A Friend of the Family
Happy #wcw! We're back for another thrilling roundup of our favorite literary heroines and trailblazers. These women are not sidekicks or footnotes in men's stories; they make their own destinies by being fearless and flawed and brave. This group has been inspiring us for a long time, and we hope to find more women in books to continue to empower us!
Sometimes authors know exactly why they write their protagonists the way they do…they want someone who’s strong and courageous so she can beat the villains; they want someone who’s afraid of the dark so she has to face her biggest fear at the end of the book; they want someone with bright red hair because that reminds them of their childhood best friend. Catherine Linka, author of the award-winning book A GIRL CALLED FEARLESS and its newly released sequel A GIRL UNDONE, had a very different relationship with her protagonist, Avie --- she had no idea why she wrote Avie the way she did until the end of the first book. Catherine explains her revelation in her blog post, below. Check it out, as well as both books in her series!
The author of the young adult novel ILLUMINATE, Aimee Agresti is also a former Us Weekly staff writer and entertainment journalist whose work has appeared in People, Premiere, DC Magazine, Capitol File, The Washington Post, Washingtonian, The Washington City Paper, Boston magazine, Women’s Health and the New York Observer to name a few. In this post, she talks about her various sources of inspiration for ILLUMINATE.
Lauren Grodstein, author of A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY, describes the thrilling experience of receiving her first "grown-up book" for Hannukah one year, knowing --- even at the age of ten --- that it was one of the best presents she could possibly receive.
