Hello from a hotel room. I have been traveling a lot! I love room service! When I get home in a few days I have to start my next YA book. I am frightened. 

Meanwhile, here is a little news!

SEATTLE

Most of my events for We Were Liars (May 13) will be after it publishes, but Seattlites -- a sneak preview plus FUN and EMBARASSING hijinks with other writers.

Feb 27, 2014,  me, Robin Wasserman, Adele Griffin and Sarah Mlynowski will read from our new books and from early and embarassing first attempts at fiction. It's at the downtown Seattle Public Library, 6:30 pm. More details here! 

The four of us are also doing two panels on Saturday the 29th at the AWP Conference,  also in Seattle, so if you're headed to that, come see us. 

HAMLINE

I just got back from spending 11 days teaching at Hamline University's MFA in Writing for Children, low-residency program. To put it simply, there are intensive residencies in July and January, and the rest of the time students write like crazy and send in work to their advisors for critique and guidance. The faculty is very thrilling to be around, for me.  

This time, I taught writing workshop with Laura Ruby (Bad Apple, Good Girls, etc) and our guests included: Anita Silvey (who lectured on the history of picture books and middle grade novels),
Jane Yolen (who gave our commencement speech),
Kate DiCamillo (who talked about her process on The Tiger Rising with Jane Resh Thomas),
Geoff Herbach (who talked about his theories of primal emotions and how they drive stories) and
Vaunda Micheaux Nelson (who talked about her development process on No Crystal Stair). 

Pretty awesome. Plus our usual faculty who are listed here on the MFAC website.  We spent a lot of time talking about picture books this season, and a lot of time talking about writing cultural difference -- sharing LGBTQ book lists, POC fantasy novel booklists, and more. 

Anyway, the Hamline MFAC now has a Tumblr, which is unofficial but supercalifragilistic. It is run by faculty member and NBA long-lister Anne Ursu, and if you have interest in children's and YA books generally, it's a good one to follow (it's not centered on Hamline stuff, but on stuff we talk about at Hamline, if that makes sense.) Here it is.

TUMBLR and more TUMBLR

So not only do I recommend THAT Tumblr, but I want you to know I got ACTUAL TUMBLR lessons from Rachel Fershleiser, who works there and does all their cool book stuff -- and she explained it all to me!  Though I haven't figured out totally how to work it, I am getting much better and you should come and follow me because I will be there and on Twitter much more than on this blog. 

Also, of course, the We Were Liars Tumblr is dead sexy (made by the folks at Random House) and it has pins and maps and all that juicy stuff connected to the book. 

Apparetly at least four members of the staff at Avid Bookshop in GA read an early copy of We Were Liars (May 2014) - and you can read their responses here. 

And: The National Book Awards are on November 20. Follow on Twitter. I think the hashtag will be #nbaward but I'm not sure. I will post photos and give you the inside scoop when I can. 

Hope you had a good Halloween.
I was a monarch butterfly.
Someone stole our pumpkin AND the bowl of candy we left out for neighborhood kids.
I saw a man with a beard dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.
I ate all the Butterfingers nobody else wanted.
Business as usual for All Hallows Eve in NYC. 

Today (Nov 1) was the cover reveal on the Entertainment Weekly website for my upcoming book, WE WERE LIARS.  
It was an exclusive, which means no one was allowed to see the cover until today -- or the juicy John Green quotation at the top of the shiny beautiful jacket.  
Here it is!  
You also get a hint of the plot, which is highly under wraps. 

xoE

I have a book coming out in May. It is called WE WERE LIARS. There will be a fancy pants cover REVEAL on Entertainment Weekly's website on November 1, and advance reader copies (ARCs) will be mailed out after that --  but before then my publisher had me sign about 100 manuscripts which were sent to top secret recipients.

Okay, they're not top secret. I just don't know who they were. So if you were one of them, tweet me and let me know!  

If you want to know more about We Were Liars, I answered questions on Twitter the other night so there are some clues there. Search hashtag #wewereliars and you can read the conversation.  

We did it! We picked five National Book Award finalists for 2013, and they announced today, Oct 16. 

It was HARD to decide because we members of the committee adored all top ten books. But I am proud to share with you our choices, and a winner will be decided at a big fancy ceremony in late November.

