LARA
M. ZEISES
BIOGRAPHY
I BOOKS
I PRESENTATIONS
I BOOK ORDERING
Lara
M. Zeises is the author of three novels for young adults. Her
first, Bringing Up the Bones (2002), was named an honor
book for the 2001 Delacorte Press Prize Competition as well as
one of the New York Public Library's Books for the Teen Age.
Her
second, Contents Under Pressure (2004), began as her
thesis project at Emerson College, where she earned her M.F.A.
It has gone on to be named to the 2006 International Reading Association's
Young Adult Choices list, the 2005-06 Tayshas (Texas) Reading
List, and the 2005 New York Public Library's Books for the Teen
Age. It was recently voted the 2006 Delaware Blue Hen Teen Book
Award winner.
Lara's
third novel, Anyone But You (2005), was named a Top 10
Pick by Teen People. An excerpt from that project helped
earn Lara a 2005 Emerging Artist Fellowship in Literature-Fiction
from the Delaware Division of the Arts.
She's
currently hard at work on her next project for Delacorte, tentatively
titled What's Cooking with Stella Madison?
In
addition to writing, Lara teaches part-time at the University
of Delaware, where she received her BA in English-Journalism.
She also facilitates creative writing workshops for both teens
and adults.
In
addition to writing, Lara teaches at the University of Delaware,
and she also facilitates creative writing workshops for both teens
and adults.
Lara
has the further distinction of being the mentor and inseparable
friend of chick-lit author, Lola
Douglas, whose book, True Confessions of a Hollywod Starlet,
not only was among ALA's 2007 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults,
but has been made into a Lifetime Original movie starring Joanna
"Jojo" Levesque and Valerie Bertinelli with 8/9/08 the
premiere airdate.
IN
LARA'S OWN WORDS:
I
grew up in Delaware, the First State, and, more importantly, the
Home of Tax-Free Shopping. I earned my B.A. in English-Journalism
at the University of Delaware. After a miserable stint as a journalist
at a small newspaper in Indiana, I ran screaming back to the greater
Delaware area and saved up enough money to go to graduate school.
I earned my M.F.A. in creative writing at Emerson College in May
of 2001, just two days before I sold Bringing Up the Bones.
I
am a dork. This is something all of my friends will tell you.
When you are young, being a dork is a terrible burden. But the
older you get, the more you realize that dorkdom is often a great
predictor of success as an adult. At least, this has been my experience.
I've
been writing nearly all my life. When I was eight I used to spend
the summer doing so-called work in my mom's office, writing knock-off
Nancy Drew stories on the typewriter because I loved the sound
of my fingers banging on the keys. In high school I wrote some
really bad fiction and some even worse poetry, but I spent most
of my time working on marginally good plays.
In
college I sort of stumbled into journalism. To borrow a phrase
from Laura Lippman, with whom I worked while interning at The
Baltimore Sun, I wanted to be a writer with a steady paycheck.
I spent much of my college career sweating blood into The
Review, UD's student-run newspaper. Unfortunately, I didn't
find real-world journalism nearly as satisfying as my time at
The Review or as rewarding as my internships at the
Sun or The News Journal, Delaware's largest
daily paper. Eventually I had to face facts and acknowledge that
what I really wanted to do was write for television.
Huh?
you ask. In addition to being a dork I am also a certified pop
culture junkie. So yeah, I wanted to write TV shows like my all-time
favorite, My So-Called Life. This is what I was planning
to do when I got to Emerson. Instead, I ended up in an Adolescent
Novel Workshop taught by Lisa Jahn-Clough, and the rest, as they
say, was history.
So
many young adult authors have said they didn't start out wanting
to write for the genre -- Francesca Lia Block, Sarah Dessen, Rob
Thomas, Nancy Werlin, Ellen Wittlinger, and even Paul Zindel,
to name a few. And I can't speak for all of them, but I'd guess
most of these authors thought they were writing for adults when
some smart agent or editor suggested
that they should rework their manuscripts for teens. And
if they were anything like me, hearing this made something click.
In my opinion, there is no better audience to write for. Perhaps
this is because, no matter how old I get, I feel like I live in
a state of arrested adolescence. Or maybe it's just because the
issues that most teenagers deal with don't go away once you turn
20 -- if anything, they only intensify and grow bigger.
And
that's my story.
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