These authors’ friendship began in New York City, where they were both in a graduate children’s literature writing program at the New School. They lived in the same Brooklyn neighborhood, and they’ve been working together and critiquing each other’s work since those early days.
Both followed a relatively smooth road to publication after grad school, landing book contracts for their respective senior theses: Han’s Shug (S&S Books for Young Readers, 2006) and Vivian’s A Little Friendly Advice (Scholastic/PUSH, 2008). Vivian has also written for children’s television and worked as an editor at Alloy Entertainment. The team creative process at Alloy proved helpful as Burn for Burn was coming together. “We worked really hard on honing the outline for the series,” Vivian says. Han agrees, but notes that on her own, “I never outline!”
Their time at BEA will be a whirl of events, says Han. But the friends don’t plan to be totally overrun by the hubbub. “We always make sure that we have some ‘us’ time to get mani-pedis or do something fun,” says Vivian.
Though they look forward to continuing their teamwork on the trilogy, both authors also have solo books on the horizon. Vivian has just wrapped a tour for The List (Scholastic/PUSH), and plans to devote some solid writing time to her next book project, which she describes as magical realism.
Han is currently crafting a novel titled For All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, which has some roots in personal experience. “Whenever I was trying to get over a boy, I would write him a really long, wrought letter—but never mail it. I still have some in a box at my parents’ house,” she explains. The protagonist of her new book composes similar epistles, but isn’t so good about the not-mailing part.
