TTT: Authors I'd Like to Meet/Authors I've Met

Happy Top Ten Tuesday! Today I'm sharing my favorite authors that I've met, and the authors I'd love to meet.

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme started on the Broke and the Bookish blog.

They set the topic, we make the lists. Visit their site to see more on this topic

1. Chelsea Cain has written more than half a dozen novels of which I’ve read none, but I am familiar with her work on the short-lived Marvel comic series, Mockingbird. I would love to chat with Cain about how excellent that series was and apologize for the online harassment she faced for having the audacity to write a feminist superhero book.

2. I’ve read a few of Jhumpa Lahiri’s books, but none have moved me quite like her Pulitzer Prize winning debut, Interpreter of Maladies. I mostly think that a conversation with Lahiri would be incredibly chill. We would just hang out in some chic restaurant, sipping red wine while discussing great novels and world affairs.

3. Sarah Addison Allen once wrote a nice book called The Sugar Queen. I read it and identified with the main character, Josey Cirrini, so much I thought for sure that Allen somehow new secrets about my life. I would love to meet her and tell her how much I loved that book and also try to urge her to write a book with a librarian as a main character. I think her style would fit a book set in a library so well.

4. I want to meet Leslye Walton if only to ask if she’s going to write a second book! Her first and only book so far was The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender and I found it immensely tragic and lyrical. I follow her on Twitter and it seems like she is working on a new project, but I’d like to get some confirmation.

5. The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis was an impressive book. I would love to tell her that it must have taken ovaries of steel to write such a scathing takedown of rape culture in a YA market that tends to idealize troubling and problematic relationships. Oh, wait, what’s that? McGinnis will be coming to the Mentor Library this June? Cool! We’ll all get to meet her then.

6. And one wishful thinking – I wish I could’ve met Laura Ingalls Wilder. I’ve spent so much time thinking and reading (and recreating!) about her life and journey across this country that it would’ve been nice to just see the woman who has become such a legend in my mind.

And a few I have met:

1. Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books had such a profound impact on me while I was growing up, so when I had the chance to go to one of her readings for her new book at the time (the first Beka Cooper book, Terrier). She signed my copy of Squire, “Girls Rule” and it’s true! We do.

2. The first book I remember loving, the book that made me realize that books could be amazing and take you on the most incredible journeys was Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Running Out of Time. I sought her out at the Buckeye Book Fair and told her how her book changed my life. I had just started working as librarian and she generously wished me luck in my new job. (I also had a cool moment when I found out her daughter is also named Meredith!)

3. You’d think we eventually get tired of talking about how much we all love Faith Erin Hicks, but today is not that day. Marilyn and I trekked out to Ann Arbor, MI to see Hicks at the Kids Read Comics event at the public library and I cannot stress to you enough how incredibly nice this woman is. She chatted with us, doodled in all of our books, and complimented my shirt from The Last of Us (the video game one of her comics is based on).

4. If you’ve ever glanced at our Staff Picks display, there a 75% chance you’ve seen my name tucked in a copy of The Infinite Wait by Julia Wertz. I met her at SPX while she was there for the publication of her comic anthology, Museum of Mistakes. I was mostly too nervous to say anything to her, but it was cool to see the person behind the manic, bug eyed drawings of her book.


Which author would you like to meet? Who was the best author you've met?
~Meredith T.