date. Which still amazes me. I’ve also sold short stories and non-fiction articles for various anthologies.

My ultimate goal was a contract with one of the major publishing houses and that came to fruition in April 2009 when I signed with St. Martin’s Press. The Demon Trappers Series, a Young Adult Urban Fantasy series set in Atlanta, will debut in January 2011 in the United Kingdom and February 2011 in the United States.

Though I’m an Iowan by birth, I live in Atlanta. I credit my crazy imagination for my success and honestly believe I have the best job in the world. And I love single malt scotch and expensive chocolate. Not a bad combination.


Libba Bray is the author of the acclaimed A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

(Every single other bio for Libba was extremely long, and while they all made me pee my pants laughing, I didn't want this post to be too long. Plus, her utter AWESOMENESS speaks for itself.)




Since 1991, Suzanne Collins has been busy writing for children’s television. She has worked on the staffs of several Nickelodeon shows, including the Emmy-nominated hit Clarissa Explains it All and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo. For preschool viewers, she penned multiple stories for the Emmy-nominated Little Bear and Oswald. She also co-wrote the critically acclaimed Rankin/ Bass Christmas special, Santa, Baby! Most recently she was the Head Writer for Scholastic Entertainment’s Clifford’s Puppy Days.

While working on a Kids WB show called Generation O! she met children’s author James Proimos, who talked her into giving children’s books a try.

Thinking one day about Alice in Wonderland, she was struck by how pastoral the setting must seem to kids who, like her own, lived in urban surroundings. In New York City, you’re much more likely to fall down a manhole than a rabbit hole and, if you do, you’re not going to find a tea party. What you might find...? Well, that’s the story of Gregor the Overlander, the first book in her five-part fantasy/ war series, The Underland Chronicles.

She currently lives in Connecticut with her family and a pair of feral kittens they adopted from their backyard.


I live in central California with my husband and two very busy daughters. There is never a time that I can be found without a book in my hand, and I adore stories that take me to new places, and then take me by surprise. Books that changed my world include JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Contemporary authors that I can't get enough of include Melissa Marr, Kristin Cashore, Jay Asher (write something else, Jay!), and Suzanne Collins.

I have a Doctorate in Physical Therapy, and my day job is my full time PT practice. Growing up all over the United States has inspired wanderlust and I love travel, which works out well, because my weekend job is lecturing internationally on a variety of health care topics. But, one day not long ago, for no apparent reason, I decided I needed another job and started a night job—writing. Personal Demons is my first novel.



Lesley is a writer and actor living in Toronto, Canada.  Captivated at a young age by stories of mythology and folk lore, past civilizations, and legendary heroes, she developed into a full-fledged Celtic Mythology Geek, steeped in stories of the Otherworld, Faeries and King Arthur. Lesley went on to earn a Master’s Degree in English from the University of Toronto specializing in Shakespeare and Arthurian literature.



For almost three years, Lesley hosted weekly late-night movie marathons on the nationally broadcast television show, SPACEBAR, as the Waitron-9000, a sparkly holographic waitress with an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure B-movie trivia. She is also a founding member and principal performer with Tempest Theatre Group.



Lesley is an unrepentant egghead – a character-trait that somehow doesn’t interfere with a love of shoes and shiny things. WONDROUS STRANGE is her debut novel, the first in a trilogy published by HarperCollins.




Andrea Cremer spent her childhood daydreaming while roaming the forests and lakeshores of Northern Wisconsin. She now lives in Minnesota, but she thinks of her homeland as the “Canadian Shield” rather than the Midwest.

Andrea has always loved writing and has never stopped writing, but she only recently plunged into the deep end of the pool that is professional writing. When she’s not writing, Andrea teaches history at a very nice liberal arts college in St. Paul.

In the little spare time she can find, Andrea stares up at trees, rescues infant rabbits from predatory cats, and invents names for pug puppies with her husband. She has an unfortunate tendency to spill things – white carpets beware!




