Kat Zhang
Kat Zhang spent most of her childhood tramping through a world weaved from her favorite stories and games. When she and her best friend weren't riding magic horses or talking to trees, they were writing adaptations of plays for their stuffed animals (what would The Wizard of Oz have been like if the Cowardly Lion were replaced by a Loquacious Lamb?). This may or may not explain many of Kat's quirks today.
By the age of twelve, Kat had started her first novel and begun plans for her life as a Real Live Author (she was rather more confident at twelve than she is even now). Said plans didn't come into fruition until seven years later, when her agent sold her Young Adult trilogy, The Hybrid Chronicles, to HarperCollins. The series, about a parallel universe where everyone is born with two souls, concluded in 2014.
Her two upcoming Middle Grade novels will be released in 2017 and 2018 with Simon & Schuster. The first, The Emperor's Riddle, is about hidden treasure, lost aunts, and China. The second, The Memory of Forgotten Things, is about parallel universes (again), solar eclipses, and misfit children.
Kat is represented by Emmanuelle Morgen of Stonesong. She also contributes to Pub(lishing) Crawl, a site for aspiring writers to talk about books, storytelling craft, and the publishing process.
“There's only so long you can be at the zoo before it gets old.”
“The silence was like an unwelcome child, pulling at our hair, running its fingers over our lips.”
“For years, we'd been the thorn of the neighborhood, the dirty little secret that wasn't so secret. The girls who just wouldn't settle.”
“(Addie) I said. (If it had been you - if it were you trapped inside. If you were the one who couldn't move, I'd go back. I'd go back in a second.)”
“ I said. ”
“I was caged in our body and caged in his arms and, somehow, the former was the real prison.”
“If you're there, Eva...if you're really there..." His fingers tightened around our shoulder, digging into our skin. "I love you, too. Always"Then he pushed us away.”
“I was terrified. I was eleven years old, and though I'd been told my entire life that it was entirely natural for the recessive soul to fade away, I didn't want to go. I wanted twenty thousand more sunrises, three thousand more hot summer days at the pool. I wanted to know what it was like to have a first kiss. The other recessives were lucky to have disappeared at four or five. They knew less.”
“Addie was warm and radiant next to me, making up half of us. But I - I was Eva, Eva, Eva, all the way through.”
“One second. A snapshot of fear and sweat and blood.”