The BKBF Interview continues this week with author Brandy Colbert. This weekly series of Q&As features some of this year’s exciting young adult authors. BKBF interviews Brandy Colbert, author of The Voting Booth. Tune in on Saturday, October 3 as Brandy Colbert joins fellow young adult novelists in a BKBF panel discussion.
What’s the last book that had you reading past your bedtime?
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. It’s a true masterpiece of a book.
Who made reading important to you?
My mom. She’s always been a big reader, and when I was growing up, she made sure our weekends included family trips to the library and/or bookstore.
Tell us your best book-receiving experience.
When I was a kid, one Christmas I asked for nothing but books. No toys, or anything else—just books. And my parents obliged. I don’t know how old I was, but I remember there were many books from the Baby-Sitters Club series.
What books are currently piled in your “To Be Read” stack…and where can the stack be found in your home?
On the immediate stack, which lives on my nightstand, are The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith, The Tradition by Jericho Brown, Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo, and Strange Birds by Celia C. Pérez.
How have the pandemic and antiracism protests of 2020 affected your reading and/or writing?
It’s been tough. I feel like I spent the first couple of months just fretting in between promoting my two books that were published this year. It’s become much easier to concentrate on reading, but the writing is still a challenge.
Brandy Colbert is the award-winning author of Little & Lion, Pointe, Finding Yvonne, The Revolution of Birdie Randolph, and most recently, The Voting Booth. Her short fiction and essays have been published in several critically acclaimed anthologies for young people. She is a faculty member at Hamline University’s MFA program in writing for children, and she lives in Los Angeles.
