Alethea Kontis facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Alethea Kontis
Kontis at Burke Centre Library in 2013
Born	January 11, 1976 South Burlington, Vermont, U.S.
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	American
Genre	Teen & young adult, fantasy, horror fiction, science fiction, romance

Alethea Kontis is an American writer. She writes many books, especially for young people. Her stories often involve fantasy, science fiction, and even romance. She also writes picture books for younger kids. Besides books, she writes essays and tells stories.

About Alethea Kontis

Alethea Kontis was born in South Burlington, Vermont, in the United States. Today, she lives in Titusville, Florida. She is a very busy writer. Her work appears in many places, like Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest.

She has won several important awards for her writing. These include the Garden State Teen Book Award and the Scribe Award. She also won the Gelett Burgess Children's Book Award twice!

Kontis has been a book reviewer for NPR for many years. She mostly reviews books for young adults and children. She also co-wrote a book called The Dark-Hunter Companion with author Sherrilyn Kenyon. Alethea Kontis learned and improved her writing skills from famous teachers like Orson Scott Card and Andre Norton.

Her Early Jobs in Books

After finishing college, Alethea Kontis started working with books. She was a bookseller and a librarian. She worked as an Assistant Children's Librarian in Smyrna, Tennessee.

Later, she became a book buyer for Ingram Book Company. This meant she chose which books the company would sell. She worked there for ten years. While at Ingram, she interviewed authors and was known as the "Genre Chick." She was also one of the hosts for Ingram's "Tea in Space" podcast. People even called her "The Voice of Ingram."

In 2000, Kontis started working more directly in publishing. She began copy editing for Booksurge press. This led to her editing books for other publishers like Solaris Books and Baen Books.

She also used her skills to review books. She wrote for The Rutherford Reader. In 2008, she got her own book review column. It was called "Princess Alethea's Magical Elixir." You could find it in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show online magazine. Since 2018, her reviews have also appeared in Locus (magazine) and on NPR Books.

Around the mid-2000s, Kontis also started editing fiction. In 2004, she became an editor for Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest. That same year, she helped edit a special book called Elemental: The Tsunami Relief Anthology. This book was a collection of science fiction and fantasy stories. All the money earned from it went to Save the Children. This helped people after the terrible 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

In 2005, Kontis started her own small publishing company called NYX Books. She ran it until 2009. In 2015, she opened another small press under her own name. Here, she publishes some of her own books.

Becoming a Writer

Alethea Kontis's journey into writing fiction began after two big events. In 2003, she attended a week-long writing workshop by Orson Scott Card. Then, she met author Andre Norton, who lived in the same town. Kontis visited Norton's home, and they became good friends.

To keep improving her writing, Kontis helped start the Codex Writers Group online workshop in 2004. She was very active in this group.

That same year, she got an offer from Candlewick Press. They wanted to publish her first picture book, AlphaOops: The Day Z Went First, which came out in 2006. More books for young children followed. These include AlphaOops!: H is for Halloween (2010) and The Wonderland Alphabet (2012). Her recent picture book is Oodles of Doodles! (2022).

Kontis also became well-known for her stories in horror fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and romance. Her first short story, "Sunday," was published in 2006. Over the next 15 years, she published many short stories. She also co-wrote the New York Times bestseller Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunter Companion (2007). She wrote a memoir, Beauty & Dynamite (2008).

Her first novel, Enchanted, came out in 2012. This book was the first in her Woodcutter Sisters series. It was an expanded version of her short story "Sunday." Enchanted won many awards. It also inspired two more books in the series: Hero (2013) and Dearest (2015).

In 2013, Kontis spoke about fairy tales at the Library of Congress. In 2015, she was asked to give a main speech at the Lewis Carroll Society of North America's Alice150 Conference. This conference celebrated 150 years of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Alethea Kontis is also a poet. Her poems have appeared in many publications. She often mentions authors like Andre Norton, Orson Scott Card, Sherrilyn Kenyon, and Jane Yolen as her teachers and mentors.

Selected Works

Novels

• Enchanted The Woodcutter Sisters Book 1 (Harcourt Books, 2012)
• Hero The Woodcutter Sisters Book 2 (HM Harcourt, 2013)
• Dearest The Woodcutter Sisters Book 3 (HM Harcourt, 2015)
• Trixter The Trix Adventures Book 1 (Self Published, 2015)
• Trix & the Faerie Queen The Trix Adventures Book 2 (Self Published, 2016)
• Haven Kansas (Self Published, 2016)
• The Truth About Cats And Wolves: A Nocturne Falls Universe story (Sugar Skull Books, 2017)
• When Tinker Met Bell: A Nocturne Falls Universe story (Sugar Skull Books, 2017)
• Besphinxed: A Nocturne Falls Universe story (Sugar Skull Books, 2018)
• Thieftess (Thursday Woodcutter) The Woodcutter Sisters Book 4 (Release Date TBD)

Collections

• Beauty & Dynamite (Apex Publications, June 2008) ISBN: 0-9776681-7-7
• Wild & Wishful, Dark & Dreaming: the worlds of Alethea Kontis (2013, Alliteration Ink)
• Tales of Arilland (Fairy Stories from the Dark Wood) Books of Arilland Book 5 (Self Published, 2015)
• Genius Loci: Tales of the Spirit of Place (Ragnarok Publications, 2016) ISBN: 978-1941987612
• Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling (Apex Book Company, 2016)

Anthologies

The Once Upon Faerie Tale Anthology Collection

• Once Upon A Curse (with Yasmine Galenorn and 15 other authors, Fiddlehead Press, 2016)
• Once Upon A Kiss (with Devon Monk and 15 other authors, Fiddlehead Press, 2017)
• Once Upon A Quest (Fiddlehead Press, 2018)
• Once Upon A Star (Fiddlehead Press, 2019)
• Once Upon A Ghost (Fiddlehead Press, 2020)
• Once Upon A Wish (Fiddlehead Press, 2021)
• Once Upon A Bite (Fiddlehead Press, 2022)

Non-fiction

• The Dark-Hunter Companion, co-written with Sherrilyn Kenyon (St. Martin's Griffin, 2007) ISBN: 0-31236-343-5 - a guide to the Dark-Hunter series

Children's books

• AlphaOops!: The Day Z Went First, illustrated by Bob Kolar (Candlewick Press, 2006)
• Diary of a Mad Scientist Garden Gnome, illus. Janet K. Lee; (Thaumatrope, 2009)
• AlphaOops!: H is for Halloween, illustrated by Bob Kolar, (Candlewick Press, 2010)
• The Wonderland Alphabet: Alice's Adventures Through the ABCs and What She Found There, illus. Janet K. Lee (Archaia, 2012)
• Oodles of Doodles!: Ready-to-Read Level 1, illus. Christophe Jacques, (Simon Spotlight, 2022)

Short stories

Alethea Kontis has written many short stories. Here are a few examples:

• "Sunday" (Realms of Fantasy, October 2006)
• "Small Magics" (Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, October 2006)
• "Blood & Water" (Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, July 2008)
• "Clockwise" (Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, Nov. 2011)
• "The Monster & Mrs. Blake" (for The Story Station)
• "The Witch of Black Mountain"
• "Messenger (Chapter 20 of Dearest) (2015)
• "For Angels to Fly: A Short Story" (2016)

Awards and Nominations

See Also

• Great grand-niece of Ernestine Mercer.