Author Jennifer Nielsen

After presenting, Nielsen generously fielded numerous questions from numerous boys, many of whom had brought stacks of her books to the zoom screen to show her. 

Asked what she hopes a reader will take away from her books, Nielsen said, “As soon as the book is released, it’s no longer mine. You are going to pull from it what you need most in your life. I trust you will read the book and think, ‘I want to be more heroic, or clever. My job is to provide the story. You pull the theme that matters for your life.”

Nielsen shared her storyboards — timelines and family trees covered with images of characters and scenes scribbled on post-it notes that she moves around when developing a narrative — and rounds of edits on redlined manuscript pages. “I learned a lot about writing with [the Ascendance] series. I learned the value of rewrites.” She talked about symbolism in her book (yes, the rock in The False Prince is a symbol for Sage) and offered clever tips on how to create original names for characters (take a common name, then delete, add or switch a letter, and “Nick” becomes “Nilcor”  (“That could be a place name! The city of Nilcor!”)

She showed the boys the first book she ever wrote (unfinished, after receiving criticism that made her think she couldn’t be a writer) and a copy of S.E. Hinton’s Outsiders (which led her to realize that young girls, like Hinton and Nielsen, could become writers).

“If the story I want to read doesn’t exist, I have to write it!” she responded to a question about how she came up with story ideas. 

And asked which of hers book is her favorite, she replied: “My favorite book is the next one. It means my best writing is ahead of me!”  

Although we couldn’t have our usual in-person book reading and signing, Nielsen generously agreed to send stickers with her signature for the boys to include in their own copies of the books. 

Thank you to Lower School Librarian Raegan Conlin for arranging this wonderful talk and to Jennifer Nielsen for sharing so much with our students.