In Praise of 'Chaos': A Profile of Patrick Ness

Many people who now consider themselves evangelists for Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy initially resisted the first book, The Knife of Never Letting Go, which is narrated by the illiterate but lovable Todd Hewitt, the last boy in a frontier town on a colonized planet, and features a talking dog...

The Wild West of Benjamin Percy

Benjamin Percy confides that he never dreamed he'd become a writer—much less receive a Whiting Award in 2008.

Richard Rhodes, the Atom Bomb, and Hedy Lamarr

The Twilight of the Bombs (Knopf) is the fourth and final volume of Richard Rhodes's seminal work chronicling the world's nuclear history, a three-decade journey that began with his 1988 Pulitzer and National Book Award winner, The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

Spring 2010 Flying Starts: Morgan Matson

Writing YA fiction was a goal from the very beginning for Morgan Matson. "I took a year off from college to work in the children's department at an amazing independent bookstore [Vroman's]," Matson recalls. "That was my introduction to YA. I loved it. I read everything I could. When I graduated I got a job as an editor, then saw that the New School had a Writing for Children's M.F.A. and knew right away it was what I wanted to do."

Spring 2010 Flying Starts: Jandy Nelson

When Jandy Nelson started working toward her M.F.A. in children's and young adult book writing at Vermont College, her intention was to write picture books. But that changed the very first night of the program.

Spring 2010 Flying Starts: Erin Stead

Had Erin Stead made a different decision in college, A Sick Day for Amos McGee might never have existed. At the beginning and end of her college years, Stead planned to be an illustrator, but for a period in between, painting was her artistic goal. "For a while I thought I would be a serious painter, the kind that smokes cigarettes and wears a black beret," she recalls. "But then I got back to illustrating. It keeps me honest, and I'm much happier doing it."

Spring 2010 Flying Starts: Jacqueline West

Jacqueline West took many roads before landing in the world of children's literature, but she always loved stories with talking animals and magical worlds. While growing up, she was captivated by the work of A.A. Milne, Roald Dahl, Lewis Carroll, and Kenneth Grahame. She now finds herself in their company with the publication of her first novel, The Shadows (Dial).

Spring 2010 Flying Starts: Lauren Oliver

Lauren Oliver may have just published Before I Fall (Harper), but she's been writing for as long as she can remember—"every day since I was about five," she says. "I've had dozens of books in various stages of completion, and I wrote two full adult novels, one of which had absolutely no plot. It was in the YA world where I learned about narrative tension."

Playground Epiphanies: A Profile of Mona Simpson

Mona Simpson was a new mother when she moved back to Los Angeles in 1993. She presumed it would be a temporary relocation, but she's still there and her new book, My Hollywood: A Novel (Knopf), Simpson's first full-length work in a decade owes a serious debt to the move.

Janet Evanovich Mixes It Up

"For the record," Alex Barnaby assures readers at the beginning of Troublemaker, the graphic novel coming in July from mother/daughter team Janet and Alex Evanovich, "I was never involved in kidnappings and dognappings... attacked by giant spiders... or had bad juju thrust upon me... until Sam Hooker entered my life."

Love, Drama, Sex, Family: All in a Day's Work

Brenda Jackson’s 75th book, Hidden Pleasures, will be released by Kimani Romance, an imprint at Kimani Press, Harlequin’s African-American romance publishing division. That’s 75 books in 15 years, 10 of them being released across various Kimani lines in 2010 alone. Romance novelist Jackson, 57, plans to celebrate by, well, writing more. And reaching out to her readers; she is justly famous for taking very good care of them. Through monthly book giveaways featured in her electronic newsletter (www.brendajackson.net/page/brendas-newsletter), they will get to enjoy her anniversaries along with her.

Why I Write...

A momentous event in my seventh year started me on a lifelong passion: my grandmother gave me a typewriter. I began to write to understand what I was living.

War Story: PW Profiles Chang-Rae Lee

What stumped Lee in writing The Surrendered is how closely its story touches his own: his father never talked much about his past, and it wasn't until Lee was in college that his father admitted that the war had had terrible effects on his family.

Fall 2009 Flying Starts: Nina LaCour

“It was a surprise for me to end up writing a YA novel, but I'm excited about it,” says Nina LaCour, author of Hold Still, the emotionally charged story of Caitlin, a teen photographer struggling to understand the suicide of Ingrid, her best friend and fellow artist.

Fall 2009 Flying Starts: L.K. Madigan

Like many debut novelists, L.K. (the initials stand for Lisa Kay) Madigan has a day job. Unlike most, hers involves math. She works for a money manager.

Fall 2009 Flying Starts: Lauren Kate

The 28-year-old writer known as Lauren Kate has just published her first two books. The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove (Razorbill), is about a Texas high school queen bee. Fallen (Delacorte), is the first in a four-book series about two star-crossed lovers—one of whom is a fallen angel. She also learned that Disney has optioned the movie rights to Fallen. And she moved into a new house with her new husband—and changed her last name, from Velevis to Morphew. (Her children's book nom de plume will remain Lauren Kate—her first and middle names.) Phew!

Fall 2009 Flying Starts: Alex Beard

Alex Beard is an artist on a mission. With schools cutting arts funding and what he calls a “schism” between the fine art world and much of the population, Beard wants to encourage kids to embrace creativity in their own lives. And his first book for children, The Jungle Grapevine—a moral fable based on “telephone,” the childhood game of misunderstanding—is just one piece of the puzzle.

Fall 2009 Flying Starts: Malinda Lo

With Ash, 35-year-old Malinda Lo makes her debut as a novelist—and Cinderella makes her debut as a lesbian.

Fall 2009 Flying Starts

Spring 2009 Flying Starts: Thalia Chaltas

Writing came easily for Thalia Chaltas as a child, but it wasn’t until she was in her 30s that she seriously considered being an author. “Reading was my escape as a kid, but I never thought of it as a career path,” says Chaltas, whose novel-in-verse, Because I Am Furniture (Viking) is narrated by teenager Anke, whose father is abusing her siblings.