Author Chat with Lauren Seal (Light Enough to Float), Plus Giveaway~ US ONLY!

Today we are very excited to share an interview with author Lauren Seal!

Read on to learn more about the author, the book, and a giveaway!

 

 

 

Meet the Author: Lauren Seal

Lauren Seal is a writer, librarian, and the Poet Laureate of St. Albert in Alberta, Canada. She mentors the teen and young adult poets of a spoken word youth choir and her poems have been published in various anthologies. This novel-in-verse, her first book, is inspired by her own experiences with anorexia, anxiety, and hospitalization. When she’s not busy recommending books to library patrons, Lauren can be found reading, writing, and composing poems in her head on long dog walks.

Website

 

 

 

About the Book: Light Enough to Float

Deeply moving and authentic, this debut novel in verse follows teenage Evie through her eating disorder treatment and recovery―a perfect choice for readers of Wintergirls and Louder Than Hunger.

 

Evie has just barely acknowledged that she has an eating disorder when she’s admitted to an inpatient treatment facility. Now her days are filled with calorie loading, therapy sessions, and longing—for home, for control, and for the time before her troubles began. As the winter of her treatment goes on, she gradually begins to face her fears and to love herself again, with the help of caregivers and of peers who are fighting their own disordered-eating battles. This insightful, beautiful novel will touch every reader and offer hope and understanding to those who need it most.

Content warning: This book contains content about eating disorders, self-harm, suicidal ideation, hospitalization, and near-drowning.

Purchase * Goodreads

 

 

 

~Author Chat~

 

YABC:  What gave you the inspiration to write this book?

Light Enough to Float was inspired by my own teenage experience with anorexia and my subsequent hospitalization. I read anything and everything I could when I was sick, but never found a book that reflected my exact experience, specifically my up and down recovery journey. Then, a couple years ago, I wrote a poem about my hospitalization, and the role books played in my emotional healing. After writing it, I thought, Well, I’ve made one poem. I bet I could write an entire book like this.

 

YABC: Who is your favorite character in the book?

Is it cheating to say Evie? She’s the main character and the person we experience the story through. She is resilient, bitter, angry, and messy, but also loving and funny.

If not Evie, I’d say Jayda, the patient Evie bonds with on the unit. She was a difficult character to write, and her relationship dynamic with Evie is complicated and layered. She cares for Evie and wants to help her but, because of her own mental health, doesn’t always get it right.

 

YABC: Which came first, the title or the novel?

Definitely the novel. I’m terrible with titles. I always worry I’m getting them wrong.

It was actually my partner, Mike, who came up with the title. He adapted it from a line I had in an early draft of my manuscript. My agent liked the title so much, she made me change the ending of the original poem to match it. Mike’s very smug about the whole thing.

 

YABC: What scene in the book are you most proud of, and why?

There are so many scenes I’m proud of, but two that stand out most to me, because it took a lot to get them right.

The first is the scene where Evie’s younger sister, Wren, confronts Evie about how she’s been affected by Evie’s eating disorder. When you’re suffering a mental illness, it is difficult to see beyond your own struggles. I’ve talked a lot with my three siblings about their experiences during my illness and hospitalization. That scene is an amalgamation of the emotional truths I heard from them, and I agonized for hours over it.

Similarly, the “Plates” scene near the end of the book. I don’t want to give too much away, because I view it as the emotional climax of the story, but that scene is particularly important to me.

 

YABC:  Thinking way back to the beginning, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned as a writer from then to now?

 I think it would be to open myself up to failure. For years, I didn’t write because I feared not being good enough. Writing had been such a huge part of my life, and I just cut it out. And I was miserable.

Eventually, I couldn’t help it anymore and I started writing again. I sent poems and stories out to publications, and I was rejected, then accepted, then rejected. I learned that by allowing myself to fail, I was also allowing myself to learn, improve, and try again.

 

YABC: What do you like most about the cover of the book?

It’s gorgeous! Holly Stapleton really nailed it. I love how it incorporates the water imagery from throughout the book, how the sun could be either setting or falling, how you can read the girl on the front as either extremely isolated or hopeful. But most of all, I love that the body of the girl is more metaphorical and suggestive than realistic. I really didn’t want a hyper-realistic, starved body on the cover, because I remember what it was like being a sick teen, comparing my body to every other body I saw. I didn’t want sick teens feeling like they weren’t sick enough because they didn’t look like the cover of a book; so, what I like most is that there both is and isn’t a body on the cover.

