A. S. King

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A.S. King
King in her office in Pennsylvania
King in her office in Pennsylvania
Born (1970-03-10) March 10, 1970 (age 51)
Reading, Pennsylvania, US
OccupationWriter
NationalityAmerican
GenreYoung-adult novels and short fiction
Notable works
  • Still Life with Tornado
  • I Crawl Through It
  • Glory O'Brien's History of the Future
  • Reality Boy
  • Ask the Passengers
  • Everybody Sees the Ants
  • Please Ignore Vera Dietz
  • The Dust of 100 Dogs
  • Monica Never Shuts Up
  • Dig
Notable awardsLos Angeles Times Book Prize 2012, Michael L. Printz Award Honor 2011, Michael L. Printz Award Winner 2020

Amy Sarig King (born March 10, 1970) is an American writer of short fiction and young adult fiction.

Biography[]

King was born and grew up outside of Reading, Pennsylvania.[1] She recalls that due to a particular seventh grade teacher, she gave up on achieving good grades and instead played basketball and worked.[1] She graduated from Exeter Township Senior High School in 1988.[2]

She then moved to Ireland landing in Dublin first for two years,[3] then to Tipperary, Ireland where she and her husband renovated a farm[4] and she worked with adult literacy students.[5] While in Dublin, before she could obtain a work permit, she read a book a day, often classics she thought she would have read if she studied writing, including "a lot of surrealist fiction."[4] She began writing novels while in Dublin.[3] She returned to Pennsylvania in 2004.

Writing[]

King wrote seven novels, as well as poetry and short stories, before she published her first novel, and collected more than 400 rejection letters.[6][7] Her first published work was actually poetry to some university journals in the United States.[8] She was unaware of the young adult market and wrote about adult characters, but the stories often started earlier in the characters' lives and she states, "What I was always doing was trying to help teenagers better understand the adults in their lives, and vice versa."[4] King does not plan her novels; she often starts with a character and discovers their personality and their stories as she writes, and then edits heavily.[1][9] She also often includes magical realism and unconventional structures.[1]

Even with an agent, King faced difficulty publishing because it was hard to categorize her work; it was not until an editor asked for "something weird" that she received a deal and learned about the young adult market.[4] The novel, The Dust of 100 Dogs, was published by the small young adult press Flux in 2009.[10] Since there was already a writer named Amy King, she chose to write with the initials "A.S."; the S stands for her maiden name, Sarig.[4] She found this pen name appropriate as she writes gender-neutral novels and it spelled "asking".[4][9]

Her second novel, Please Ignore Vera Dietz, was bid on by seven different publishing houses. King chose Knopf because of editor Michelle Frey's "vision" for the novel; other publishing houses wanted to remove the adults in the book.[4] Please Ignore Vera Dietz was a 2011 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book[11] and an Edgar Allan Poe Award nominee for "Best Young Adult".[12] Her third young-adult novel, Everybody Sees the Ants, was named one of the Top Ten Books for Young Adults in 2012 and was an Andre Norton Award finalist.[13] Her fourth young-adult novel, Ask the Passengers (2012), won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.[14][15] It was also a Lambda Literary Award finalist,[16] and a Library Journal Best YA Books for Adults selection.[17] This was followed by Reality Boy in 2013, which was inspired by wondering if some children on reality television that were presented as entertainment were subject to abuse.[18] Her 2014 novel, Glory O'Brien's History of the Future, follows a character who is actually the daughter of the protagonist in an unpublished novel King wrote in 2004, called Why People Take Pictures.[3]

Her short fiction for adults has been published in Washington Square, Contrary, Quality Women's Fiction, Eclectica Magazine, Word Riot,[19] Amarillo Bay, Literary Mama, Underground Voices, The Huffington Post, Lit103.3 and FRiGG. A collection of twelve of her short stories, titled Monica Never Shuts Up, was published in 2012 in ebook format[20] and later in print from Createspace.[21]

King's seventh novel, I Crawl Through It, was published in September 2015.[8][22] This was King's first surrealist novel, a genre she felt she had been moving toward over her writing career.[3] Her next two novels were released in 2016 and 2017 respectively, this time with Dutton Children's Books.[23] She worked with Andrew Karre, who bought her first published book.[6] Also published in 2017 was King's first middle grade novel, Finding Marvin Gardens, by Arthur A. Levine Books (an imprint of Scholastic) and was written under the name of Amy Sarig King.[24]

King's eleventh work, Dig, was published in 2019 and praised by Kirkus as "stunningly original".[25] Her twelfth project was released later that year, and her thirteenth, Switch, was published in 2021.[26]

Awards and recognition[]

King won the 2011 Michael L. Printz Award Honor for Please Ignore Vera Dietz.[27] Ask the Passengers won the annual Los Angeles Times Book Prize for young-adult literature in 2012.[14][15] In 2015, she was named the "Outstanding Pennsylvania Author" for that year by the Pennsylvania School Librarians Associations; all of her novels have taken place in the state.[28][29] King's 2019 novel Dig won the 2020 Michael L. Printz Award.[30]

Several of her works have been contenders for book awards or have been named to annual booklists.

