This week, AWM Assistant Director of Programming and Education, Sonal Shukla, chats with Adrianna Cuevas, debut author of the middle grade fantasy novel The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez.
We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Find more episodes here.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
“I pretty much live in my own head most of the time, so surrounding myself with my imagination and writing helps me get it all out.”
“It was my way to honor my family and my history, especially as someone who’s first-generation. When my family left Cuba they couldn’t bring anything with them. So the things that we have preserving our history are our language, which I shoved in the book; food, recipes, which I shoved in the book; and then the stories we’ve told each other.”
“It makes a big difference that we do have such a wide variety in kid lit of identities shown and expressed because I think it helps kids realize that reading and stories can be for everybody. And then it helps them feel like the story’s more real.”
“I love middle grade because I love that age. They’re just a lot of fun to not only write for but to talk about writing with because they haven’t yet learned to censor themselves so anything goes. And I just think that’s great.”
“As an author you want to write characters that can make real by making them fully-formed, so you want to make them multidimensional…I think it’s really important as a writer that you try to create a whole character and not let one identity just be the one that drives them.”