Gabriel Garcia Marquez died today at the age of 87. Garcia Marquez is best known for his Nobel-award winning novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”
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Tag Archives: author
Author Profile – Katherine Paterson
Born: October 31, 1932 in Jiangsu, China
Website: www.terabithia.com
Katherine Paterson was born in Jiangsu, China while her parents, George & Mary Womeldorf, were working there as missionaries. Her first language is Chinese. In 1954, Paterson graduated from King College in Tennessee with a degree in English and received a Master’s degree in Christian education with the hopes of going back to China as a missionary. However, at that time, China had closed its borders. Paterson traveled to Japan instead where she worked as a Christian education assistant while studying both Japanese and Chinese culture. Both would influence her later writing.
Her first novel, “The Sign of the Chrysanthemum,” was published in 1976. Her most widely read novel, “Bridge to Terabithia,”was published the very next year. It was highly controversial due to its difficult themes but it remains Paterson’s best known work.
In January 2013, Katherine Paterson received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal from the American Library Association recognizing her “substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.” The committee cited “Bridge to Terabithia” in particular saying, “Paterson’s unflinching yet redemptive treatment of tragedy and loss helped pave the way for ever more realistic writing for young people.” Paterson herself addressed her critics in a recent interview for National Public Radio saying, “I think if a book has the power to move a reader, it also has the power to offend a reader. And you want your books to have power, so you just have to take what comes with that.”
Paterson has won two Newbery Medals, two National Book Awards, the Hans Christian Andersen Award and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the biggest prize in children’s literature. She lives in Vermont with her husband, a retired Presbyterian pastor.
Bibliography:
The Sign of the Chrysanthemum (1973)
Of Nightingales That Weep (1974)
The Master Puppeteer (1975)
Bridge to Terabithia (1977)
The Great Gilly Hopkins (1978)
Jacob Have I Loved (1980)
Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom (1983)
Come Sing, Jimmy Jo (1985)
Park’s Quest (1988)
Lyddie (1991)
Flip-Flop Girl (1994)
Jip, His Story (1996)
Parzival: The Quest of the Grail Knight (1998)
Preacher’s Boy (1999)
The Same Stuff as Stars (2002)
Bread and Roses, Too (2006)
The Day of the Pelican (2009)
The Flint Heart (2011)
Author Profile: Kate Carlisle
Born: Los Angeles, California 
Website: www.katecarlisle.com
Kate Carlisle began writing after a twenty plus year career as an Associate Director for various television game and variety shows. She worked as a Dating Game chaperone and performed on The Gong Show. After deciding to get out of show biz, Carlisle went to law school and during her first year she started writing fiction as a way to escape studying. She soon dropped out of law school and began taking writing classes. The rest, as they say, is history.
Carlisle’s Bibliophile Mystery Series is currently seven novels plus one short story. The series centers on heroine Brooklyn Wainwright who is a rare book expert and bookbinder living in San Francisco. Brooklyn has a knack for solving mysteries in the books she restores and a proclivity for discovering dead bodies. I happen to love Brooklyn as a character because of her wit and passion for good books and good food.
In addition to writing mystery and crime novels, Carlisle is also a romance author. She has written five steamy romance novels. Carlisle is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers and Romance Writers of America. She lives in Southern California with her husband.
Bibliography:
Bibliophile Mystery Series
Romance Novels
Author Profile: Jasper Fforde
Born: January 11, 1961 in London, England 
Website: http://www.jasperfforde.com/
Jasper Fforde began his writing career working on movies such as “Goldeneye,” “The Mask of Zorro,” and “Entrapment.” After nineteen years in the film industry, Fforde decided to write his own stories. Ten years and 76 rejection letters later, Fforde’s first novel, “The Eyre Affair” was published and his heroine, literary detective Thursday Next was born.
Fforde’s Thursday Next series consists of seven books and was a hit in both the U.K. and U.S. Thursday Next’s novels are set in an alternative world where Wales is a socialist republic and pets are clones of extinct animals. Thursday’s job as a literary detective includes rescuing characters who have been kidnapped from their books and mending plot holes.
Fforde has also started three other series. The Nursery Crimes books feature Jack Spratt solving Humpty Dumpty’s murder and Goldilocks’ disappearance. In 2010, Fforde released “Shades of Grey,” which is set in a color-blind, post-apolcalyptic world where your worth is determined by which color you can see. His latest series is a for the young adult genre. “The Last Dragonslayer” was released in the United States last year and it’s sequel “The Song of the Quarkbeast” will arrive later on this year.
Fforde is known for his comedic absurdity and rich worlds. My favorite example of his oddity is in his Thursday Next novels. As a literary detective Thursday can jump in and out of books and while she is inside a book she communicates with her colleagues via the footnoter phone where they talk in the footnotes.
Bibliography:
Thursday Next
Nursery Crime
Shades of Grey
The Chronicles of Kazam
Novel Escapism 