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E. K. Johnston
Emily Kate Johnston, who publishes as E.K. Johnston, is a Canadian novelist and forensic archaeologist.[2] CareerJohnston started writing fan fiction in 2002, and wrote her first manuscript in 2009.[3] Her first book, The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim, was published in 2014, and is set in an alternate present-day Ontario where dragons are both real and a menace. The review in The New York Times called the book "a clever first step in the career of a novelist who ... has many more songs to sing",[4] it was nominated for the William C. Morris Award in 2015.[2] A sequel, Prairie Fire, followed in 2015. Johnston's third book was A Thousand Nights, a retelling of One Thousand and One Nights. C.S. Lewis's descriptions of the desert in The Horse and His Boy inspired Johnston in writing her own novel set in the desert.[5] A companion book, Spindle, followed in 2016, which was a reinterpretation of Sleeping Beauty.[6] Her fifth novel, Exit, Pursued By A Bear, was published in 2016. Inspired by Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, it tells the story of cheer-leading captain Hermione Winters, who discovers she is pregnant after being sexually assaulted at a camp party. It was written partially as a challenge, and partially as a response to Stephen Woodworth's 2013 bill to re-criminalise abortion.[7] It was named a "Book of the Year" by several organisations, including NPR,[8] Publishers Weekly,[9] and the New York Public Library.[10] It won the Canadian Children's Book Centre's Amy Mathers Teen Book Award in 2017.[11] A Star Wars fan,[12] Johnston was asked to write a book on the character Ahsoka Tano. Published in October 2016,[13] Ahsoka fills in the gap between her appearances in The Clone Wars and Rebels. Her second Star Wars novel, Queen's Shadow, was released in March 2019.[14] Featuring Padme Amidala, Queen's Shadow is set in the years between the events of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.[15] Additionally, she has also written the story By Whatever Sun, focusing on Miara Larte, a character Johnston created within Ahsoka, and set during the events of A New Hope. Johnston describes her novel That Inevitable Victorian Thing as a "[n]ear-future Sci-fi Canadian Idealistic Romance".[16] It was published in 2017. She credits her discipline in academic writing for helping her time management while writing prose; and states she is a fast writer, the composition of A Thousand Nights taking "about 20 days",.[3] She advises early and young writers to learn to finish projects as practice in self-discipline and editing.[7] Among her favorite authors are Jo Graham, Elizabeth Wein, Tessa Gratton, Kiersten White, Madeleine L'Engle, J.R.R. Tolkien, David Eddings, C.S. Lewis,[3] and Holly Black.[2] She plays the alto saxophone and the clarinet.[2] Johnston released another Star Wars novel, Queen's Peril, on June 2, 2020.[17] Personal lifeJohnston is biromantic and demisexual.[18][19] BibliographyNovels
Short stories
Star Wars
Dungeons & Dragons
Awards
References
External links
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