  • 2009 Cybils Awards finalist, The Dust of 100 Dogs[31]
  • 2010 ALA Best Books for Young Adults listing, The Dust of 100 Dogs[32]
  • 2010 Junior Library Guild listing, Please Ignore Vera Dietz
  • 2010 Best New American Voices 2010, Short Fiction nomination, "Monica Never Shuts Up"
  • 2011 ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults listing, Please Ignore Vera Dietz[33]
  • 2011 Cybils Awards finalist, Everybody Sees the Ants[34]
  • 2011 Junior Library Guild listing, Everybody Sees the Ants
  • 2011 Michael L. Printz Award honor book, Please Ignore Vera Dietz[27]
  • 2011 Edgar Award finalist, Please Ignore Vera Dietz[12]
  • 2011 Andre Norton Award finalist, Everybody Sees the Ants[35]
  • 2012 ALA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults listing, Everybody Sees the Ants[36]
  • 2012 Junior Library Guild listing, Ask the Passengers
  • 2012 Lambda Literary Award finalist, Ask the Passengers[16]
  • 2012 ALA Rainbow List Top Ten selection, Ask the Passengers
  • 2012 Library Journal Best YA Books for Adults, Ask the Passengers[17]
  • 2012 ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults listing, Everybody Sees the Ants[37]
  • 2012 Publishers Weekly Best Children's Fiction Books of 2013, Ask the Passengers[38]
  • 2012 Kirkus Reviews "Best of 2012" listing, Ask the Passengers[39]
  • 2013 ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults listing, Ask the Passengers[40]
  • 2013 Kirkus Reviews "Best Teen Books of 2013" listing, Reality Boy[41]
  • 2013 Publishers Weekly Best Children's Fiction Books of 2013, Reality Boy[42]
  • 2014 ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults listing, Reality Boy[43]
  • 2014 Kirkus Reviews "Best Teen Books of 2014" listing, Glory O'Brien's History of the Future[44]
  • 2014 Cybils Awards finalist, Glory O'Brien's History of the Future[45]
  • 2015 Andre Norton Award finalist, Glory O'Brien's History of the Future[46]
  • 2014 Publishers Weekly Best Young Adult Books of 2014, Glory O'Brien's History of the Future[47]
  • 2015 ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults listing, Glory O'Brien's History of the Future[48]
  • 2015 ALA Top Ten Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults listing, Glory O'Brien's History of the Future as read by Christine Lakin[49]

Works[]

  • The Dust of 100 Dogs (2009, Flux)[10]
  • Please Ignore Vera Dietz (2010, Knopf)
  • Everybody Sees the Ants (Oct. 2011, Little, Brown)
  • Ask the Passengers (Oct. 2012, Little, Brown)
  • Monica Never Shuts Up (Dec. 2012, The Bat Press)
  • Reality Boy (Fall 2013, Little, Brown)
  • Glory O'Brien's History of the Future (October 2014, Little, Brown)[50]
  • I Crawl Through It (Sept. 2015, Little, Brown)
  • Still Life with Tornado (Fall 2016, Dutton Children's Books)[51]
  • Me And Marvin Gardens (2017, Arthur A. Levine Books)[24]
  • Dig (March 26, 2019, Dutton Children's Books)
  • The Year We Fell From Space (October 2019, Arthur A. Levine Books)
  • Switch (May 2021, Dutton Children's Books)
Anthology Contributions
  • Dear Bully: 70 Authors Tell Their Stories (Sep. 2011, HarperTeen)
  • Break These Rules: 35 YA Authors On Speaking Up, Standing Out, and Being Yourself (Sep. 2013, Chicago Review Press)
  • Losing It (2013, Carolrhoda LAB)
  • One Death, Nine Stories (2014, Candlewick)

