Hi everyone, to continue from the last post: The authors!
Fiona Wood: She wrote her book Cloudwish with a Vietnamese protagonist to try and promote diversity in YA novels. You don’t see minorities often presented in books (or authors either). Books are a platform to spread this awareness and acceptance of different cultures and people. When she said this, I completely agreed. Books should reflect society and therefore should reflect the diversity of our community.
Erin Gough: Her character is a lesbian. Again, there was that underlying message of diversity in literature. However, Gough mostly talked about how she had the idea for this book ages ago and only really wrote a while back. Basically, keep hold of your ideas as you never know when you might need them.
Lili Wilkinson: She wrote this book because she started a veggie garden. She was pretty excited about the idea because after all, it is a YA novel about GARDENING. As one of her family members stated, “the idea sounds like a career-ending decision”. What really resonated with me was when Wilkinson spoke about girls, especially powerful girls. When writing the novel, she thought how media depicts those mean girls who control the school and their subjects, I mean, fellow students. The thing though, this image of the mean, powerful girl seems to say that girls, and women can’t be powerful. That women abuse power. So the novel is also about how a Astrid can use her power for good, against the typical media stereotype.
And last but not least Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff! Congratulations for winning the Gold Inky Awards! Illuminae definitely deserved it!!!
These two amazing authors basically talked about how the book came to be. Once upon a time, Amie Kaufman had an anxiety dream about a school test, the one you didn’t know was coming and it was in German. She also dreamt she was writing a book but when she woke up, she didn’t remember what it was.
So she had brunch with Jay and told him about it and they started to decide what the book was about. They decided to write about space because putting the words in space after the plot sounded wayyy cooler. Here was Jay’s explanation.
“Imagine you have pirates fighting dinosaurs. Sounds pretty cool. But then you have pirates, fighting dinosaurs, IN SPACE. That just makes it exponentially cooler.”
Then they spoke a bit more about how Illuminae came about but the thing that really struck me was the advice they gave when writing. When they were writing the novel, publishers told them the book wouldn’t sell. That’s because sci-fi doesn’t sell (this is not my opinion everyone. NOT MINE) and books in alternative formats don’t sell either. So Jay and Amie wrote the book like nobody was ever going to read it.
And it worked. They said when writing, it is never a waste of time if you have fun and enjoy the creative process. They put all their efforts and love into Illuminae and through hard work and dedication, it became a success.
Then the ceremony wrapped up with Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You the Sun receiving the silver Inky awards and Illuminae receiving the gold Inky awards. Congratulations to Amie, Jay and Jandy for winning!!!!
Also, I should mention I was so happy when I told both Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff about this book blog Pendragons, they both agreed that it was a WICKED name. Luna and I, had difficulty when thinking of a name, but settled on Pendragons, and we’re so happy somebody agrees with our choice! (We have a video of them saying hello to Pendragons, but unfortunately, it won't upload 😩😩😩)
Thank you for taking your time to read this long post! Please comment below on your thoughts about the awards!
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