Bio
I’ve been writing stories since I was very young, nearly as soon as I learned how to read. Writing is much more than what I do for a living: writing is who I am, the way I see the world, the way I try to make sense of what I see.
But it wasn’t until I attended the Clarion Workshop that I got serious about my work. At Clarion I met writers, real live writers whose books I had actually read, who read my stories, offered helpful critiques, and — most of all, best of all — took me seriously as a fellow writer. That changed my life. I began selling short fiction, was approached by an agent, and a few years later, sold my first novel, The Cipher, to inaugurate the Dell Abyss line. Four more novels and a short fiction collection, Extremities, were published in the ’90s.
In 2000, I wrote a short story called “Stray Dog” for Cicada Magazine. That story became my first YA novel, straydog, published in 2002 by Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Six more YA novels have followed straydog, including Talk, Buddha Boy, and Headlong.
My newest novel for adults, Under the Poppy, was published in 2010 by Small Beer Press. It’s a novel of love, war, and theatre, set in Victorian times. That book has its own dedicated blog, at http://underthepoppy.com.
I’m a native Detroiter, growing up in an east side suburb. I live near the city with my husband, painter/photographer Rick Lieder, and our rescued cats.
Want more? Here are some other bios/interviews:
Bookslut:
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2008_09_013428.php
The New Yorker’s Book Bench blog:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2008/12/the-exchange-ka.html
Teens Read Too:
http://authorsunleashed.blogspot.com/2010/09/interview-with-kathe-koja.html
