Literary Birthday – 4 August – Alex Aster

Happy Birthday, Alex Aster, born on 4 August 1995.

Alex Aster Quotes

1. I wrote so many books, and I was in such a rush. I was so impatient. All I wanted to do was get an agent; it wasn’t even getting published! I was so focused on that that as soon as I would finish a book, even before I finished the book, I would query agents and I would shoot myself in the foot because I never took the time to really edit it and think about it and be strategic. (Book People Teens)
2. I think I honestly knew from when I was six years old that I wanted to be an author. I would do what a lot of kids do: get the paper, fold it, staple it, and make my own little books. I did that my entire childhood. I just thought it was so cool. (Book People Teens)
3. I have writer’s block right now…Either I can’t write it all, or I sit down and I write 10,000 words in a day and most of it gets kept. (Book People Teens)
4. I feel if you don’t give up, if you keep going, eventually something will happen because you get better. No one is born an amazing writer. It takes practice, like anything else, any other skill in the world. You would never expect to be born amazing. You have to practice. Every book you write is practice. (Book People Teens)
5. There’s such a big disconnect between the people making decisions in boardrooms and the readers who are hungry for these types of books. (The Guardian)
6. It truly goes to show that timing can often be such an important piece of the publishing process. For Lightlark, I started writing the first version of the story right after graduating from college. The setting came to me first. I love celestial elements, so I wanted to create a magic system built from the stars, sun, moon, etc. Then came the characters. I wrote several different manuscripts, and the plot varied, but the title, character names, and magic system always stayed the same. It also was always a young adult fantasy novel. (Publisher’s Weekly)
7. I definitely struggle with deadlines. I had been warned by other authors that writing a series with books released every year can be difficult, because you have to almost have the next book done by the time the previous book releases. I also completely agree, writing as a job vs. for fun has changed my process too. For one, I now write outlines, which, it turns out, actually do make writing books easier! I also try to chart character growth, so I can track progress between books. (Publisher’s Weekly)

Alex Aster is a Colombian-American young adult and adult fiction author. She is best known for the young adult fantasy romance series, Lightlark and the middle-grade fantasy series, Emblem Island. Since its release in 2022, Aster has sold over four million copies of Lightlark in the US alone and the series has spent over 140 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Aster is also one of the world’s most-followed authors, with more than two million fans and over half a billion views across her social media videos. In 2025, she published her debut adult novel, Summer In The City, a romantic comedy that became an instant New York Times bestseller. Her adult romantasy novel, Starside, followed in March 2026. Follow her on Instagram.

Source for photograph: Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alex_Aster_2023_Texas_Book_Festival.jpg

by Amanda Patterson
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