Fox Cities Book Festival: Connecting writers and readers across our diverse communities.

Rose Szabo was a kind of funny-looking kid who read a lot and wanted to be a writer. They grew up in Northern Virginia. They were a middling student despite their parents’ best efforts, and often got in trouble for things like starting a tabloid newspaper or running a guinea pig for class president. Rose slacked off a lot in college, resulting in a D in Russian History. Shortly after graduating they started an unfulfilling job in a coffee shop, and then promptly got scarlet fever. This brush with a Victorian disease made them realize that if they didn’t do something they’d die working in a coffee shop, so they started writing again. Over the next eight years they went to graduate school twice and wrote three novels. They quit a job they liked writing for a blog to spend more time on books. They got an agent. They then graduated again and had to go work at a Dunkin Donuts, which was worse than the first coffee shop. Then they got a job teaching college. Then they sold their book. Now they’re a professional writer and teacher. Getting what you want is rarely a straight line. What Big Teeth is their first novel