author interviews

My bookshelves are filled with women: women writers and women’s stories; women who look and live and love like me, and women who don’t; fictional women and real women and women who fall somewhere in between. My bookshelves have always looked like thi…

No, Rachel Hawkins did not purposefully time the May 1 publication of her latest YA book, Royals, to coincide with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's May 19 royal wedding, but that doesn't mean she's not super excited about the fact. "God, I want to se…

You might remember Circe as the beautiful enchantress from The Odyssey, famed for turning men into pigs. Or perhaps you only know her as a vague figure from hazy Greek antiquity, or as the namesake of the Game of Thrones character. But there is more …

When writer Meredith Goldstein pitched a relationship advice column to her Boston Globe editors in 2008, her life (and relationship) were sailing smoothly. By the time that column launched on the daily newspaper’s website in early 2009, not-so-much. …

In her debut graphic memoir Am I There Yet?, out now, Mari Andrew traces her winding path to adulthood through a series first person essays peppered with tiny revelations about life, heartbreaks, and travel. Her words sit side-by-side with heartfelt …

Being a teenager is hard. Being an LGBTQ teen is even harder, especially if you're a POC or another marginalization. Although LGBTQ teens (and the community at large) have more acceptance legally and socially than ever before, there is still a signif…

You may know Philadelphia for its cheesesteaks and historical sites, but right at the heart of the city is a buzzing, vibrant arts scene. Energized by a diverse array of neighborhoods and strong local identity, poetry is thriving in the City of Broth…

When Chelsey Johnson sat down to write her debut novel, she knew she wanted to write a queer book that wasn't a coming out story. “For a long time, if you ever tried to rent a gay movie — especially in movies but also in books — we always got the co…

In the introduction to her debut book Heart Talk, artist, poet, and speaker Cleo Wade invites readers to treat it “less like a book and more like a friend or companion,” and she means it. “I definitely write in service to other people, and I always a…

Winter isn't finished quite yet, and as people across the country prepare for more weeks of driving snows, howling winds, and apocalyptic conditions both natural and political, the old gods of the far North are making their presences felt once again.…

Poet Ariana Brown was doing a show in Tucson, Arizona when a fellow performer broke out in a rash. Having grown up in the Southwest — San Antonio, to be exact —  Brown is familiar with the local plant life. She set off to find some aloe vera, and wit…

When I first speak with Shobha Rao, author of the debut novel Girls Burn Brighter, out now from Flatiron Books, she tells me a story. It’s a story about a king who has tasked each of his three sons with filling an entire room in his castle on a budge…

Speaking directly to the rising #MeToo and Time’s Up movements is a new novel that you'll definitely want to add to you TBR pile this spring. A timely debut, Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough blends historical fiction with poetry to recreate the al…

Young adult author Elizabeth Acevedo has been a performing poet for over 14 years, but it was her work as an eighth grade English teacher that first inspired her to write her debut novel The Poet X. Acevedo's students were primarily Latinx, and she …

She’s a member of the now-iconic cohort dubbed “Instagram poets” — who, alongside writers like Yrsa Daley-Ward, Nayyirah Waheed, and the bestselling Rupi Kaur, are filling both books and social media with accessible, relatable, and dare I say trendin…

There are many reasons to write a book, and Tomi Adeyemi wrote Children of Blood and Bone because she had to. Because she was told that this story didn't matter. Not this story, specifically, but the story behind the story of her young adult fantasy …

“When Amye and I decided to solicit essays for My Body, My Words, we wanted it to be body inclusive, and reveal what it’s like to live with illness, as an overweight person, as an amputee, as a man, as a woman, as neither, as an addict, as a mom and …

When comedian, writer, and actor Harris Wittels died of an overdose in 2015, the comedy world publicly mourned the loss of such a talented artist. For fans of his work on Parks and Recreation, The Sarah Silverman Show, and Comedy Bang! Bang!, it was …

She’s been compared to memoir superstar Jeannette Walls and Netflix sensation Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but Tara Westover’s story is wholly her own. In her widely anticipated memoir, Educated, out now from Random House, Westover tells the story of h…

I was a freshman in high school when I saw Tina Fey's Mean Girls in theaters in 2014, and it isn't an exaggeration to say it changed my entire outlook on girlhood. For the next decade, I looked at other young women in my life with suspicion, treated …