The concrete info below is cribbed from the NBA's wonderful site -- but  you should click over to it because they have published a FREE EBOOK of excerpts from all 20 finalists in the four categories. So for free, you can read bits of all the contenders before the big event November 20. 

FINALISTS:

Kathi Appelt, The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp 
(Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster)

Cynthia Kadohata, The Thing About Luck (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster)

Tom McNeal, Far Far Away (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)

Meg Rosoff, Picture Me Gone (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Group USA)

Gene Luen Yang, Boxers & Saints (First Second/Macmillan)

LONGLIST:

- Kate DiCamillo, Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures (Candlewick Press)
- Lisa Graff, A Tangle of Knots (Philomel, A division of Penguin Group USA)
- Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic) 
- David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing (Knopf Books for Young Readers/Random House) 
- Anne Ursu, The Real Boy (Walden Pond Press/an Imprint HarperCollinsPublishers)

JUDGES:

Deb Caletti, Cecil Castellucci, Peter Glassman, E. Lockhart, Lisa Von Drasek

August is passing with reading, reading and reading -- but most of it is because I am judging the National Book Awards, young people's literature category.  SO I CAN'T TELL YOU ABOUT IT. 

For those of you who don't follow these things, the history of the NBA is pretty interesting, and the Wikipedia version is here (not authoritative, but probably basically the gist of it). The NBA online exhibition of the YPL award winners and finalists is below (I've linked to it before.)

Anyway, what happens is that publishers submit the books -- and they can be fiction, nonfiction, poetry, graphic novels, picture books, middle-grade, young adult -- anything! We are a committee of five -- three writers (one is me), one librarian and one bookseller. All in the field of children's literature. We read read read read read read, and discuss at length. Then we come up with a longlist of ten books that will be announced Sept 12. 

About a month later, the finalists from that list are announced. The five authors have a month to stew and worry -- and then we have a big PARTY at Cipriani. It is black tie! All the finalists do a big reading the night before the party, which is open to the public and which is pretty incredible.

Anyway. Party. Black tie. I am planning to wear a J. Crew party dress that is very pretty but maybe not as flattering as it might be. Unless I find something even better. And they have fancy writers and supporters of literature and people give speeches and they give the award. Also, lots of people liveTweet it, which is quite fun. And I get to give the award! Because I am the Chair of the YPL committee. 

Which means maybe I SHOULD get a new dress. 

But seriously. It is not about the dress. It is about the books. 

A few things I've read this summmer that I can tell you about:

GOBLIN SECRETS by William Alexander. This was our Mother-Daughter Book Club pick, and it won the NBA last year. Alexander talked at the Hamline MFA program when I taught there in July, and he was fascinating -- discussing  everything from Shakesperean theater to the Muppets, both influences on the novel.

Amulet of the Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud. I am in the middle of this on audio. So MUCH FUN. Why did it take me so long?

Bronxville by Coe Booth. This is a sequel to Tyrell, which I also loved, but I think it stands alone. It is in some ways a romance, in other ways a harsh and heartbreaking story of life in Bronx housing projects and a boy who is trying to find his way in a really tough situation. 

Happy reading!

xoE

Hello from a couch where I am sitting with Sarah Mlynowski and Courtney Sheinmel, WRITING STUFF. Well, they are writing stuff. I am blogging. 

My new book for elementary-aged readers came out this past week. Invisible Inkling: The Whoopie Pie War is the third book in the Invisible Inkling series. The return of the killer unicorn head, 15 ways to make pumpkin ice cream, pygmy hedgehogs, romance, a league of supervillains, moderate violence. What more could you want? Oh! Pictures by Harry Bliss. It's got those, too.

I am recently returned from teaching at Hamline's MFAC -- an MFA program in writing for children. It's a low-residency program, which means there are intensives in July and January, and the rest of the time the students work directly with an advisor on their creative and critical work. There are only a couple programs like it in country, specializing in writing for kids, so if you're interested I recommend you check it out.

This was my second residency, and one of my favorite things about teaching there is that I get to attend my colleagues' lectures on the craft of writing. Oh, hearing Franny Billingsly explain how to develop a character, or Anne Ursu talk about "staging" a novel, or Gary Schmidt talk about point of view -- all in a day's work.

