A #TTBF Q&A with Author Christopher Myers
Assuming all your loved ones and pets are safe, what would you save in a fire?
There is one pet named Shiba that I think is secretly plotting to kill me. I’d try to secretly lure her back in to the house.
What is one thing you’re glad you tried but would never do again?
It’s a tie between reading Thomas Hardy and double dutch.
You’re a writer and also an artist. What’s your workspace like when you’re creating? A place for everything and everything in its place or more like creative chaos?
The chaos is a precise and well informed chaos. A system only I know, or at least that’s what I tell myself.
Your inaugural list for your new imprint Make Me a World is coming out this Fall. How much thought did you put into which three books should kick off your list? What did you want that selection to say?
There are so many books in the world that are yet to be published that need to be in the hands of children. I am constantly impressed and daunted with the blind spots of our industry. I wish I could publish them all at once.
You’ve been writing books for a long time, but this is your first experience as a publisher. What has been the most surprising or challenging thing about running your own imprint? What has been the most fun?
When one says one cares about stories for all children there is a chorus of agreement that rises from people in the industry, librarians, reviewers and readers, yet and still there are voices that say no. The nos are never couched in terms of not wanting to address certain communities or denying populations stories about themselves. More often the no rests on abstract concepts like appropriateness or need or experience or any number of euphemisms that have the same effect as saying, “these children don’t deserve books about themselves.” I’m eager for us all to examine where our nos come from.
If you could choose three books to include on our official “Read Everything” book list for 2019, what would they be?
Autobiography of Red by Ann Carson
The Pillowbook of Sei Shonagon
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi