Q&A with Laura Bates, Author of The Burning and Founder of the Everyday Sexism Project

4/28/2020

Hey FIREreaders!

We sat down with Laura Bates, author of The Burning, and founder of the Everyday Sexism Project and asked her some of our burning questions. Laura's young adult novel came out April 7! We hope you enjoy this interview, if you have any questions for our author you can submit them via our Twitter and Instagram.

Fire off five words to describe your book:

Feminist, fearless, female friendship, fire.

Last book that made you cry like a fire sprinkler system?

The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman.

What are you currently reading?

The Deathless Girls by Kiran Millwood Hargrave.

Name one song or artist that gets you fired up:

Amanda Palmer.

The person you would most want to share a campfire with?

Rainbow Rowell.

Fire down below! What's the first object you save?

My first edition of Slaughterhouse Five.

Tell us your best three sentence campfire story.

You're passing through a new neighbourhood on a dark, stormy night, when you become lost. A little girl with long red hair appears and beckons to you: you follow her and she leads you to the main road before waving and walking away. When you mention the story to a friend from the area the following week, she looks at you strangely and says "there used to be a little girl with long red hair who lived here, but she died in an accident 10 years ago."

Give us an out of context quote from your book to warm our hearts:

"We are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn. And we're not putting up with it anymore."

Anything you have the burning desire to say?

Stop policing girls and start educating boys!

Advice for newly sparking writers in three sentences or less:

Be brave. Read everything. Keep going.

More about The Burning:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month!
“A smart, explosive examination of gender discrimination and its ramifications.” --Publishers Weekly

A rumor is like fire. And a fire that spreads online... is impossible to extinguish.

New school. Check.
New town. Check.
New last name. Check.
Social media profiles? Deleted.

What happens when you can’t run or hide from a mistake that goes viral?
Anna and her mother have moved hundreds of miles to put the past behind them. Anna hopes to make a fresh start and escape the harassment she's been subjected to. But then rumors and whispers start, and Anna tries to ignore what is happening by immersing herself in learning about Maggie, a local woman accused of witchcraft in the seventeenth century. A woman who was shamed. Silenced. And whose story has unsettling parallels to Anna's own.

From Laura Bates, internationally renowned feminist and founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, comes a realistic fiction story for the #metoo era. It's a powerful call to action, reminding all readers of the implications of sexism and the role we can each play in ending it.