Alethea Kontis | |
|---|---|
 Kontis at Burke Centre Library in 2013 | |
| Born | Alethea Kontis South Burlington, Vermont, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | American |
| Genre | Teen & young adult, fantasy, horror fiction, science fiction, romance |
| Website | |
| www | |
Alethea Kontis is an American writer of Teen & Young Adult Books, picture books and speculative fiction, primarily for children, as well as an essayist and storyteller. She is represented by Moe Ferrara at Bookends Literary Agency.[1]
Born in South Burlington, Vermont, Kontis lives in Titusville, Florida.[2] She contributes to a variety of publications including Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest.[3][4][5] As a prolific writer she has also been awarded a number of prizes for her work including the Garden State Teen Book Award, the Scribe Award and the Gelett Burgess Children's Book Award which she won twice.[6][7][8]
Kontis has been an NPR book reviewer for many years covering predominantly Young adult and children's fiction.[9][10] Kontis co-wrote The Dark-Hunter Companion with Sherrilyn Kenyon.[11][12] Kontis has learned and honed her writing under a variety of teachers including Orson Scott Card and Andre Norton.[13]
After graduating from USC, Kontis began a career as a bookseller and librarian, eventually moving to middle Tennessee to work as Assistant Children's Librarian at the Smyrna Public Library.[14][15] From there she was scouted to become a book buyer for Ingram Book Company, where she spent the next decade.[16][17] While at Ingram, Kontis interviewed authors as the "Genre Chick" for their Readers Advisory. She was one of four hosts of Ingram's "Tea in Space" podcast,[18] and was given the title "The Voice of Ingram."
In 2000, Kontis moved further into the publishing world when she began copy editing for Booksurge press. This led to copy editing works for Solaris Books, Subterranean Press, Angry Robot, and Baen Books, among others.[19][20]
Building on the skills she learned as a book buyer, Kontis started reviewing fiction for The Rutherford Reader and eventually earned her own book review column, "Princess Alethea's Magical Elixir," in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show online magazine in 2008.[21] Since 2018 her reviews have appeared in Locus (magazine)[22] and, more regularly, on NPR Books.[23]
In the mid-2000s Kontis added fiction editing to her growing list of skills. She became a contributing editor for Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest in 2004, and later that year began working on Elemental: The Tsunami Relief Anthology: Stories of Science Fiction and Fantasy,[24] a critically acclaimed benefit anthology she co-edited for Tor Books. The profits from this anthology went to Save the Children after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.
In 2005, Kontis launched a small speculative fiction press called NYX Books, which she ran until 2009. In 2015 she opened up another small press under her own name, Alethea Kontis, where she has self-published some of her own works.
Kontis' fiction writing career began after two events that inspired and transformed her: attending Orson Scott Card's week-long Literary Boot Camp in 2003,[25] and connecting with author Andre Norton,[26] who happened to live in the same small town. Kontis visited Norton's High Hallack, and the two became good friends in the last years of Norton's life. To continue honing her craft, Kontis helped found and participated heavily in the Codex Writers Group online workshop, starting in 2004.
That same year she received an offer[27] from Candlewick Press to publish her first picture book, AlphaOops: The Day Z Went First (2006). Other books for young children followed, including a sequel to her first, AlphaOops!: H is for Halloween (2010), a board book titled The Wonderland Alphabet: Alice's Adventures Through the ABCs and What She Found There (2012),a picture book in verse, The Little Witch and Wizard (2019), and most recently Oodles of Doodles! (2022).
Kontis also established a foothold in the horror, science fiction, fantasy, and romance genres. Her first short story, "Sunday," was published in Realms of Fantasy in 2006. In addition to publishing dozens of genre short stories over the next decade and a half, she co-wrote the New York Times bestseller Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunter Companion (2007), wrote a memoir, Beauty & Dynamite (2008), and published her first novel. The first book in the Woodcutter Sisters series, Enchanted, released in 2012. This expanded version of the fairy tale story "Sunday" won numerous awards and inspired the two follow up books, Hero (2013) and Dearest (2015).
After speaking about fairy tales at the Library of Congress in 2013, Kontis was asked to give the keynote address at the 2015 Lewis Carroll Society of North America's Alice150 Conference in New York City,[28] celebrating the 150th anniversary of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Kontis is also a poet, appearing in Everyday Weirdness, These Apparitions, Timeless Tales, Truancy, New Verse News, and more.
Kontis cites multiple authors and publishing industry greats as her teachers and mentors, notably Andre Norton, Orson Scott Card, Sherrilyn Kenyon, and Jane Yolen.[29][30]
The Once Upon Faerie Tale Anthology Collection
| Year | Award | For |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | NCTE Notable Children's Trade Books in the Language Arts | For "AlphaOops!". |
| 2010 | Junior Library Guild Selection | For "AlphaOops!". |
| 2010 | Publishers Weekly Starred Review | For "AlphaOops!". |
| 2012 | Kirkus Starred Review | For "Enchanted". |
| 2012 | Gelett Burgess Award Winner - Fiction (Middle Grade) | For "Enchanted". |
| 2012 | Kirkus Best Teen Books of 2012[47] | For "Enchanted". |
| 2012 | SWFA Andre Norton Award Nominee | For "Enchanted". |
| 2013 | SWFA Andre Norton Award Nominee | For "Hero". |
| 2013 | Audie Award Nominee | For "Enchanted". |
| 2013 | YALSA Top Ten Best Fiction For Young Adults | For "Enchanted". |
| 2013 | YALSA Amazing Audiobooks For Young Adults | For "Enchanted". |
| 2014 | World Book Night Pick | For "Enchanted". |
| 2014 | Prism Award Nominee | For "Hero". |
| 2015 | Garden State Book Award - Fiction Winner | For "Enchanted". |
| 2016 | Gelett Burgess Award Winner - Fables, Folklore, and Fairytales Young Adult | For "Tales of Arilland". |
| 2016 | Dragon Awards - Middle Grade Nominee | For "Trix and the Faerie Queen". |
| 2018 | Dragon Awards - Young Adult Nominee | For "When Tinker Met Bell". |
| 2019 | Scribe Award - Young Adult Winner[48] | For "Harmswood Academy #3: Besphinxed". |
