Libba Bray
We were happy to hear that Libba Bray has signed a contract with Little, Brown Books for Young Readers to write a new YA series for major bucks—$2 million, rumor has it. Editor Megan Tingley (who also publishes Stephenie Meyer) will be working with Bray on The Diviners, a trilogy set in the 1920s. Bray describes the series as “a wild new ride full of dames and dapper dons, jazz babies and Prohibition-defying parties, conspiracy and prophecy—and all manner of things that go bump in the neon-drenched night.”
Bray’s success comes on the heels of winning the Printz Medal for Going Bovine, a picaresque tale of a teenage boy searching for a cure for mad cow disease, but she is also known for her atmospheric Victorian-era series that started with A Great and Terrible Beauty and contains supernatural elements.
One mystery: in our interview with Bray, she told us her work-in-progress was something quite different, “a satire about a group of teen beauty queens whose plane crashes on a deserted island. Sort of Lord of the Flies as channeled by P.J. O’Rourke and [National Lampoon writer] Doug Kenney.” Though we’re eager to see what she makes of the 1920s, we’re hoping this intriguing project will also see the light of day!
I devoured her Libba Bray Trilogy in high school. They remain to this day my favorite series after the Harry Potter series. Today in a era of petty females and petty drama reality shows (sadly which I watch every week) I realize it was so great to read a series about strong females. They were just so intruging and out of the ordinary- they were a breath of fresh air in the widening rich girl/ “OMG THAT BEEYOTCH STOLE MY BOYFRIEND” YA Market. I say all this to say, I LOVE her and always will because of her new apporach to female YA lit. I cannot wait for this series and I am sooooooooo happy for Mrs. Bray. This and The Passage by Justin Cronin are on my I WANT YOU NOW LIST.
- Sarah