Erin Bow shares stories about winning the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award with her debut novel, working at the CERN laboratory, being a science writer for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and having just won the Governor General’s Award. I impress her with my knowledge of RICK AND MORTY and TINY TOONS. We have a wonderful conversation about writing for spite, transhumanism, her writing shed, a creepy cabin story, a fear of squandering talent, the joy of winning awards, and so much more.

Erin Bow is a former physicist who currently writes speculative fiction young adult novels. She studied particle physics in college, eventually working at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. She then decided to leave science in order to concentrate on her love of writing. Originally from Nebraska, Bow came to Canada in 1997. She is the author of the YA novels Plain Kate, The Scorpion Rules, The Swan Riders and Sorrow's Knot. Plain Kate won the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award in 2011. Bow has also written poetry under her maiden name Erin Noteboom.