Sheboygan Childrens Book Festival

Writing the celebrated satire Feed, says M. T. Anderson, was a process that demanded a fair share of field research. "I read a huge number of magazines like Seventeen," he confesses. "I listened to cell phone conversations in malls. Where else could you get lines like ‘Dude, I think the truffle is totally undervalued’?" It seems these furtive observations paid off: Feed, a National Book Award Finalist, was honored with the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and dubbed "satire at its finest" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

The research undertaken to write The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The Pox Party, a National Book Award Winner, was on a wholly different magnitude, the author recalls. Street-side eavesdropping was replaced with visits to battlefields in historic Lexington, Massachusetts, and hours spent in libraries poring over 250-year-old documents.

In addition to writing for young adults, M. T. Anderson also writes for younger readers.  Books in his Pals in Peril series include Whales on Stilts and Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware.  The Norumbegan Quartet series includes the acclaimed The Game of Sunken Places and The Suburb Beyond the Stars.  He has written the picture books Handel, Who Knew What He Likes and Me, All Alone, At the End of The World, which Newsday called "a persuasive argument for a little solitude and space to think."

Mr. Anderson is a contributor to the Exquisite Corpse Adventure online serial and is a member of the Board of Directors for the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance.  He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Read more about M.T. Anderson at Mr. Anderson's Web site.