Beyond the Page: Brooke Hartman
This week we are excited to feature Brooke Hartman, author of Dream Flights on Arctic Nights (West Margin Press, February 2019), illustrated by Evon Zerbetz. Get to know Brooke through some fun questions below.
What’s your favorite (current or all-time) movie, dessert, and adult book?
- Favorite movie: Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. This was my all-time favorite movie as a child, and even as an adult I’m amazed at the intricacy Jim Henson poured into this film. I will probably never attain this level of detail in my own work, but his love for all things creative inspires me.
- Favorite dessert: my grandmother was of Scandinavian descent and from the Midwest, so every family dinner included as many (if not more) dessert selections than entrées. My all time favorite, though, were her basic frosted sugar cookies… made with fresh farm cream and high-fat butter… okay, maybe not so basic.
- Favorite adult book: It’s funny you had to clarify “adult.” To be fair, I read a TON of Young Adult SFF, and a bajillion picture books every day to my kids, but my recent favorite ‘just for grownups’ book was Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter. I’m a huge fan of character-driven science fiction, and this book was not only gripping, but had the science to back it up. Think Andy Weir’s The Martian but with alternate dimensions instead of an alternate planet.
Who is your favorite Sesame Street character and why?
The Martians. Yep… yep yep yep yep yep. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
What fictional place would you most like to go?
I’d go live with Meg and Charles Wallace Murry, because then I could RIDE ON THE BACK OF GAUDIOR THE UNICORN THROUGH SPACETIME, Y’ALL (drops mic)
Tell us one fun insider-fact about Dream Flights on Arctic Nights, your first book.
The illustrator for Dream Flights, Evon Zerbetz, and I were collaborating on this project before we ever pitched it to our publisher (Alaska Northwest Books). I’d been working on a poem about flying over an arctic landscape, and when a friend introduced me to Evon and her gorgeous linocut illustrations, they took my breath away. I knew that together Evon and I could create not just another picture book, but a truly beautiful piece of art. And Alaska Northwest Books must have seen that, too!
Brooke Hartman
Brooke Hartman is a children’s book author and currently serves as president on the Alaska Writers Guild. In 2012, her picture book manuscript won the Writer’s Digest Annual Fiction Contest, and placed as a finalist in 2017. Hartman lives in Chugiak, Alaska.
