Geeking Out with Author, Claudia Gray

Two seniors designed this amazing welcome sign inspired by the book cover below

Book 2 in the Constellation series

That's me on the left

The young adult author Claudia Gray lives in the New Orleans area, and Patrick Taylor is located in the New Orleans area. Over the last few years, every time that I would see Claudia at a book event, I would ask if she would do a school visit. She always has said yes, but she is a busy writer and getting a time set on the calendar has been a challenge. On Tuesday, November 27th, the sophomores and juniors finally had a chance to meet her. I actually set up this event because I knew that the members of the high school book group, Bookmarked, would love her, but since this event was a long time in the making, I decided that every student in those two grades would benefit from hearing what she had to say. I was not wrong. The students were a great audience, and I think they all took a little something away with them at the end of the hour. 




Claudia came prepared to talk to aspiring writers, but when she realized that we were a STEM school, she switched gears. Members of Bookmarked had written questions for her on Monday at our regularly scheduled meeting. She decided to go with the questions as the outline for her talk. She took the questions created by the students and arranged them in a flow that made sense and worked beautifully for her presentation. The students were curious about how she got started writing the Star Wars' books and if she preferred writing her original characters and stories or someone else's, how her life changed after becoming a published author, if she based any of her characters on people that she  knew in real life, and what inspired her to become a writer. We did learn that when she was young she decorated her closet to use as an X-wing flight simulator. Though she never had a chance to leave Earth, you wouldn't know that from reading her sci fi series that begins with Defy the Stars. You can read the answers to these questions and see more pictures of the day by visiting the library website. 


We want to thank Claudia for taking time out of her schedule to talk to the students at Patrick Taylor Academy and to Octavia Books who helped make sure students could purchase books to be signed by the author. 

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