About Laura
Biography
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.
Other Trivial Facts
• She has the lady-writer's cliched affinity for cats.
• She sews, albeit pretty badly.
• She sometimes talks to squirrels, but they mostly refuse to answer.
• Her favorite color is red.
• Her favorite food is take-out.
• She loves plants and flowers, but for some reason, they tend to die under her care.
• Before becoming a fiction writer, she held such illustrious jobs as a page in the public library, where she and the other pages often had book cart races behind the stacks, a server in a fine restaurant called "Stuff Yer Face" and a copywriter for a "collectibles" company, where she waxed poetic about such treasures as porcelain fairies, Pooh bear picture frames and swivel-hipped Elvis ornaments.
Read an interview with Laura at Cynthia Leitich Smith's blog Cynsations that covers everything from flying vs. invisibility to sensuality in teen literature.
Visit the new myspace .