The BKBF Interview with Angie Manfredi, author of The (Other) F Word: A Celebration of the Fat & Fierce.
What books are currently piled in your “To Be Read” stack … and where can the stack be found in your home?
My to-be-read stack is actually on my nightstand! I think there’s something comforting about a big pile of books by your bed – before I was married, I used to sleep with the books talking up half the space IN my bed. And I love having a huge TBR pile, so currently stacked up there are Big Sky by Kate Atkinson (finally a new Jackson Brodie!), We Are Totally Normal by Rahul Kanakia (one of my most anticipated YA books of 2020), and Savage Appetites by Rachel Monroe (because I love true crime and meta.)
What’s the best book about your hometown?
No one has written a book about my hometown, a small mountain town in Northern New Mexico, yet. (I’m going to, though!) But the best book about small town New Mexico life is certainly Bless Me, Ultima by the genius Rudolfo Anaya. More than any other book I have ever read, Bless Me, Ultima captures what it is like to grow up and live in New Mexico, a place where so many cultures and so much of the past, present, and future intertwine.
What’s the last book that had you reading past your bedtime?
Infinity Son by Adam Silvera, a young adult fantasy novel due out from HarperCollins in January 2020, kept me up reading until my eyes burned. And I actually had water boil over on the stove when I got caught up reading the young adult graphic novel Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell.
What is your favorite book to give an adult or a child?
I think EVERY baby should get a copy of My Heart Fills With Happiness by Monique Gray Smith and We Sang You Home by Richard Van Camp and I have bought them for countless babies! They are each the perfect way to welcome little ones into the world and leave you, the reader, suffused with a glow of wonder and celebration. Isn’t that how all books should make you feel?
Angie Manfredi is a librarian and writer who owns every season of Law & Order on DVD and sends over 150 handwritten Valentines every year. She has spent the last 11 years working directly with children and teens of all ages in a public library and now works in library consulting on all things youth services. Angie is fat and not sorry about it. She is a passionate advocate for literacy, diversity, and decolonizing the discourse surrounding children’s literature. Her latest book is The (Other) F Word: A Celebration of the Fat & Fierce.
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