What was the first thing you did when you heard that you were going to be published? That always makes me feel like, despite the emotional difficulties of writing and publishing that book, it was a worthwhile endeavor. I’ve heard from sexual assault survivors, homicide survivors, people who have lost children – and in many cases those people found some healing in my book, or a sense of kinship with my family.

So many people have written to tell me about their stories, their personal traumas. Probably the most gratifying thing has been all the mail I received (and still receive) in response to my memoir, A Rip in Heaven. What's the coolest thing that's happened to you since becoming a published author? And maybe also that he opened the reader’s mind to an unfamiliar culture. So I think I’d just like them to say that my narrator Christy is funny and loveable, that his story is a compelling one. I would like them to say, “The Outside Boy is the greatest book in the history of the universe.” But I guess that might be a bit of a stretch. If you heard someone describing your books (or just the latest book) to a friend out in public, how would you most like to hear them describe them/it? I did all kinds of poetry and story contests, too, when I was a teenager, and I never won anything – I didn’t even manage to get published until my college literary magazine. It was seventy-five looseleaf pages in a blue, three-ring binder with stickers on the front, and it was about a little girl who skateboards across America. I wrote my first book when I was about seven years old. It really was astonishing, to read that for the first time. What book would you most want to read again for the first time? I could never choose just one! Top few were probably Tuck Everlasting, Bridge to Terabithia, all of The Chronicles of Narnia, and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. What was your favourite book when you were a child?

So I’m also reading Jennifer Belle’s very funny new novel, The Seven Year Bitch. It’s a really harrowing collection of first-person folk-memories of the Irish famine, which makes it horrible pre-sleep reading. But in truth, right now I’m reading a very depressing book called Famine Echoes by Cathal Póirtéir as research for my next novel. I was going to fib and say The Dead Republic by Roddy Doyle because that’s next on my list. Which book or books are on your nightstand right now? After you read the review, check out my review of her latest book, The Outside Boy, and then leave a comment to be entered to win one of two copies of her wonderful book. Author Jeanine Cummins was gracious enough to drop by and answer my questions to her.

The Outside Boy by Jeanine Cummins