Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (April 16, 1984) is a lesbian American author of fantasy and young adult literature. She was born in Silver Spring, Maryland and lived most of her life in Concord, Massachusetts. Her debut novel, In the Forests of the Night, was published in 1999, when she was just fifteen years old. She has published a new young adult novel every subsequent year since her first and has moved from her family's Sudbury home to a nearby Massachusetts town.

Biography

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In the Forests of the Night

Often dubbed "the goth princess" in her early publishing years and as the "teen successor to Anne Rice", Atwater-Rhodes wrote her first vampire novel at the age of thirteen. At the time, she said she had over a dozen stories in various stages sitting on her shelves.

After being in a play with the son of an English teacher, the son proceeded to brag that Atwater-Rhodes was trying to get a book published. As it turns out the English teacher was also a literary agent and asked to read some of her work and later to represent her.

Two months later, on her fourteenth birthday, Amelia received a phone call telling her that Bantam Doubleday Dell had accepted her manuscript, White Wine, for publication. Her agent, Tom Hart, said it was "the easiest sale [he] ever had." White Wine would later be published when Amelia was fifteen as In the Forests of the Night.

Amelia is attending the University of Massachusetts, where she is double-majoring in English and psychology. She hopes to be a teacher.

She has been featured in Seventeen, JUMP* Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The New Yorker, The Rosie O'Donnell Show and CBS This Morning. Several of her novels have been ALA Quick Picks for Young Adults; Hawksong was The School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and Voice of Youth Advocates Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Selection.

Plagiarism

Several years ago, I was in a writing group, named Riskai. To that group, I submitted several works, including a draft of a book I had been working on, titled (at that time) Predator, Prey.

A little while after that, I discovered two very personal pieces I had posted up on a writing website, with someone else's name on them. As you might imagine, this upset me greatly; after some argument, I managed to have the pieces removed.

I thought that was the last of the plagiarism, but a couple months later, someone asked me about He Who Carries the Whip.

For the record: He Who Carries The Whip was Predator, Prey, posted illegally, without my permission or knowledge, with all the names changed (including my own). Shortly after the plagiarism witch-hunt which ultimately destroyed my beloved writing group, I understand that the person who posted Carries added a note saying something along the lines of my wanting to post my work to see what kind of feedback I would get without having my name attached.

I do not have an account on FanFiction.net, and as of this date (June 12, 2006) I have never had one. I do not have an account on any fanfiction site.

-Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (as written at AARBookLovers at LiveJournal on June 12, 2006)

Predator, Prey was published in 2002 as Midnight Predator.

Website

Amelia operates, codes, and participates actively in her own website, Nyeusigrube.com. The name translates in the language of her characters as "Den of Shadows." The site has a large collection of information on her world, characters, books, a blog she updates, and a message board with over 1100 users and 9000 articles (August 2007). Below is a brief history of the message board that has been found on Amelia's site since it's launch in September 2004. The site still has several "Coming Soon" areas and has for several years.

TDoS was first inspired, much like my writing, by boredom. Several years ago, LJ and Kel, two friends of mine, decided- I believe while babysitting- to pass time by building me a web site. Through a great deal of hard work by those two and later by LJ and her friend Tyler, tDoS blossomed in a way I certainly had not imagined. At the time, I knew next to nothing about web site design, so a great deal of credit really must go to the love and labor that those aforementioned put into this realm.

When LJ and Tyler moved on from tDoS, I was at a first completely lost. The original code was their property, so I didn't have that to work with (not that I could read more than the basic parts of it, anyway). It probably would have been easier to leave The Den of Shadows as a memory, but I hated to take away the heart of the community that had grown around this site. I did a great deal of research and managed to throw together some html while LJ and Tyler were deliberating, so I had something to put up when they officially announced their resignation on September 2, 2004.

Religion, Sexuality, and Growing Up Famous

Amelia recently replied to a post on her message board asking if she was "queer" and about her life as a role model to young readers. Ms. Atwater-Rhodes spoke out for the first time about her much debated sexuality, her much publicized religion, and her life growing up as a young celebrity hounded by the media:

Yes, I am. I have been out, in my personal life, since 2000. I assume the article your friend saw was the one printed after I was on a "guess who's gay" panel down in San Marcos, Texas, while I was going to school there.

Honestly, the reason I was openly a "witch" when first published was because I was 14 and didn't know any better. It drove me nuts whenever an article focused on the fact that I was a kid, or that I was a witch, instead of focusing on the work itself. I ended up having to tell my publicist that I wouldn't take questions on the subject any more.

I didn't want my books to be labeled "gay fiction" just because who the author was. They have their stories, and points I consider far more important than my sexuality. My first priority is to be there for readers, and if I had to pick a first activist movement, it would be literacy and education. Ignorance leads to fear; education leads to tolerance. It's all connected.

On a more personal note: reporters turned my spirituality into a freak-show carnival ride spectacle. I'm okay with their not being allowed to do the same with my sexuality.

Why, then, am I answering your question? The answer is multi-part only partially because I am overly loquacious at this early hour of the morning:

- My policy is not to lie about who I am. I understand that people remain in the closet for many reasons, but I came out seven years ago and it would quite frankly kill me to go back into that closet now. Besides, if I wanted to stay in the closet, I probably shouldn't be starting triumphant threads about gay marriage ;)

- My policy is to be honest on this message board. This community means a lot to me, my readers mean a lot to me, and being here gives you the right to ask things it would be rude for a complete stranger or a reporter to ask. (Well, I suppose you could be a crafty reporter, but if so, I have a deep respect for investigative journalism. Nellie Bly is one of my personal heroes. But this hardly seems a secretive enough issue for such drastic measures, so I'll go with my first assumption.)

- While education and literacy are my first passions... well, I'm from Massachusetts. And I'm proud of it. I may not "use" my fame in this context, but I am politically active, and I accepted quite a while ago that eventually my professional and political lives would intersect. I made the decision then that, when I was asked point blank, I would give an equally non-evasive reply. After all, what right do I have to ask my country to acknowledge me, if I won't even do it myself? -Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (as written at nyeusigrube.com on July 6, 2007)