I did a lecture this time called Self Editing: Better Living Through Technology, which was about using Final Draft, Scrivener and the Track Changes function of Word. 

The other big thing that's going on with me right now is I am judging the National Book Awards, young people's literature category. There are five judges total, and the long list of top ten books is announced on September 12, 2013. So I am reading reading reading. Here is a link to Up All Night Reading, the National Book Foundation's online exhibition of the YPL category winners and finalists, organized by year. It is very fun reading and has loads of essays about the books and tidbits about their authors.

Hope you are doing some amazing summer reading, too! 

xo E

Hey there. 

I haven't blogged because I have been writing a novel for you guys. Seriously. It won't be out for a year yet, but I am doing final revisions on my first YA book in quite a while. It is called (if you haven't read this blog in a while) WE WERE LIARS. 

More about that later. Internet-wise I am on Twitter a lot more than on this blog, and on Pinterest as well. So come join me there if you miss me.

News of today: I am chairing the National Book Awards committee on young people's literature, together with the awesome librarian Lisa von Drasek from the Kerlan Library, the excellent novelists Cecil Castelluci and Deb Caletti, and the legendary bookseller Peter Glassman from Books of Wonder. You can read our bios and learn the judges in the other categories here. 

I think this will be a grand adventure. I've talked to a number of people who have been judges, including Daniel Ehrenhaft and Scott Westerfeld, and they said it was just an incredible experience to read so much and be forced to formulate an articulate what you think makes great literature.  

I've also joined the children's lit advisory committe for Vida, which is an organization for women in the literary arts. They do a great awareness-raising work like comparing the number of male and female writers interviewed by big-shot journals like The Paris Review. (It's approximately 15% women.) So go check them out. 

In other news, I went to Disneyland last week. I rode Splash Mountain and got crazy wet. I love that thing. It reminded me of the movie it was based on, which I haven't seen since my childhood. It's Disney's  Song of the South. No one watches it nowadays because it has some racist stereotypes that just ruin it, but a lot of it is the old folk tales of tricksters Brer Rabbit, Brer Bear and Brer Fox -- and those are the guys you see in the ride, the animal characters up to no good. And that put me in mind of the wonderful Barry Moser-illustrated Jump! and Jump Over! by Van Dyke Parks. Here is a link to see those amazing pictures. You won't be sorry.

Tidbit: I wrote my college thesis on Barry Moser's illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. 

That's all for now. Happy spring!

xo
E 

Hi! Happy holidays!

The awesome novelist Kieran Scott: let's talk about her because she is up to some amazing fundraising for the Community Foodbank of NJ which will help out families hit hard by Hurricane Sandy this season. 

I first heard of Kieran when I signed up The Boyfriend List with our mutual publisher. They showed me her book Jingle Boy, which they published and which is obviously perfect if you are a Christmas-celebrating person in need of a fun holiday read or gift for a pal.

Something else I like about Kieran is that, like me, she has another name and writes different books under that name! She is also Kate Brian, author of the best-selling Private series, and has another fun YA holiday read under that name called Ex-Mas. 

(Why can't I make those book jackets the same size??? I can't do it! Blergh.)

Anyway, really what I want to tell you about is the amazingness of the YA for NJ auction which Kieran organized. All the money goes to bring food to people in NJ who need it, especially those affected by Hurricane Sandy. And there are more than 200 YA authors contributing. There are loads and loads of signed books -- plus some amazingness like having authors come to your school, Skype visits, and the like. Perfect holiday gifts and all for a great cause. I am going to link some of the most thrilling bits below. It's an ebay auction, so you just bid on stuff like a regular ebay auction.

I WILL WRITE YOU A SILLY RHYME IN YOUR HONOR, plus a stack of four signed Ruby Oliver books. 

You could OWN MEGAN MCCAFFERTY'S NOTES on an ARC of Sloppy Firsts.

Random House editor Wendy Loggia will CRITIQUE a MANUSCRIPT.

Matthew Quick's not-yet-out book, FORGIVE ME, LEONARD PEACOCK - an autographed ARC. 

An ORIGINAL STORY BY DAVID LEVITHAN. Plus a signed book.

But there's so much more! Click here for the complete list of items being auctioned.

Below are a couple more links about the auction. 

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YA for NJ Starts TODAY!