“All my books will either make you either cry on the bus or snort milk out your nose,” warns Erin Bow. “I am dangerous to your dignity.” Her stories also stretch our heartstrings almost beyond endurance before returning us to ourselves, exhausted and tear-stained and exultant. Erin is a physicist by training, a poet and novelist by vocation, and a lover of animals, quests, and well-timed poop jokes.

Her first novel, the Russian-flavoured fairy tale Plain Kate, won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award. She is also the author of two critically acclaimed science fiction novels, The Scorpion Rules and The Swan Riders, and the fantasy-horror story “Sorrow’s Knot.” In her middle-grade debut, Stand on the Sky, Erin immerses us in nomadic Kazakh culture, which she learned about while living and working alongside a family of Kazakh nomads in the Olgii aimag (province) in Westernmost Mongolia.

Erin believes cats actually can talk; they just don’t find us worthy. She lives in Kitchener, Ontario, with her husband, author James Bow, their two daughters, a noble gray tomcat, and a Goldendoodle named Luna Lovegood.

Appearing in: Authors@School

Website: www.erinbow.com
Book: www.scholastic.ca/books/view/stand-on-the-sky