New Interview - Mixed Multitudes

Francesca Lia Block changed the face of young adult publishing with her first novel, Weetzie Bat — a book that was mature (both in the “sophisticated” sense and the sense of mature themes) beyond anything else that was being published in the genre of children’s literature at the time, but never lost sight of its primary audience and never stopped being, at its heart, a book about a teenage girl. She’s influenced by imaginary realism writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jeanette Winterson, as well as early film (think Georges Méliès) and the golden age of Hollywood. Weetzie is the tale of a girl whose father (a Jewish immigrant) became an effects man in Hollywood, and whose life starts off surreal and blossoms into a fountain of weirdness.

Francesca Lia Block: Learning to Quake
(Matthue Roth is an excellent author in his own right. I very much enjoyed Never Mind the Goldbergs.)