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BEA 2014: Mario Batali: Farmers as Rock Stars
As Justin Timberlake is to pop stars, Mario Batali is to chefs, yet that’s not how he sees it.
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BEA 2014: Maggie Stiefvater: A Sinner in the City of Angels
The first time Maggie Stiefvater attended BEA, to promote her 2009 Scholastic release, Shiver, a fan rushed up to her as she sat huddled in a booth with her editor, exclaimed, “You’re Maggie Stiefvater,” and fell down.
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BEA 2014: Courtney Collins: On Her Way Up from Down Under
“A magic carpet ride” is how Courtney Collins describes her experience as a debut novelist.
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BEA 2014: Lena Dunham: Where the Girls Are
Golden Globe winner Lena Dunham is best known as the creator and star of the hit HBO series Girls, where she plays 20-something aspiring writer Hannah Horvath.
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BEA 2014: Skylar Dorset: A Dream Becomes a Reality
Skylar Dorset says a dream compelled her to write her debut YA fantasy novel, The Girl Who Never Was (Sourcebooks, June), the first of a pair of Fairie Court books.
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BEA 2014: Colm Tóibín: Here, There, and Everywhere
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BEA 2014: Lynn Brunelle: Turning Her Geek On
Lynn Brunelle remembers that her “inner geek” first began to show itself in the middle of her fifth and sixth grade “horse phase.” She didn’t just like horses; she wanted to know every single scientific and beautiful thing about them.
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BEA 2014: Martin Short: Coming Up Tall
Martin Short has done just about everything a star can do: television, movies, the Broadway stage, and lots and lots of talk show appearances.
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Grown Up, Still Quirky: Bryan Lee O'Malley
"I had to get a job, and it ended up being at a restaurant," Canadian cartoonist Bryan Lee O'Malley tells me, speaking about a brief period when he was working as a food runner at a Toronto restaurant back in 2004.
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BEA 2014: Michael Pitre: In His Own Words
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BEA 2014: Philip Gulley: New Series, New Publisher
Philip Gulley writes about what he knows: a smalltown Quaker pastor who serves and loves imperfectly, but who always points others to God.
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BEA 2014: Amanda Palmer: No Shame in Asking
It was a circuitous and unexpected road that led Amanda Palmer to become an author. Best known as one-half of the punk duo the Dresden Dolls, Palmer had already expanded her creative world to include songwriter, playwright, and blogger.
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BEA 2014: Meg Wolitzer: Venturing into YA Territory
Author of The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, and other acclaimed adult novels, as well as The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman for middle-graders, Meg Wolitzer makes her initial foray into YA fiction with Belzhar (Dutton, Sept.), which is set at a Vermont boarding school for emotionally fragile and highly intelligent teenagers.
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BEA 2014: Scott Blackwood: Inspired by a Multiple Murder
Scott Blackwood’s evocative novel See How Small (Little, Brown, Dec.), in which three teenage girls are murdered in a small Texas town, achieves such a multilayered narrative effect that even its author has a tough time pigeonholing the book’s genre.
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BEA 2014: Malcolm Brooks: Renaissance Cowboy
How does a Montana horseman and carpenter by trade write a first novel that is getting the kind of advance press garnered by Cold Mountain?
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BEA 2014: Greer Macallister: Truth or Illusion?
While most people watching a magician sawing a woman in half during a performance typically wonder how it’s done, Greer Macallister’s curiosity extended far beyond such a prosaic concern: instead, she wondered why she had never seen or even read of a female magician sawing a man in half.
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BEA 2014: Morgan Rielly: Teenager on a History Mission
Morgan Rielly was only 14 years old when he interviewed his first WWII veteran.
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Andrea Davis Pinkney: Shedding Light on a Dark Subject
The gift of a simple red pencil gives a girl in war-ravaged Sudan the opportunity to express her feelings and overcome her grief.
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BEA 2014: Hampton Sides: Icebound in Siberia
His name, his publisher proudly announces, is “nearly synonymous with high-velocity narratives” that “perfectly capture pivotal moments in history,” making what Hampton Sides does sound really easy.
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BEA 2014: Sarah Lotz: A Crash, and Three More
The chills in The Three (Little, Brown, May), Sarah Lotz’s debut novel written on her own and under her own name, begin with the scary description of a plane crash in Japan.