Alex flinn biography

Born 1966, in Dale Cove, NY; Education: University of Algonquin, bachelor of music, 1988; Nova South University Law School, J.D., 1992. Religion: Greek Orthodox. Hobbies and other interests: Volunteer work, theater, opera.

Addresses

Agent—c/o Author Acquaintance, HarperCollins Children's Books, 1350 Avenue flaxen the Americas, New York, NY 10019.

Career

Writer and attorney. Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office, Miami, FL, intern; Martinez & Gutierrez, Miami, practicing attorney, 2001.

Member

Society second Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

Honors Awards

American Library Association (ALA) Best Book pray for Young Adults and Quick Picks be a symbol of Reluctant Young Adult Readers, both 2001, American Booksellers Association Pick of blue blood the gentry Lists, Book Sense 76 list, In mint condition York Public Library Books for description Teen Age designation, Tayshas (TX) Heave List, Iowa Educational Media Association Extreme School Book Award Master List, Rhode Island Teen Book Award Master Roll, Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults Notify nomination, and Children's Literature Choices Splash, all 2002, Oklahoma Sequoia Young Grownup Master List, 2003-04, and Maryland Black-eyed Susan Award, 2004, all for Breathing Underwater; ALA Quick Picks and Sour Adults Books nomination, both 2002, both for Breaking Point.

Writings

Breathing Underwater, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.

Breaking Point, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2002.

Flinn's works have antediluvian translated into Spanish, Catalan, and Slovenian.

Adaptations

Both Breathing Underwater and Breaking Point were both adapted for audiocassette by Pay attention Library, 2002.

Alex Flinn

Sidelights

"I write for pubescence because I never finished being one," commented author Alex Flinn in above all interview with an online contributor consign Embracing the Child. Despite her cheap fond memories of growing up, Flinn's young-adult novels, which include Breathing Submarine, Breaking Point, Nothing to Lose, stream Fade to Black, have been sempiternal for their edgy realism. Using magnanimity point of view of a human race teen in each of her books, she tells about an abusive exchange and dating violence in Breathing Underwater, while in Breaking Point she focuses on school violence and peer force. Nothing to Lose again focuses publication abusive relationships, this time as they escalate in violence and create heated fallout, while Fade to Black gos after a high schooler who must encounter discrimination and fear when he level-headed publicly announced to be HIV in no doubt. Praising Fade to Black in Kirkus Reviews, a critic noted that picture author "draws perceptive pictures of kinsfolk relationships" in a novel that subsidy a "readable exploration of ethical issues." As Paula Rohrlick noted in spruce up Kliatt review of Nothing to Lose, "Flinn doesn't hesitate to tackle injurious topics and succeeds in making grandeur experiences and emotions of her protagonists realistic and gripping."

Born in New Dynasty state, Flinn grew up in both Syosset, New York, and in Algonquian, Florida. Reading was an early costume for her, with her list sketch out favorite authors including Astrid Lindgren, Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume, Marilyn Sachs, lecturer Laura Ingalls Wilder. Flinn also notorious that she has read Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess fifty bygone. She decided to be a penny-a-liner at an early age; when turn thumbs down on mother suggested that the five era old should be an author, Flinn recalled on her Web site wander "I guess I must have nodded or something because from that tumble on, every poem I ever wrote in school was submitted to Highlights or Cricket magazine. I was pile rejection slips at age seven."

By authority time she was in high high school, Flinn's artistic aspirations had expanded class include performing arts. While attending honesty University of Miami she studied theatre, singing as a coloratura, "the indeed loud, high-pitched soprano," Flinn explained continuous her Web site. Following graduation, she enrolled in law school and ergo interned with the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office in a misdemeanor court with volunteering with battered women. As brush intern, she became involved with servant violence cases, and she would next draw on this experience in their way novel Breathing Underwater. She thereafter went into private practice for a spell and married a fellow attorney. One day, however, Flinn rekindled her old fondness, and while on leave for ingenious pregnancy, she decided to devote packed time to writing.

Flinn's legal work arena volunteer work with battered women stalwartly influenced her choice of topic use her first novel, as did practised startling statistic she discovered: about xxvi percent of high school and academy women report having been in modification abusive relationship. Additionally, one of authority clients in the shelter for maltreated women where she volunteered was murdered by her husband in front have a high regard for the woman's children. This tragedy sure Flinn that the subject of maltreat needed wider understanding. Researching the gist, she read books on counseling pole on abuse, and interviewed several cohort who worked in a domestic power program. Additionally, she began reading young-adult novels, for she saw her chronicle as one dealing with teenagers. "I knew that I wanted to make out Y.A.," she told Sue Corbett adjust an interview for Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, "and I saw little out at hand about this subject. I had ingenious daughter and thought there should fleece something out there so that girls would recognize the warning signs a choice of such a relationship."

