YALLFest Interview with Rainbow Rowell

Hi everyone– I'm really happy to host Rainbow Rowell's interview for YALLFest on the blog today!

But first off, what is YALLFest? It's the biggest book festival in the south. And this year, they have around 50 amazing authors featured: Veronica Roth, Lauren Oliver, Ransom Riggs and so many more. Interviews are being featured all around the Blogosphere, so be on the lookout for them! You can check out many of the interviews on the official page HERE.

Anyway, onto the interview!

Rainbow Rowell

Rainbow Rowell writes books.

Sometimes she writes about adults (Attachments and Landline).

Sometimes she writes about teenagers (Eleanor & Park and Fangirl).

But she always writes about people who talk a lot. And people who feel like they’re screwing up. And people who fall in love.

When she’s not writing, Rainbow is reading comic books, planning Disney World trips and arguing about things that don’t really matter in the big scheme of things.

She lives in Nebraska with her husband and two sons.

Website: http://rainbowrowell.com/

What one thing do you need to have when you write?

Lip balm.

Describe your book in 5 words.

FANGIRL
Earnest, snowy, swoony, minty, bookish.

What's the hardest line to write– the first or the last?

THE FIRST! The whole first page is a nightmare. I want people to just skip it. And I always end up rewriting it.

Best writing tip you ever received?

"Just finish your book."

What one young adult novel do you wish you had when you were a teen? Why?

Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt. I think it would have made me feel less alone.

Where's your favorite place to write?

At coffeeshops. In giant overstuffed chairs.

What are you working on now?

I'm revising my adult novel, Landline, which comes out in spring 2014, and playing with a romantic/political/tragicomic fantasy.

What is you favorite genre to write in? To Read?

I write mostly contemporary. I read mostly fantasy.

At what point in the development of an idea do you know that it will become a full-length novel?

All of my ideas are full-length novels. I have a heard time narrowing my scope.

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Thank you so much to Rainbow Rowell for stopping by! I haven't read any of her books yet, but Fangirl and Eleanor & Park both sound amazing :) If you're in the area, make sure you stop by YALLFest!

Goodreads

In Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan, but for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.
Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?