Wild Conversations, Interviews, Confessions

It’s the full moon tonight, and as of tomorrow my novel Wake the Wild Creatures will be out in the wild for one whole week.

I just got home from my first-ever book tour on Saturday. (I’ve traveled to do a few different back-to-back events before, but I've never had to be the center of attention in six different cities for six nights in a row or experienced anything like this.) So much of it was wonderful and surreal, some of it was admittedly painful and forced me to grow in ways that made me uncomfortable, and overall it was deeply meaningful and something I will always remember. A book tour feels like one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences that I don't imagine getting to do again, and so I appreciated every stop, every person who came to see me, every bookstore that hosted me, every question, every moment. I’m still parsing through all the memories from each stop, and I'm drained and exhausted, so this post will be more about sharing bits and pieces of news from release week.

Most of all, I want to thank so many of you for pre-ordering the book and buying it this first on-sale week, and for all the wonderful people who went to my events last week—there were so many joyous surprises and reunions from different parts of my past! I saw old and missed friends and loved ones, fellow authors I adore and admire, publishing people I used to have so much fun working with, three (!) of the editors involved in this book, my former faculty and alumni family from a teaching job I miss very much, and former students from courses I taught and writers from workshops I led, and... well, wow. It was amazing. For those of you who took the time to come see me, please know how much it meant to me and that I won't ever forget.

My special thanks to my conversation partners at each event who brought such beautiful, thought-provoking questions: Emily X.R. Pan, Robin Talley, Malinda Lo, Libba Bray, Kelis Rowe, and Kate Pentecost. I'm eternally grateful to each of you for being there at my side. 💜 I'm so grateful to my publisher Little, Brown for sending me on a tour during release week—something I didn't expect. I got lucky and travel was incredibly smooth except for the very end. After sitting for what felt like forever in the plane on a tarmac in Texas before we were allowed to take off (a screw was missing), you cannot imagine how happy I was to land in Philadelphia and be home again.

Scroll down for one book tour memory I had to include here. It involves a dress I saved for this long-awaited moment.

Some interviews I did for the book have come out! Here are highlights from a few, with links to where you can read the whole piece:

For Writer's Digest, I shared about how a piece of art inspired Wake the Wild Creatures and how authors should always be ready for surprises: "Authors in traditional publishing should always be ready for upheaval, as many of us who have been in this business for a while have come to know. . . . Anything can change at any moment in this business. From this experience I keep reminding myself to focus only on the parts of this process I can control: the story I write, the effort I can put into sharing it with others, and, as a safeguard, keeping my eye on writing the next book."

⭐️ Read the whole interview in Writer's Digest.

For the Nerd Daily, I shared about first discovering my love of writing by writing a story about an alien family from Venus and about what readers will find in Wake the Wild Creatures: "Readers will find flawed and fierce women and girls in this book, and a healthy amount of female rage. There’s also an element of magic or, perhaps, magical thinking connected to the natural world. This is a story for survivors, for dreamers, for outcasts, and for anyone who wants to consider living a different kind of life of their own making."

⭐️ Read the whole Q&A on the Nerd Daily.

For YA Books Central, I shared the specific way I know when a book is finished and the ways my teenage narrator is like me and unlike me: "As a child, I used to run free in the woods where I grew up, and I often felt like an outsider in the rest of the world. But the difference between me and Talia is that as a teenager I desperately longed to escape the mountains for the big city, and I made a life for myself amid the noise and concrete. Talia would never do something so terrible. I understand her and why she wishes to stay, but I don’t think she could ever understand me."

⭐️ Read the whole author chat on YA Books Central.

And finally for School Library Journal's Teen Librarian Toolbox, I talked about how your dream doesn't have a deadline and it's never too late, and I shared something that feels very important when it comes to this book and the place I write about inside it: "There is a line early on in Wake the Wild Creatures when my protagonist, Talia, defends her home from people who do not understand it and says, 'It’s not a cult. It’s a community.' . . . To me, the heart of this book is about community and about what the Neves stands for. This is a story of the building of a community when one didn’t exist, and being brave enough to think of society in a new and different way. It’s also about rebuilding when things are broken but are worth saving. What I most hope is that this book will find the readers who see what Talia sees."

