So Booking Cool recently had the pleasure of speaking with debut co-authors Charli Hodge, 11, and Octavia Samuels, 37, about their picture book, Hello Beautiful Brown Girl. The self-published work is intended to celebrate and empower young girls of color around the world. What’s more is, Hodge and Samuels, based in Georgia, are an auntie and niece duo who sold beyond their expectations on their release day.… Read the rest
Award-winning author Shannon Hitchcock recently returned to So Booking Cool to discuss her new novel, One True Way. Based in 1977, the story centers on two middle-school female students, Allie and Sam, who experience the pressures of falling for each other from their southern community, the political climate, and their families. Hitchcock says the novel is inspired by a real-life friendship she had, in which their mutual friends describe… Read the rest
Photo by Greg Preston, from The Artist Within 2
Welcome to our first post of 2018! So Booking Cool had the pleasure of interviewing award-winning illustrator and bestselling author, Marla Frazee. The California native recently illustrated the picture book-version of Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village, both published by Simon and Schuster. In our exclusive interview with Frazee, she talks the early days of her career, being … Read the rest
Michael Bush, the costume designer who dressed legendary entertainer, Michael Jackson, for 25 years talked to So Booking Cool about his book, The King of Style: Dressing Michael Jackson. The book was published by Insight Editions, a publisher that specializes in quality illustrated books that tribute cultural milestones in entertainment, history, and the arts–which is exactly what King of Style offers. Whether you are an avid Jackson fan … Read the rest
Lisa Morton, President of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) has been a writer for approximately 30 years. She is a short stories, as well as nonfiction author, two genres she adores. The award-winning prose writer and filmmaker started a career in film as a modelmaker for Star Trek and went on to write and produce original content for Disney Channel, as well as many films, including Adventures in … Read the rest
Tawanna Sullivan, the Associate Director of Subsidiary Rights at the Berkley, Jove, and Ace imprints (Penguin Random House) talked to So Booking Cool about publishing. A natural book enthusiast, Sullivan took a course in order to prepare for her publishing job. Subrights wasn’t anything what Sullivan expected, however, that didn’t stop her from turning it into a 20-year career.
Subsidiary Rights is defined as negotiating the … Read the rest
Entrepreneur and artist Keturah Ariel chatted with So Booking Cool about her company, the art industry, book publishing–including the upcoming Spring title, I Am Enough (HarperCollins) she illustrated by Empire star Grace Gealey-Byers. Keturah has been drawing and creating artwork for others since she was a child. The Columbus Ohio native worked at an art company before launching her very own, Keturah Ariel Brands.
Her designs range … Read the rest
Rising artist-star Lisa DuBois recently chatted with So Booking Cool about the brand new Rugrats comic book series, published by BOOM! Studios. The Michigan-based illustrator always knew she wanted to be an artist and envisioned creating animations. Check out the full interview with DuBois to learn how she got started, her advice for aspiring comic book artists, the challenges that come with being an illustrator, why maintaining good health is … Read the rest
Yesterday we had the pleasure of speaking with Tasha Hilton, the Digital Marketing Manager at Atria Books, about her career in publishing and her role in the Angela Yee Book Club: Kickin’ it From the Stoop. She originally worked as a digital marketer in the entertainment industry before deciding she wanted to expand her horizons, leading her to pursue publishing and join Simon and Schuster in June 2016.… Read the rest
Joy Peskin is the editorial director at Farrar Straus Giroux (FSG) Books for Young Readers, an imprint at the Macmillan Children’s Group, where she manages a department of editors and edits her own titles–a career Peskin describes as “the best of both worlds.” The esteemed editor has worked at Penguin Random House (her first publishing job was at Puffin) and Scholastic prior to joining Macmillan in 2012.… Read the rest
