Most Entertaining Author Bio Note of the Week

M.T. Anderson, author of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation,the recent (and deserving) winner of the National Book Award, has also written several other young adult novels, including Feed,whose main characters are, not surprisingly, teenagers. In his bio note for the novel, he says:

"To write this novel, I read a huge number of magazines like Seventeen, Maxim, and Stuff. I listened to cell phone conversations in malls. People tend to shout. Where else could you get lines like, 'Dude, I think the truffle is totally undervalued?'"