Soman Chainani’s debut novel, The School for Good and Evil, debuted on The New York Times bestseller list, has been translated into languages across six continents, and will soon be a major motion film from Universal Pictures.
As a writer and film director, Soman’s films have played at over 150 film festivals around the world, winning more than 30 jury and audience prizes, and his writing awards include honors from Big Bear Lake, New Draft, the CAPE Foundation, the Sun Valley Writer’s Fellowship, and the coveted Shasha Grant, awarded by a jury of international film executives.
When he’s not telling stories or teaching in New York City, Soman is a die-hard tennis player who never lost a first-round match for ten years . . . until he started writing The School for Good and Evil. Now he loses all the time.
The second book in the trilogy, A World Without Princes, is published by HarperCollins (April 2014).
Latest published book …
A WORLD WITHOUT PRINCES
You wrote it because …
In the first book of THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL series, I tried to upend the words ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ and strip them of the connotations we normally have — no matter what our age is. In the second book in the series, I try to do the same to the words ‘Girl’ and ‘Boy.’ By the end of the book, kids especially will find those terms much more fluid than before.
Best moment …
The whole second half of the book is twist upon twist, all carefully planned since the beginning of Book 1. Writing those twists and having them feel organic, as if discovering them while writing was worth all the pain and agony of writing the dreaded middle book in a series.
Your special place to write …
On my chaise lounge chair, by a window overlooking Riverside Park
Necessary writing/creativity tool …
Compulsive exercise right before, which tires me out and lets me access my unconscious brain much more easily
