Julianna Baggott
Critically acclaimed, bestselling author Julianna Baggott has published more than twenty books under her own name as well as pen names Bridget Asher and N.E. Bode. Her recent novel, Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (2015). Her novel Pure, the first of a trilogy, was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (2012) and won an ALA Alex Award. Her work has been optioned by Fox2000, Nickelodeon/Paramount, and Anonymous Content and she currently has work in development at Netflix with Shawn Levy attached to direct, Paramount with Jessica Biel attached, Disney+, Lionsgate, and Warner Brothers, to name a few. For more on her film and TV work, click here. There are over one hundred foreign editions of Julianna’s novels published or forthcoming overseas. Baggott’s work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Modern Love column, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The International Herald Tribune, Glamour, Real Simple, Best Creative Nonfiction, Best American Poetry, and has been read on NPR’s Here and Now, Talk of the Nation, and All Things Considered. Her essays, stories, and poems are highly anthologized.
Baggott began publishing short stories when she was twenty-two and sold her first novel while still in her twenties. After receiving her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, she published her first novel, the national bestseller Girl Talk. It was quickly followed by The Boston Globe bestseller, The Miss America Family, and then The Boston Herald Book Club selection, The Madam, an historical novel based on the life of her grandmother. She co-wrote Which Brings Me to You with Steve Almond, A Best Book of 2006 (Kirkus Reviews); it has been optioned by Anonymous Content, and currently by BCDF, with a screenplay penned by playwright Keith Bunin.
Her Bridget Asher novels, published by Bantam Dell at Random House, include All of Us and Everything, listed in “Best New Books” in People magazine (2015), The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted, The Pretend Wife, and My Husband’s Sweethearts.
Although the bulk of her work is for adults, she has published award-winning novels for younger readers under the pen name N.E. Bode as well as her own name. Her seven novels for younger readers include, most notably, The Anybodies trilogy, which was a People Magazine summer reading pick alongside David Sedaris and Bill Clinton, a Washington Post Book of the Week, a Girl’s Life Top Ten, a Booksense selection, and was in development at Nickelodeon/Paramount. Other titles include The Slippery Map, The Ever Breath, and the prequel to Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, a movie starring Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman, and Jason Bateman. For two years, Bode was a recurring personality on XM Sirius Radio. Julianna’s Boston Red Sox novel The Prince of Fenway Park (HarperCollins) was on the Sunshine State Young Readers Awards List and The Massachusetts Children’s Book Award for 2011-2012.
Baggott also has an acclaimed career as a poet, having published four collections of poetry – Instructions: Abject & Fuming, This Country of Mothers, Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees, and Lizzie Borden in Love. Her poems have appeared in some of the most venerable literary publications in the country, including Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and Best American Poetry (2001, 2011, and 2012).
She is an associate professor at Florida State University’s College of Motion Picture Arts where she teaches screenwriting. From 2013-2017, she held the William H.P. Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross. In 2006, Baggott and her husband, David Scott, co-founded the nonprofit organization Kids in Need – Books in Deed which focuses on literacy and getting free books into the hands of underprivileged children in the state of Florida. David Scott is also her creative and business partner. They have four children. Her oldest daughte
“—Cuando te conocí, pensé que estábamos hecho el uno para el otro, a pesar de que, en algunos sentidos, parecíamos muy distintos y no parábamos de pelearnos. Pero ahora... —¿El qué? —Ahora no creo que estemos hechos el uno para el otro, sino que nos estamos haciendo el uno al otro, para convertirnos en las personas que seremos. ¿Sabes a lo que me refiero.”
“Una explosión de sol... todo se volvió iridiscente y se resquebrajó, como si los objetos y los humanos contuvieran luz. Fue la entrada más luminosa a la oscuridad.”
“I screamed. You told me not to.” He rubs at the soot on one hand with his thumb, then stares at it. “The dirt,” he says, his voice strangely peaceful.“What about it?” she asks. “It’s dirty.”
“She glances back before stepping into the alley, and she catches her grandfather looking at her the way he does sometimes--as if she's already gone, as if he's practicing sorrow.”
“Maybe they just didn't have anywhere they needed to go.”
“So far, I should be calm and more specifically not like that...Anything else? Would you like to do surgery on my personality? How about open-heart surgery? I´ve got some tools”
“-Se supone que solo te quedarías con nosotros por tu propio bien, por razones egoístas. Me dijiste que tenías una.-Y la tengo.-¿Y cuál es?-Tú eres mi razón egoísta.”
“Are there books about us or something?” This makes Pressia angry - the idea that this world is a subject of study, a story, instead of filled with real people, trying to survive.”
“Is it wrong to kill something that wants to kill you?”
“Our stories are what we have,” Our Good Mother says. “Our stories preserve us. we give them to one another. Our stories have value. Do you understand?”
“First, you hand over some basics--overwhelming joy, existential angst, a giving-in to desire, etc. And then you promise to withstand talking idly about the weather, to encourage cliché, to uphold the virtues of average. You hand over the need to be understood and, in return, you get a bar of Normal soap. And you can wash in it and be daily reborn to a safe world of modest, enduring love or, at least, mild, well-mannered bonding.”
“We each have a story. They did this to us. There was no outside aggressor. They wanted an Apocalypse. They wanted the end. And they made it happen. It was orchestrated - who got in, who didn't. There was a master list. We weren't on it. We were left here to die. They want to erase us, the past, but we can't let them.”
“The bombs disrupted molecular structures. The cocktails included the distribution of nanotechnology to help to speed up the recovery of the earth - nanotechnology that promotes the self-assembly of molecules. The nanotechnology, speed up by DNA, which is an informational material but also excellent at the self-assembly of cells, made our fusing stronger. And the nanotechnology that hit the humans trapped in rubble or scorched land helped them to regenerate.”
“Recuerdo que lo feo es lo que hace que lo bonito sea bonito.”
“Los niños quieren a sus padres, aunque estos no se lo merezcan; es inevitable.”
“La suerte es relativa.”
“How do you know me?" she says.He looks at her through his narrow eyes. "I was," he says."You were what?" she asks."I was," he says again. "And now I'm not.”
“She knows that whispers can be useful. Sometimes they contain real information. But usually they're fairy tales and lies. This is the worst kind of whisper, the kind that draws you in, gives you hope.”
“Wir sollten feiern, was wir feiern können.”
“Memories are like water.”
“Beauty, you can find it here if you look hard enough.”
“Part of the post-apocalyptic, dystopian trend is that it seems to go hand in hand with young adult novels. Maybe that's because it's not simply the adults who are aware of the current crisis. Teens are the ones who are being told, again and again, that their futures are in jeopardy. The teen years can feel dystopian even in the best of times. But I don't think we realize how much pressure and feeling of doom we're passing down to our teens.”
“Even if their supplies of love are finite, they've figured out that life is, too, and they're no longer rationing.”
“Finally she said, "When I grow up, I'm going to live out here. I'll probably be a Miss Somebody, too..."Don't grow up," I told her. "It only gets more confusing.”
“Sometimes the only way to fix a mistake- is to make it twice.”
“Love is selfless, it is a weakness, a giving in, a constant falling.”
“Omission is a sin only if, in the process of deceiving, you forget the truth. Lying is a sin only if, in the process, the lie becomes the only truth.”
“And I knew that I loved him with more than a nod. I loved him with a rush of tenderness, a lion's share. (Is that ever enough?)I wanted to survive. I had to. I never called.”