Interview with Sarah Weeks and Gita Varadarajan

Sarah Weeks has written more than 50 picture books and novels for children and young adults, including the bestselling novels Pie and So B. It—which is now a feature-length film directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal. Two of her most recent contributions are Save Me a Seat, a novel, and Glamourpuss, a picture book illustrated by David Small. In addition to writing, Sarah is an adjunct faculty member in the prestigious writing program at the New School University in New York City and a founding member of ART, a traveling troupe of authors who perform readers’ theater at conventions and conferences across the country. Born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she splits her time between her homes in Nyack, New York, and Callicoon Center, New York. She is married to Jim Fyfe, a television segment producer. She has two grown sons and a stepdaughter. For more information about Sarah and her books, please visit sarahweeks.com and on Twitter @authorweeks.

Gita Varadarajan was born and raised in India, where she grew up with her grandparents. She describes her grandfather as a master storyteller who would entertain her, her brothers, and her cousins with fantastical stories. “I started to see the world through stories,” she explains. “I saw a lot of stories around me, and I created a lot of stories in my head.” As a teacher, she has taught and designed curriculums all over the world, including in a number of schools in Bangalore. In 2010, she, her husband, and her two sons moved to the United States, where she earned her master’s degree in literacy education from Teachers College at Columbia University. Shortly after, she was delighted to begin teaching second grade in Princeton, New Jersey, and through other programs promoting diversity, like the Princeton University Prison Teaching Initiative. Following in her grandfather’s storytelling tradition, she wrote her first novel, Save Me a Seat, with Sarah Weeks and has a new picture book—My Bindi—that is set to be published by Scholastic in the near future.