I was born in Austin, Texas on August 18, 1986 and grew up in Michigan. In the first few years of my life, my family bounced around several states until we finally settled in mid-Michigan. I was a Girl Scout who dabbled in gymnastics and volleyball until I discovered horseback riding and it quickly consumed my heart and soul. When I discovered the Goosebumps books in the third grade, I decided I wanted to be RL Stine when I grew up.


I own a horse (a Swedish warmblood mare named Pia) and my passion is hunter/jumpers. My other passion is photography, and if you don't see me on a horse, you will probably see me with a camera in my face. I collect 1980's My Little Ponies and Breyer model horses, own over 400 movies, love playing Pokemon and MarioKart, and dream about sneaking into the polar bear exhibit at the zoo some day.


When I was sixteen, I wrote a one-act play about violent vampires for my creative writing class that became my first novel. For NaNoWriMo in November 2008, I wrote ANGELFIRE and signed with literary agent Elizabeth Jote of Objective Entertainment on February 4th, 2009. A few months later, we sold the trilogy to Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.




Rachel Caine is the New York Times, USA Today and internationally bestselling author of more than 30 novels, including the immensely popular Morganville Vampires series, the Weather Warden series, and the Outcast Season series.

In 2011, Rachel will publish the first novel of her new series, The Revivalist, with the release of Working Stiff in August.

She has been honored with a Paranormal Pearl Award and an RT Booklovers Award, and was recently nominated for Best Urban Fantasy novel of 2010 as well as a Career Achievement Award, both from Romantic Times. Her first young adult novel, Glass Houses, was chosen for the Texas Tayshas List in 2009.

Rachel has appeared as a guest at over 100 science fiction, fantasy, mystery and romance conventions and conferences over the past 20 years, including Dragon*Con, San Diego ComicCon, the World Fantasy Convention, and the World Science Fiction Convention. She has been featured in several national publications including People magazine and Vanity Fair, and on local and national television.

She was born at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, attended Socorro High School in El Paso, Texas, and earned a bachelors degree in business administration from Texas Tech University. She’s worked in many jobs, including accounting, graphic designer, insurance investigation, corporate communications, and web design, to name just a few. She became a full time writer in 2010.

Rachel is married to award-winning fantasy artist R. Cat Conrad, and has two iguanas as pets: Popeye and Darwin.




Cassandra Clare was born to American parents in Teheran, Iran and spent much of her childhood travelling the world with her family, including one trek through the Himalayas as a toddler where she spent a month living in her father’s backpack. She lived in France, England and Switzerland before she was ten years old. Since her family moved around so much she found familiarity in books and went everywhere with a book under her arm. She spent her high school years in Los Angeles where she used to write stories to amuse her classmates, including an epic novel called “The Beautiful Cassandra” based on a Jane Austen short story of the same name (and  which later inspired her current pen name).

After college, Cassie lived in Los Angeles and New York where she worked at various entertainment magazines and even some rather suspect tabloids where she reported on Brad and Angelina’s world travels and Britney Spears’ wardrobe malfunctions. She started working on her YA novel, City of Bones, in 2004, inspired by the urban landscape of Manhattan, her favourite city. She turned to writing fantasy fiction full time in 2006 and hopes never to have to write about Paris Hilton again.


7 comments:

  1. I've only read books by Suzanne Collins but there are a lot of authors on your list that I would love to try. Thank you for bringing them to my attention!

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  2. Interesting list of YA authors. I've never heard of most of them. But what about authos of color? Do you read any books by Latina, Asian, or Black writers? I'd be interested to see that list.

    http://sandrasbookclub.blogspot.com

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  3. Ditto for me, at least with Clare and Collins. I haven't read most of the other authors on your list. *Sigh* So many books, so little time ...

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  4. Rachel Caine and Cassandra Clare deserve their spots :))

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  5. This is a great list! www.thewitchesbrew.biz

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  6. Excellent list, and I'm adding several of these great authors to this other list I found of the "best" young adult authors (it goes back to the beginning, w/classic authors as well). These authors deserve their due, IMO!

    http://www.ranker.com/list/best-young-adult-authors/book-keeper

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  7. I've read books by libba bray, suzanne collins and cassandra clare. Thats all the people i've heard of though.

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