Literary Birthday – 8 November – Lauren Oliver

Happy Birthday, Lauren Oliver, born 8 November 1982.

Lauren Oliver Quotes

1. I prefer to do my writing in the morning, at home at my dining room table. But I travel a lot, and more often than not am forced to write on my Blackberry, or in the back of a car, or on a plane!
2. I use Twitter and Facebook, and I think the blogging community has a lot to do with it. People tend to find my book because of word-of-mouth recommendations, and a lot of that happens online now.
3. I started writing as a way of extending my love of reading; when I read a book I loved, I would continue to write sequels for it (I was inadvertently a fan fic writer, before ‘fan fiction’ was even a term!). Later on, I began working on my own stories, and keeping company with a lot of imaginary friends.
4. First of all—write! Then write, write, write, and write some more. Also, read as much as you can.
5. I often write two books simultaneously. Usually one of them starts out as a fun experiment designed to give me a daily break from the real book I’m writing. And then that becomes a real book too.
6. I love Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice; I’m still resentful of the fact that my sister is named after her. I love Matilda in Matilda, Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series, and Lyra in the His Dark Materials Trilogy. And plenty, plenty more.
7. I think I’m able to do so much because writing is what I love to do. So, often when I have free time, I choose to write and edit.
8. My first novel was about a 35-year-old whose wife dies of cancer and who takes up with a prostitute. It was ridiculous. They were roundly rejected by every publisher because they had no plot. I was writing boring books.
9. I think dystopian futures are also a reflection of current fears. We live in a time of some uncertainty and volatility. This generation has witnessed a major economic downturn (some would say collapse), America’s near-constant participation in foreign wars, and environmental instability. Dystopian novels help people process their fears about what the future might look like; further, they usually show that there is always hope, even in the bleakest future.

Lauren Oliver is an American author of Young Adult novels. She is best known for her Delirium trilogy, Panic, and Vanishing Girls. She has also written the novel, Rooms for adults.

Source for Image

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lauren_Oliver_2016.jpg

Larry D. Moore, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

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