Marie Lu is the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of the Legend trilogy and The Young Elites trilogy. She graduated from the University of Southern California and jumped into the video game industry, working for Disney Interactive Studios as a Flash artist. Now a full-time writer, she lives in Los Angeles and spends her spare time reading, drawing, playing Assassin’s Creed, and getting stuck in traffic.
Is this your first time in Sharjah?
Yes, and my first time in the United Arab Emirates.
Did you always want to be a writer? How did you learn your craft?
I’ve loved writing since I was very small. I have memories of when I was five years old, stapling together little books I’d written and drawn in, and pretending they were real. When I was 13, I realized that “real books” were put out in the world by publishers, and after that, I began trying in earnest to get a book published. As for how I learned the craft – it was quite piecemeal. I read a lot, I wrote a lot, and I threw away a lot of it. I never took creative writing classes; in high school, I checked out every book I could find on how to write a novel as well as giant tomes listing out all the literary agents in the country. I also saved my money in college to attend the Pikes Peak Writers Conference. I still remember being a terrified 19-year-old at that conference, meeting the Legendary Terry Brooks for the first time!
Your first novel Legend, published in 2011, was the beginning of a YA science fiction quartet. What was the original inspiration for this series, and do you plan to develop it further?
The earliest inspiration for Legend was Les Misérables. I’d wanted to write a teen retelling of that, and then as I wrote, it deviated far from Les Misérables until it became a dystopian story. At this moment, I feel comfortable with where I’ve left the series, but I’ve learned to never say never! It’s not impossible that I might someday return to the Legend world.
You followed this up with the Elite fantasy series, beginning with The Young Elites published in 2014. What are the challenges of writing in these two quite different, albeit related, genres?
The greatest challenge in writing The Young Elites after Legend was actually getting into my new main character’s (Adelina) headspace. While Day and June from Legend had to face a hostile world, they were fundamentally good at heart, with strong morals that came from their good-hearted family members. They were raised well. Adelina, though, was a girl who suffered a wicked father and a broken childhood, so her reaction to her twisted world came from a much darker place. I needed to tell a story about a girl’s downfall into becoming a villain, which meant writing a villain’s point of view in a way that felt convincing. That weighed heavily on me, in a way that Day and June’s perspectives never did.
Can you tell us a little about your latest novel, Steelstriker, which is the second in a new series, Skyhunter.
Steelstriker is the hardest book I’ve ever had to write, and not only because it was my pandemic-era book! It concludes the story of Talin, an elite warrior for her world’s last free nation, a tiny country called Mara fighting a losing war against a massive Federation. It’s a story about found family, the bond between mothers and daughters, colonialism, and the strength of immigrants. I’m deeply proud of it, even though it was so hard for me to write.
What are you hoping to gain from your visit to the Sharjah Book Fair?
I spend so much time alone in the writing cave that I’m always excited to be able to see the light and visit with readers! It’s the reason I write – to connect with people, to share stories. So I’m very much looking forward to doing just that, to talk about and listen to stories at the Sharjah Book Fair.
