Laura Ruby
Raised in the wilds of suburban New Jersey, Laura Ruby now lives in Chicago with her family. Her short fiction for adults has appeared in various literary magazines, including Other Voices, The Florida Review, Sycamore Review and Nimrod. A collection of these stories, I'M NOT JULIA ROBERTS, was published by Warner Books in January 2007. Called "hilarious and heart-wrenching" by People and "a knowing look at the costs and rewards of remaking a family," by the Hartford-Courant, the book was also featured in Redbook, Working Mother , and USA Today among others.
Ruby is also the author of the Edgar-nominated children's mystery LILY'S GHOSTS (8/03), the children's fantasy THE WALL AND THE WING (3/06) and a sequel, THE CHAOS KING (5/07) all from Harpercollins. She writes for older teens as well, and her debut young adult novel, GOOD GIRLS (9/06), also from Harpercollins, was a Book Sense Pick for fall 2006 and an ALA Quick Pick for 2007. A new young adult novel, PLAY ME, is slated for publication in fall of 2008. Her books have sold in England, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, Serbia and Montenegro. THE WALL AND THE WING is currently in development with Laika Studios for release as an animated feature.
Ms. Ruby has been a featured speaker at BookExpo, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) annual convention, the Miami Book Festival, the Florida Association of Media Educators (FAME) convention, the Midwest Literary Festival, the International Reading Association's annual convention, and Illinois Reading Council annual conference, among other venues, and she has presented programs and workshops for both adults and children at numerous schools and libraries.
Currently, she is working on several thousand projects, drinking way too much coffee, and searching for new tunes for her iPod.
“I say, 'Well, if you can't please everyone with your deeds and your art, please a few. To please many is bad.'Hannalore frowns. A note hits her in the forehead and drops to the floor. She bends at the knees to retrieve it, the perfect lady. The writing is large enough for me to read: SHOW US YOUR BOOBS!She holds up the note. 'Which of you appalling children threw this at me?'Pete Santorini, Ben Grossman, and Alex Nobody-Can-Pronounce-His-Last-Name laugh so hard that Alex chokes on his gum and Ben has to pound his back.”
“He clears his throat. 'Do you want to go to a movie or something?' The wings stop flapping. 'I can't. I'm sort of under house arrest.''Till when?''Till pigs fly and hell freezes over.''Soon, then.''Any minute.”
“Everybody loves a villain.”
“The principal: You're a smart girl, so I'm going to be blunt. I think you'd be a lot happier if you stopped acting so weird. Me: Who says I'm not happy?”
“We can all look up and say,. okay, there's the South Star,. there's the Big Dogpile, there's the Little Dipshit. Twinkle, twinkle.”
“She got icing all over her face. I think that's why I like her. For the good stuff, she's willing to get icing all over her face. Who wouldn't want a girl like that?”
“Love the people who love you back.”
“I like to rub Twinkies under my arms.”
“God will break California from the surface of the continent like someone breaking off a piece of chocolate. It will become its own floating paradise of underweight movie stars and dot-commers, like a fat-free Atlantis with superfast Wi-Fi.”
“She's still small and I still want to put her in my pocket.-Seven Chillman, classmate”
“The truth is," I say, "he's having my baby. It's a medical miracle. Someone call the newspapers.”
“Everyone loves a villain. Or maybe not a villain, exactly, but someone you can point out and say, "I might be weird, but I'm not weird like her.”
“He grew out his hair," June says. "He looks amazing.""He looks like a giant caramel with some carpet lint stuck to the top of it.”
“If other people thought art was important, then it would be required to graduate. But no, I don’t have to take art. I do have to take math, which is just a waste of time because the numbers get all switched up in my brain, plus, calculators exist for a reason. I do have to take history, which is basically memorizing tariff acts till your brain bleeds. I do have to take four years of gym class with a bunch of jerks who punch me if they don’t like what I say. But art? Optional. Even though art and music and literature and all that are what make us human. Algebra doesn’t make us human. Games don’t make us human.”
“Our moon is the same moon, our sun is the same sun, and the stars will sparkle for us no matter who or where or what erare-- not sluts, not players, just people.”
“You're a big help, Mr. I Read So Many Books.”