⭐️ Read the whole Fast Five Interview on SLJ's Teen Librarian Toolbox.

Remember how I wrote about my obsession with lost places in a recent newsletter? I had the opportunity to expand that idea and take it in new directions in an essay in LitHub.

It begins:

One of my earliest memories is watching a house burn down with a man still inside it.

My young mother stood with me in my nightgown at the edge of our driveway while across the street, the house where the old man lived was engulfed in flames. The shock of sirens had woken us in the night. My father was sleeping in the storeroom in the city where he worked, only upstate with us on weekends, so it was my mother and me who witnessed this destruction alone.

The flames roared and the air roasted, and I saw the hot bright wind in my mother’s long hair and felt it in my own. At least, that’s how I remember it.

Read the full essay "Reimagining Disappeared Worlds" on LitHub.

And one last confession and highlight from book tour. I used a dress as motivation to finish my novel... and here I am, finally wearing it:

I wore my “wild creatures” dress to the tour stop at Book People in Austin, Texas… I thought of all cities on the book tour, Austin would most appreciate the dress!

As I told everyone who thrilled me and came to the event, and as I shared to social media when I was still out on the road, there is very much a story behind this dress.

A handful of years ago, I think in 2020 or probably 2021, I bought the dress as a way to motivate myself to get through what felt like a crushing revision and a desolate point when I didn’t know if I’d be able to finish this book. When I saw this dress—with details of the forest and wild creatures on it (note in particular the deer on the front!)—it spoke to me. I told myself I would finish the book and I’d wear this dress to one of the book events to celebrate it. I’d imagined wearing it at a future event in the Catskills where this book is set. So I hung it in my closet in wait for that day… and the day took a number more years, and publishing twists, and losses and surprises to reach. It sat in the back of my closet, tag still on, for a very long time. But then the time came! I didn’t get to visit the Catskills, but I knew I needed to bring this dress on book tour. So here I am finally wearing the dress to an event to celebrate this untamed book… Thank you, Austin, for being there to witness! And thank you to my friend Timothy Braun, who I first met at a MacDowell residency way back in 2005 (!), for taking this photo to mark the moment!

Book news:

• On release day I shared a little video highlighting all the generous blurbs that this book received from some wondrous authors! Watch it here.
• If you watch, you may notice the music... this song by Wilderness Pill is called "Sharp and Bright and Beautiful" and it was inspired by a line that comes at the end of my book! I wrote about the creative synergy that led to this record.
• Read a new excerpt from the book on Cosmo.com! I love how they said it would have you "running toward the trees"!
• My publisher has created a Book Club Guide for Wake the Wild Creatures, with reading group questions. You can find the questions on this page!
• LitHub called Wake the Wild Creatures a "universe-expanding" book and said "Talia’s narrative voice is strange, fresh, and captivating." Read the list here.
• The Horn Book featured Wake the Wild Creatures on its Summer 2025 Reading List and said "elements of magic and surrealism dip in and out of the story with a lush atmosphere and breathtaking setting." Check out the whole summer reading list here.

Workshop news:

• The Tin House Workshop just announced their Autumn Online Workshop coming Oct. 4–13, and I'm on faculty! The theme will be speculative fiction, in all ways that can be interpreted, and you can sign up to workshop with me! Applications open tomorrow, on May 13! (Deadline to apply is June 9.)
• To get future announcements about workshops before I share them anywhere else, join my Workshops Mailing List, which I use just for sharing when there are new classes, workshops, and opportunities to work with me on your manuscripts. You can sign up here.

Wake the Wild Creatures is now on sale in hardcover and ebook from Little, Brown and in audio from Hachette Audio

Order from Bookshop and support your local independent bookstore

Read a new excerpt from Wake the Wild Creatures on Cosmo.com

Hear a sample from the Wake the Wild Creatures audiobook