YABC: What new release book are you looking most forward to in 2024?

I’m a book fiend, and constantly reading book blogs and publications, which means I have a long, looong list of books I want to read. If I have to pick just one, I’d say The Incandescent by Emily Tesh. I’m a sucker for the magical boarding school–I read A Wizard of Earthsea when I was 10 and used to imagine I was the first female student at the school for wizards. I’m so ready to get the burnt-out, teacher perspective of this trope.

YABC: What’s a book you’ve recently read and loved?

I’m currently re-reading Bone Gap by Laura Ruby. It’s just as poetic and lovely the second time around.

 

YABC:   What’s up next for you?

I’m currently working on a YA-something that’s focused on ambiguous loss. I’m not quite at a stage where I can talk about it, but hopefully soon!

YABC:   Which was the most difficult or emotional scene to narrate?

Evie’s hospital admission, which occurs over multiple poems. It’s entirely different from my hospital admission experience, harsher and more dramatic, but it contains all the same emotions. There’s a lot of grief and fear in those scenes, which are both hard feelings to sit with.

YABC:    Which character gave you the most trouble when writing your latest book?

Evie’s mom. The issue with writing in first person is we only ever see Evie’s interpretation of her mom, and never her mom’s true character and motivations. Evie and her mom have a particularly thorny and complex relationship. Evie’s mom is fighting to literally keep her daughter alive and is wracked with guilt over leaving her in the hospital, while also having to care for her other daughter, Wren. But Evie only sees a mom who abandoned her. I tried my best to portray the mom in a sympathetic way, while remaining true to Evie’s perspective. I’m still not sure if I got the balance right, but we’ll see.

 

YABC:    What is the main message or lesson you would like your reader to remember from this book?

Eating disorders are varied, terrible diseases that anyone–regardless of size, gender, race, socioeconomic status, and ability– can suffer from, but they can also be recovered from. Recovery will be hard and winding, and will look different for different people, but it is possible.

YABC:      What would you say is your superpower?

I’d say resilience, which is also the worst superpower to have because it means you’ve had to go through some pretty awful experiences. When I was Poet Laureate, I wrote and performed a poem about how I wished resilience was something no one would ever have to learn.

YABC:     Is there an organization or cause that is close to your heart?

I sit on the board for a lovely organization called YouthWrite. YouthWrite is an Alberta-based camp for kids and teens who love to write. It was created by Gail Sidonie Šobat, my former teacher, mentor, and friend. At YouthWrite, kids and teens get to learn writing from published authors and creatives through multidisciplinary methods, like art, dance, and drama. I attended the camp when I was a teen, even getting a weekend pass from the eating disorder unit to attend the short overnight camp that’s held in winter. It was the first place I felt like I could be a regular teen and not my anorexia diagnosis. The camp is an incredibly inclusive safe haven to many young people.

YABC:   What advice do you have for new writers? 

Try. Try writing poetry, or short stories, or novellas, or scripts. Try out a new metaphor, or a unique style of writing. Try submitting to that journal, or that agent, or that publisher. Nothing will happen unless you start.

YABC:   Is there anything that you would like to add?

Thank you for the opportunity to talk about Light Enough to Float. The book is intense, and deals with some heavy subject matter, but I hope readers see themselves reflected in Evie’s story or can empathize with the eating disorder experience. Mental illnesses like eating disorders, feel impossible to recover from when you’re in them, but, with lots of effort, it is possible to learn to live with and beyond them.

 

 

 

Title: Light Enough to Float

Author: Lauren Seal

Release Date: 10.08.24

Publisher: Rocky Pond Books

ISBN-10: 9780593700143

Genre: YA, Family & Relationships, Poetry, Contemp Issues/Social Problems, Disabilities & Illness, Social Themes – Eating Disorders & Body Image, Novels In Verse, Coming Of Age

Age Range: 12 and up

 

 

 

~ Giveaway Details ~

 

Three (3) winners will receive a copy of Light Enough to Float (Lauren Seal) ~US Only!

 

*Click the Rafflecopter link below to enter the giveaway*

 

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