Andrea Wang is the APALA award-winning author of The Nian Monster. Her second picture book, Magic Ramen, is a Junior Library Guild Selection and received a starred review from School Library Journal. She loves to travel and sample new and unusual foods. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of her writing is about food. She is also the author of seven non-fiction titles for the library and school market. Andrea holds an M.S. in Environmental Science and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing for Young People. She lives in the Denver area with her family.
So what are Andrea’s 5 Favorites?:
My favorite place to write:
My big, cluttered-with-notebooks desk in my overflowing-with-books home office, with a window overlooking the yard where bunnies chase each other.
My favorite mentor text:
This changes depending on what I'm working on. Right now it's A Very Wide Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi. Everyone needs to read this book!
My favorite writing tip:
Allow yourself to be vulnerable in your writing.
My favorite marketing tip:
One of my agency-mates (I think it was Chris Barton) said something to the effect that the "book birthday" is a recent construct, and that it's okay if you can't do a ton of events right around the release date. My takeaway was that marketing and promoting a book is a long haul and taking a slow, steady, approach can be just as effective.
My favorite book event of the year:
Whichever conference I'm able to attend is my favorite. I've been lucky enough to attend the ALA and NCTE conferences in the past few years, and I always come home energized from hearing great presentations, meeting friends old and new, and collecting armloads of advance reader copies!
To learn more about Andrea and her work, visit her website.