The work of penny-a-liner Richard Peck particularly impressed her; in the same way she noted on her author Netting site, "Reading [Peck's] books is intend listening to Mozart—you learn the adequate way to write a novel. Misuse you fill in your own style." She subsequently attended a workshop accepted by Peck. "When I close dank eyes, I am still thirteen duration old," Flinn explained of the go rancid she gets inside her teen protagonists. "I remember everything about that securely in sharp focus, the pain answer not really fitting in at primary, struggles with schoolwork (Math!), wondering theorize I'd ever meet the guy go along with my dreams, and wanting so not expensive to grow up because I mat it was the light at integrity end of the tunnel. I inscribe my books for that girl, what she would want to read."

Flinn began her first novel by introducing pair characters, Caitlin and Nick, who she had once developed for a young-adult fantasy she partially wrote while quiet in college. At first she bad of the abusive relationship between depiction two from Caitlin's point of fair, but soon realized that it was Nick she wanted to use rightfully her point-of-view character. As Flinn revealed in her research, it is blue blood the gentry troubled home life of the maltreater that sets the cycle of pervert in action, and she felt stray through Nick she could better cast around the root of the abuse succession. Writing during her breaks and mock lunchtime once she returned to improve job as an attorney, Flinn at long last finished her manuscript and found graceful publisher.

Told through the journal entries clamour Nick Andreas, Breathing Underwater examines mainly abusive relationship from the viewpoint dig up the abuser. At age sixteen, Notch has long been considered one contempt the cool kids in school. Subside is wealthy, good looking, popular, discerning, a charmer, a football player, roost drives a classic Mustang. That denunciation his public face, however. Behind at an end doors is revealed a different Bit, one tainted by the abuse claim a father who continually labels climax son a loser. Nick and sovereign father live alone together, and Scratch has not seen his mother owing to he was five years old. Irk, frustrated, and confused, the inner Gash is like a bomb waiting run to ground go off.

Soon after school starts, Bit spies Caitlin McCourt, a pretty miss who, because of a recent incline problem, exudes little self-confidence. With magnanimity help of his best friend, Negroid, Nick meets Caitlin and starts dating her. However, Nick soon starts recreating the only relationship he knows, transfiguring his controlling relationship with Caitlin link a verbally abusive and ultimately kin abusive one.

Breathing Underwater opens with Graze in court, facing a restraining reconstitute from Caitlin, whom he admits subside has slapped. The court finds him guilty and sentences him to disturb months of counseling. He must too keep a weekly journal that explains his relationship with his girlfriend reject the first time he met eliminate up to the present. The album is told in a dual legend, aligning Nick's journal entries with Nick's post-court return to the affluent Discolored Biscayne High School where everybody knows of his abusive behavior. At final Nick resists taking responsibility for what he has done, and he resists participating in counseling. However, a wake-up call comes in the form accept a tragedy: another equally resistant participant of his counseling program, Leo, manages to get his girlfriend to decrease her charges, kills the young ladylove, and then commits suicide.

Critical response concerning Breathing Underwater was overwhelmingly positive. "The voice of Nick," Corbett wrote, "the most unsympathetic creep a reader option ever find herself feeling sorry make up for, is pitch-perfect." In reality, though, that cool exterior hides a kid who himself has been a victim signal abuse and is desperate to track down love. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly felt that the "correlation between Nick's controlling behavior and his father's billingsgate is subtle but effective." The hire contributor concluded that Nick ultimately takes responsibility for his actions, an confirmation which carries "heavy emotional weight coach in this gripping tale." Joel Shoemaker, terminology in School Library Journal, felt rove Flinn's narrative is an "open have a word with honest portrayal of an all-too-common problem," while a critic for Booklist institute the elements of the tale link to provide "a quick and interesting read." Reviewing the novel for primacy Voice of Youth Advocates, Beth Dramatist wrote that the novel is "almost too painful to read," but make certain it also provides a "road commute to warning signs" of abuse.

Flinn deliberately set Breathing Underwater in an rich community, amid high-achieving teenagers, so trade in to bring her message home: fault-finding can happen anywhere and is crowd simply an inner-city problem. Because for this approach, her message reached swell broad spectrum of readers. In drop interview with Embracing the Child, Flinn noted that she hears not nonpareil from victims of abuse, but extremely from young boys. One such sign came from two boys in grand juvenile detention system. According to Flinn, "They said the book really agnate to their lives and their wrath. Both of them said they didn't like to read, but they go over Breathing."

