Our 2022 Featured Authors Share the Weirdest Question they’ve Gotten from a Reader
We asked our featured authors, “What is the weirdest question you've ever gotten from a reader?” Here’s what they had to say.
Authors of Children’s Fiction and Nonfiction
"What is the most embarrassing thing that has happened to you?"
-Adrienne Purnell Brown
Nothing is truly weird ... unless it is. I can't honestly think of any question that has felt unanswerable to me. That said, there's always the first time.
-Beth Kephart
How much money do you make as an author?
-Kathleen D. Lindsey
"Do you like crabs?" I did a career day for a school in Maryland and amid all of the wonderful and insightful questions I got hit with my favorite question: "Do you like crabs?" I heard a collective groan when I said no, when I told them I am allergic I got a "meh" but won them all back when I said I put Old Bay seasoning on everything. It was a rollercoaster.
-Mr. Tom
If the main character is my mom (which is cute because my last name is Ox and I have the characters after the animal Ox).
-Steph Ox
Do you really have magic?
-Susan Small
Because I write weird books I get a lot of weird questions. I was stumped recently when a student asked me how many cookies I drew for an illustration in Do Not Open The Box! I didn't know the answer. I can now say that there are 97 chocolate chip cookies on the page. Please don't ask me to count the chocolate chips.
-Timothy Young
Authors of Teen and Tween Fiction and Nonfiction
I don't know if it's weird, but I have been asked "How rich are you?" Which is sweet and funny.
-Maria E. Andreu
How come you wrote about the devil? (My book Sirenz is about the Greek god of the Underworld, Hades, and while he's devilishly handsome and charming, he's not the devil.)
-Charlotte Bennardo
All questions are good questions. I never think any are weird. In fact, animal bioengineering, the topic of Glowing Bunnies, is itself so bizarre that any question you can think of is reasonable.
-Jeff Campbell
"What do you have against hamsters?" — in reference to a scene from How to Survive Middle School. "Nothing! I love animals!”
-Donna Gephart
What was it like doing the artwork for your book's cover?
-Kwame Ivery
Readers sometimes grill me about the romantic futures of my middle grade characters — that is, who do I "ship" with whom?
-Dianne Salerni
Authors of Adult Fiction and Nonfiction
Do you always speak in poems?
-Sannii Crespina-Flores
How many pencils have you held in your life (from a nine year old)?
-Ann de Forest
Did you base this character on my grandmother? (who you have never met)
-Jo Piazza
I can't think of any, so I'll make one up: “Have you ever had the desire to write from the point of view of a lemur?”
-Sung Woo
Poets
When I was asked if the title of my chapbook Windswept meant wind swept or winds wept. It made me curious as well.
-Henry Brann
I can't think of any particularly weird questions, but one my most unusual experiences was discovering during an online search that someone had translated a political poem of mine into Bengali and read it as a performance piece. They did credit me as the author though. I was surprised and flattered.
-Bruce Niedt
Probably just someone asking where the nearest bathroom is but lucky for them I'm something of a George Costanza when it comes to locating high quality facilities.
-John Wojtowicz