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Bartel, Julie (January 30, 2014). "One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with A.S. King". Young Adult Library Services Association. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  2. ^ Eagle, Reading. "Berks native A.S. King wins Printz Award for YA novel 'Dig' [Spotlight]". Reading Eagle. Retrieved May 5, 2021.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Adler, Dahlia (October 6, 2014). "An Interview with YA Author A.S. King". Barnes & Noble. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g Corbett, Sue (July 12, 2013). "Questioning 'Reality': A.S. King". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  5. ^ Brabander, Jennifer M (January 13, 2015). "Five questions for A.S. King". The Horn Book Magazine. Retrieved June 23, 2015.
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b King, A.S. (January 26, 2015). "New Books! New Books!". Here's Me Using the Word Blog in a Sentence. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  7. ^ King, A.S. (August 15, 2014). "The Writer's Middle Finger Part Two (On Avoiding Disappointment)". Here's Me Using Blog in a Sentence. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  8. ^ Jump up to: a b King, A.S. (September 12, 2014). "We make paper boats; we cannot control the wind". Here's Me Using the Word Blog in a Sentence. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  9. ^ Jump up to: a b Bissett, Ariel (June 9, 2014). "MY INTERVIEW WITH A.S. KING". YouTube. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  10. ^ Jump up to: a b "The Dust of 100 Dogs". Flux. Archived from the original on May 12, 2015. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  11. ^ King, A.S. (2011). "2011 Printz Honor Speech" (PDF). American Library Association. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  12. ^ Jump up to: a b "Edgar Allan Poe Awards 2011". Bookreporter. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  13. ^ "The official hideout". A.S. King. September 10, 2013. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
  14. ^ Jump up to: a b "Book Prizes – Los Angeles Times Festival of Books". Los Angeles Times Book Prizes (events.latimes.com). April 11, 2013. Archived from the original on June 10, 2017. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
  15. ^ Jump up to: a b "Announcing the 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize winners". Los Angeles Times. April 19, 2013. Retrieved April 21, 2013.
  16. ^ Jump up to: a b "LLF Announces Finalists of the 25th Annual Lambda Literary Awards". Lambda Literary. Archived from the original on April 19, 2019. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
  17. ^ Jump up to: a b Benedetti, Angelina (November 15, 2012). "Best Books 2012: Young Adult Literature for Adults". Library Journal. Archived from the original on May 12, 2015. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  18. ^ Donnelly, Elisabeth (October 21, 2013). "A.S. King talks kids on reality TV and her new YA book, 'Reality Boy'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
  19. ^ "Raul Shows Me Things by A.S. King". Word Riot (wordriot.org). 2013. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
  20. ^ King, A.S. (December 24, 2012). "Monica Never Shuts Up". Here's Me Using Blog in a Sentence. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  21. ^ "Monica Never Shuts Up". Createspace. Archived from the original on January 23, 2016. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  22. ^ "I Crawl Through It". Hachette Book Group. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  23. ^ Deahl, Rachel (January 23, 2015). "Book Deals: Week of January 26, 2015". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  24. ^ Jump up to: a b "Rights Report: Week of June 8, 2015". Publishers Weekly. June 9, 2015. Retrieved June 13, 2015.
  25. ^ DIG | Kirkus Reviews.
  26. ^ "Children's Book Review: Switch by A.S. King. Dutton, $17.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-525-55551-3". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved July 2, 2021.
  27. ^ Jump up to: a b "Printz Award 2011". YALSA. Retrieved June 9, 2015.
  28. ^ "Outstanding Pennsylvania Author and/or Illustrator". Pennsulvania School Librarians Associations. Archived from the original on May 10, 2015. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
  29. ^ King, A.S. (February 6, 2015). "I Crawl Through It Cover Reveal & random tidbits of news". Here's Me Using the Word Blog in a Sentence. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
  30. ^ ""Dig" wins 2020 Printz Award". January 27, 2020.
  31. ^ "2011 Cybils Finalists" (PDF). Cybils Awards. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  32. ^ "2010 Best Books for Young Adults". YALSA). January 13, 2010. Retrieved February 14, 2014.
  33. ^ "2011 Best Fiction for Young Adults". YALSA. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
  34. ^ "2011 Cybils Finalists" (PDF). Cybils Awards. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  35. ^ "Andre Norton Award 2012". SFADB. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
  36. ^ "2012 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults". YALSA. January 25, 2012. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
  37. ^ "2012 Best Fiction for Young Adults". YALSA. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
  38. ^ "Best Books of 2012". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  39. ^ "Best Teen Books of 2012". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  40. ^ "2013 Best Fiction for Young Adults". YALSA. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
  41. ^ "Best Teen Books of 2013". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  42. ^ "Best Books of 2013". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  43. ^ "2014 Best Fiction for Young Adults". YALSA. Archived from the original on July 11, 2015. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
  44. ^ "Best Teen Books of 2014". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  45. ^ "2014 Cybils Finalists" (PDF). Cybils Awards. Retrieved June 7, 2015.
  46. ^ "Andre Norton Award 2015". SFADB. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
  47. ^ "Best Books of 2014". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  48. ^ "2015 Best Fiction for Young Adults". YALSA. Archived from the original on May 12, 2015. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
  49. ^ "2015 Top Ten Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults". YALSA. Retrieved June 8, 2015.
  50. ^ "Glory O'Brien's history of the future: a novel". Library of Congress Catalog Record. Retrieved February 14, 2014.
  51. ^ "Still Life with Tornado". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved October 27, 2016.

External links[]

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