Libba Bray | |
|---|---|
 Libba Bray | |
| Born | Martha Elizabeth Bray March 11, 1964 Montgomery, Alabama, U.S. |
| Alma mater | University of Texas at Austin |
| Occupation | Author |
| Known for | The Gemma Doyle Trilogy |
| Spouse | Barry Goldblatt |
| Children | 1 |
Martha Elizabeth "Libba" Bray [1] (March 11, 1964) is an American writer of young adult novels including the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, Going Bovine , and The Diviners .
Martha Elizabeth Bray was born in Montgomery, Alabama. [2] Her father was a gay [2] Presbyterian minister, and her mother was an English teacher. [3]
She and her family moved to West Virginia for a brief period, then to Corpus Christi, Texas and finally to Denton, Texas, where Bray attended high school. [1] At the age of eighteen, three weeks after graduating high school, Bray was involved in a serious car accident. She had to undergo thirteen surgeries over six years to reconstruct her face, and has an artificial left eye because of the accident. [4]
Bray graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1988 [3] as a Theatre major. As a budding playwright, she felt it important to be in New York City. When her childhood best friend, already living in Manhattan, called saying she was looking for a roommate, Bray moved to New York.[ citation needed ]
Bray is married to Barry Goldblatt, a children's book agent, and the couple have a son, Josh. [3] [5]
Bray's first job was in the publicity department of Penguin Putnam, followed by three years at Spier, an advertising agency specializing in book advertising.[ citation needed ]
Bray was encouraged to write a young adult novel by her husband, Barry Goldblatt, a children's book agent and Ginee Seo, an editor at Simon & Schuster. Before this, using a pseudonym, she had written three books for 17th Street Press (a publisher of romances).[ citation needed ][ clarification needed ]
Her first novel, A Great and Terrible Beauty became a New York Times bestseller. In November 2006, a video promoting the book was a part of The Book Standard's Teen Book Video Awards. [6] She wrote two more books to finish the trilogy she had started with A Great and Terrible Beauty: Rebel Angels and The Sweet Far Thing .
Bray is friends with many young adult authors such as John Green and Maureen Johnson, and with fellow YA fantasy authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare. Her blog can be read on https://web.archive.org/web/20101023044746/http://libba-bray.livejournal.com/.
Going Bovine was published by Delacorte in 2009 and won the annual Michael L. Printz Award from the American Library Association recognizing literary excellence in young adult literature. [7] It is a dark comedy about a 16-year-old boy named Cameron who has mad cow disease and a 16-year-old dwarf named Gonzo whom he met in the hospital. Gonzo is a video gamer who thinks that everything is trying to kill him. Cameron has visitation from a punkish angel named Dulcie who has a propensity for spray-painting her wings. They are all on a mission to cure Cameron's mad cow disease.
Beauty Queens, about a group of beauty pageant contestants whose plane crashes on an island, was published by Scholastic Press on May 24, 2011.
Bray's novel, The Diviners , was published on September 18, 2012. It centers around Evie O'Neill, a seventeen-year-old with a special power who has been sent to live with her uncle in New York City in 1926. The sequel, Lair of Dreams, was released in August 2015 [8] and the third book, Before The Devil Breaks You, was released in October 2017. [9] The fourth and final book in the series, The King of Crows, was released in February 2020.
| Year | Title | Award | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Going Bovine | Michael L. Printz Award | Winner | [10] [11] |
| Audie Award for Young Adult Title | Finalist | [12] | ||
| 2012 | Beauty Queens | Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults | Top 10 | [13] [14] |
| Audie Award for Narration by the Author | Winner | [15] [16] | ||
| Audie Award for Young Adult Title | Finalist | [17] [16] | ||
| 2013 | The Diviners | Audie Award for Young Adult Title | Finalist | [18] |
| 2016 | Lair of Dreams | Audie Award for Narration by the Author | Finalist | [19] |
| Audie Award for Young Adult Title | Winner | [19] | ||
| Before the Devil Breaks You | Audie Award for Young Adult Title | Finalist | [20] [21] |
A Great and Terrible Beauty , [22] The Sweet Far Thing, [23] received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly. Going Bovine received starred reviews from Booklist [24] and Publishers Weekly. [25] Before the Devil Breaks You [26] and the audiobook renditions of Beauty Queens [27] and The King of Crows [28] received starred reviews from Booklist. The Diviners received starred reviews from Booklist, [29] Kirkus Reviews , [30] and Publishers Weekly. [31] Lair of Dreams received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews [32] and Publishers Weekly. [33]
A Great and Terrible Beauty , [34] Rebel Angels, [35] The Sweet Far Thing [36] were national best sellers for children's fiction.
| Year | Title | Honor | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Rebel Angels | ALA Best Books for Young Adults | [37] |
| 2011 | Beauty Queens | Booklist Editors' Choice: Media | [38] |
| 2012 | Beauty Queens | ALA Amelia Bloomer List | [39] |
| 2012 | Beauty Queens | ALA Rainbow Book List | [40] |
| 2012 | Going Bovine | Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults | [41] |
| 2013 | The Diviners | Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults | [42] |
| 2013 | The Diviners | Best Fiction for Young Adults | [43] |
| 2016 | Lair of Dreams | ALA Rainbow Book List | [44] |
Moira Quirk is an English actress and comedian. As an audiobook narrator, she has won four Audie Awards.
