Making Out in the Anti-Gravity Room with Kass Morgan (a.k.a. Mallory Kass)

First Draft Episode #216: Mallory Kass (a.k.a. Kass
Morgan)

Kass Morgan, New York Times bestselling author of The 100 and
Light Years (a.k.a. Mallory Kass, senior editor at Scholastic).
Supernova, the sequel to Light Years, is out now!
Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode



Kass’s father wrote for Seinfeld




Paula Abdul (her iconic Forever Your Girl is a great starting
point) and Janet Jackson (oh my god, where to begin? Rhythm
Nation is a must, and The Velvet Rope is everything— also
apparently she wrote a book! True You: A Journey to Finding
and Loving Yourself) were two pop stars Mallory was totally
unaware of when she moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles at age
11




Once she figured out that she was not destined to be an
academic, Kass moved to New York and started an internship at
Scholastic with Arthur Levine, who edited a little book
series called Harry Potter (when she started at the
publisher, Levine was working on Deathly Hallows in secret)




Kass’s bosses at Scholastic, Rachel Griffiths and David
Levithan (New York Times bestselling author of Every Day and
Boy Meets Boy), were instrumental in making her feel
comfortable pursuing writing as well as editing




Cheryl B. Klein, associate editor at Scholastic and Kass’s
co-worker, encouraged Kass to talk to Alloy Entertainment, a
book packaging firm known for projects such as Gossip Girl by
Cecily von Ziegesar and Vampire Diaries by L. J. Smith. Alloy
contacted Kass to work on a new project, The 100!




I loved Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century, which features a
space school, and so did Kass!




Looking for Alaska by John Green (which is about to be a Hulu
show) is the type of boarding school narrative that we’re
more accustomed to reading — Kass threw the boarding school
into space!




My humblebrag about moderating a panel on worldbuilding which
featured N.K. Jemisin (and also Marie Lu, Marissa Meyer, and
Joe Hill!) at BookCon.


 


 


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Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author
of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture
Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of
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Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender;
John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and
frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their
careers and creative works.



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