Jacqueline West
Her Books of Elsewhere fantasy series appearing on the New York Times Best Seller list marked a clear moment of recognition for Jacqueline West, bringing her fiction to a broad audience of younger readers.
West was born on December 29, 1979, in Red Wing, and she went on to study at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire. A citizen of the United States, she writes in English and has built a career that spans more than one form of writing.
Her work as a novelist sits at the center of that career. As a children's writer and young adult author, West has produced fiction that includes the Books of Elsewhere fantasy series. But her writing life extends beyond prose fiction — she is also a poet, and her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. That nomination signals that her work in verse has drawn attention within literary publishing circles, separate from the readership she has reached through her children's fiction.
The Books of Elsewhere series reaching the New York Times Best Seller list, alongside a Pushcart Prize nomination for her poetry, reflects the range of recognition West has received across two distinct areas of her writing practice.
Quotes by Jacqueline West
Mom! Dad!” Olive hurried up the stairs. “Um – all the power went out on Linden Street. It must have been the snow or something. Everybody’s heat turned off, except ours – so, to be safe, they all came here.
She was part of that tree now. And once you are part of something, it can’t really frighten you.
Olive was the type of girl who would rather climb a teetering stack of chairs up to a high shelf than ask for help, perhaps because she had a lot more practice at falling down than she did at talking to people.
I’ve got a simple one: You could cut arm and leg holes in a large box, and wear a plant on your head.
Really? I love being onstage.” I shuffled my feet against the fake grass. “My favorite thing is that feeling when you’re waiting in the wings, in the dark, totally hidden, but you can feel the audience out there, and then you step out and the lights hit you, and you’re blinded for a second, and you could be anywhere, but you know you’re inside this thing that you’re helping to create, and it’s like – it’s like electricity.
It's been my experience that those people who seem the most 'normal' are in fact the most dangerous.