The Audie Awards, or simply the Audies, are awards for achievement in spoken word, particularly audiobook narration and audiodrama performance, published in the United States of America. They are presented by the Audio Publishers Association (APA) annually in March.
The Michael L. Printz Award is an American Library Association literary award that annually recognizes the "best book written for teens, based entirely on its literary merit". It is sponsored by Booklist magazine; administered by the ALA's young-adult division, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA); and named for the Topeka, Kansas, school librarian Mike Printz, a long-time active member of YALSA. Up to four worthy runners-up may be designated Honor Books and three or four have been named every year.
Kirby Heyborne is an American actor, musician, singer, songwriter, narrator and comedian. He is known for his work in films centered around the culture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Heyborne has also worked extensively as an audiobook narrator, narrating more than 300 books. He has won two Odyssey Awards and an Audie Award for Middle Grade Title. In 2015, Booklist named him a Voice of Choice narrator.
Jennifer Donnelly is an American writer best known for the young adult historical novel A Northern Light.
January LaVoy is an American actress and audiobook narrator. As an actress, she is most recognized as Noelle Ortiz on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Live. LaVoy made her Broadway debut in the Broadway premiere of the play Enron at the Broadhurst Theatre on April 27, 2010.
Going Bovine is a 2009 surreal dark comedy novel by Libba Bray. It follows the experiences of high school junior Cameron Smith, who gets diagnosed with transmissible spongiform encephalopathy.
Amy Sarig King is an American writer of short fiction and young adult fiction. She is the recipient of the 2022 Margaret Edwards Award for her "significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature". She is also the only two-time recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award for Young Adult Literature for Dig (2019) and as editor and contributor to The Collectors: Stories (2023).
The Diviners is a 2012 young adult novel by Libba Bray. The book was published on September 18, 2012, by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and is set in New York City during the 1920s. The plot follows seventeen-year-old Evie O'Neill as she helps her uncle Will—curator of the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult—uncover the killer behind a mysterious series of murders.
Katherine Ingrid Kellgren or Kjellgren was an American actress, known for her narration of audiobooks.
R. C. Bray is an American producer and voice actor known for over 250 audiobooks, an Audie Award, Earphones Awards, and Voice Arts Awards winner, Off-Broadway and Edinburgh Fringe Festival performer, and TV and radio commercial narrator.
Julie Berry is an American author of children's and young adults books and winner of several national book awards.
Elizabeth Acevedo is an American poet and author. In September 2022, the Poetry Foundation named her the year's Young People's Poet Laureate.
Robin Miles is an American actor, casting director, audiobook narrator and audiobook director. Miles has acted in Broadway shows and on TV shows including Law & Order and Murder by Numbers. She is best known for her audiobook narrations and narration director work for which she has won numerous awards, including Audie Awards, AudioFile Golden Voice, and Earphone Awards. Miles is revered in her field and is credited as one of the audiobook narrators saving the publishing industry. In 2017, Miles was inducted into Audible's Narrator Hall of Fame. Miles also has a voice training school, VOXpertise, for aspiring narrators. She has narrated over 300 books. Miles specializes in recreating "accents and speech patterns from around the globe."
The Sun Is Also a Star is a young adult novel by American author Nicola Yoon, published November 1, 2016, by Delacorte Press. The book follows two characters, one of whom is about to be deported, and explores “the ways in which we are all connected and the ways in which people across all walks of life have much more in common than they think they do.”
MacLeod Andrews is an American actor and audiobook narrator. He has won 15 Earphone Awards, and 2 Audie Awards, as well as acting awards.
JD Jackson is an American audiobook narrator, actor, and theater professor. Jackson has won 26 Earphone Awards and 1 Audie Award. In 2020, AudioFile named him a Golden Voice Narrator and two years later Booklist named him a Voice of Choice Narrator.
Michael Lockwood Crouch is an American voice actor. He has recorded over 300 audiobooks, through which he received 29 Earphone Awards, 2 Audie Awards, 1 Voice Arts Award, and 1 Odyssey Award honor. In June 2021, AudioFile named him a Golden Voice Narrator. As an actor, he is best known for his roles on the English-language Pokémonand Yu-Gi-Oh! television series.
Kyla Tucaya Garcia is an American stage, film, and television actress and audiobook narrator. As an audiobook narrator, she has received 14 Earphone Awards and has been a finalist for four Audie Awards.
Cassandra Campbell is an American narrator of over 900 audiobooks. She has won four Audie Awards from the Audio Publishers Association and has been a finalist for several more. She has also earned numerous Earphones Awards from AudioFile, who named her a Golden Voice Narrator. In 2018, she was inducted into Audible’s Narrator Hall of Fame.
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