Children’s books reigned supreme in Emily Jenkins’ childhood igniting a fire within her to become an author. She self-published several stories as a child, designing covers for them and getting her parents to type them. Jenkins was an avid reader with a particular fondness for Joan Aiken’s gothic novels. “I thought I’d be more of a middle grade writer than I turned out to be,” she says, recalling Aiken’s mysteries.

Jenkins’ playwright father encouraged her love of the written word. “I have a strong memory of a story I wrote about an animated sleeping bag,” she says, remembering the orange sleeping bag her father had given her. “[My father] took me seriously and I valued his opinion,” she says. Jenkins used to sit in the back of the theater while her father directed, edited, and adapted his plays. She credits him with providing the tools she needed to become a writer; “I developed a sense of how something improves and how it comes together,” she says. More…