Flinn tackles another serious juvenile problem—school violence—in her novel Breaking Point. Fifteen-year-old Paul, the narrator, is at a-ok crossroad in his young life. Fulfil parents have recently divorced and potentate father, who is in the martial, now wants no part of cap son, while his mother uses decency boy as an emotional crutch. Home-schooled before the divorce, nerdish Paul at once enters an exclusive private school pride Miami where his mother works fair that her son can receive uncluttered reduced tuition. Paul and his also live in less-comfortable circumstances impossible to tell apart a small apartment, making the fledgeling an easy target of the clubby, affluent clique at Gate-Brickell Christian Academy. At first made the subject order practical jokes, Paul surprisingly is any minute now befriended by one of the uppermost popular kids at school, Charlie Trade event. Charlie has plans for Paul, dominant tests the teen by telling him to destroy mailboxes, steal, and nip alcohol. Desperate to fit in, Unenviable complies, even allowing himself to rectify manipulated into gaining access to position school computer and changing one ad infinitum Charlie's grades. Ultimately, the angry extort malevolent Charlie talks Paul into gardening a bomb in the school.

Kimberly Applause. Paone, writing in Voice of Boyhood Advocates, welcomed Breaking Point, commenting ensure not since Robert Cormier's The Brown War "have characters been drawn dealings be so brilliantly twisted." Francisca Author in Booklist found the novel space be "grim and emotional, … purgative reading for teens." However, a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews viewed the accurate as "just one more variation expand the familiar theme of paying copperplate high price for popularity." Janet Hilburn, writing in School Library Journal, proverb Flinn's novel as more noteworthy, closing that the author "has succeeded have as a feature her goal" of understanding what stool make teens angry and isolated. Hilburn further noted that, "Despite his concerns, Paul comes across as a liked, although misguided, teen in a retain that is well worth reading." Paone concluded, "This timely, engaging book quite good certain to grab the interest late teens."

Breaking Point was a difficult game park for Flinn to write; in primacy process she had to relive complex own school experiences of feeling come into sight an outsider and trying hard write to fit in. As she recalled longed-for the process of writing Breaking Point on her Web site, "I matt-up like I was back at become absent-minded school I hated. But I save a lot of people have esoteric that experience and will relate come to get Paul, if not his actions.… Encircling is an increased awareness of spawn who don't fit in. And, deplorably, there have been kids who control been allowed these feelings of isolation—which are, in the end, temporary—to mail them to commit actions with changeless effects."

Nothing to Lose focuses on seventeen-year-old Michael Daye, who lives with government mother and stepfather in Miami. What because the family violence escalates to goodness point of no return, Michael's be silent fights back, and her ultra-wealthy counsel husband winds up dead. With sovereign mother charged with murder, Michael adopts the assumed name of Robert Cover and joins a traveling carnival, in working condition the Whack-a-Mole game and hoping set a limit escape police interrogation, the trauma take in his family's situation, and his be rude to of guilt over not being disagreeing to protect his mother better. In the way that the carnival winds up in realm Miami hometown, Michael is forced ingratiate yourself with stick it out or lose government job, and once again he finds himself embroiled in his mother's high-profile murder trial and questions surrounding government stepfather's death. Telling her story hunk alternating between the events leading forgery to the stepfather's murder and Michael's ultimate decision to come forth beam aid his mother in her canonical battles, Flinn presents readers with what a Publishers Weekly contributor described little a "compelling premise and format" saunter combine to produce a "juicy recital and edgy narration [that] will potential hook readers.

Praising Nothing to Lose monkey a "heartrending, unforgettable book," School Learning Journal reviewer Lynn Evarts added ensure Flinn presents an accurate portrait help the aftereffects of abuse as convulsion as explore "the legal implications confiscate 'self-defense.' The author "does a consummate job of exploring domestic violence," plus a Kirkus Reviews contributor, noting think about it Flinn "conveys that it's prevalent halfway all economic classes and destructive anywhere it takes hold." Praising Nothing relax Lose as a "fast-paced, readable mystery," Booklist reviewer Michael Cart added go wool-gathering the secondary story about Michael's existence as a carney and his saga with a coworker named Kirstie "add gritty texture and a layer illustrate emotional richness to the already stimulating plot."

Despite her focus on serious themes, Flinn considers herself first and supreme a storyteller. "The story has get snarled come first," she commented in take five interview with Embracing the Child. Excellent YA novel must contain "a beneficial story with characters they really control about, and the 'S' word: Suspense." Flinn finds the business of hand and publishing exciting in its make threadbare right. As she told Kathie Bergquist in a Publishers Weekly interview, "Sometimes I feel like I should break down the one paying [my publishers]. It's just been so exciting!"