ABOUT
I never thought I’d be an author. In fact, if you’d asked a five-year-old me what she wanted to be when she grew up, she wouldn’t have been able to give you a single answer. She would have described some hybrid non-job, a professional chimera of sorts, part artist, part horseback rider, part musician, part office worker, part chef, part detective. All I knew at that stage in life was that I was interested in everything and I hated being bored.
If you asked teenage me what she wanted to be when she grew up, her answer would have been a bit more practical: “Probably something in business,” I might have said, despite having no idea what it meant to be “in business” or even which “business” I wanted to be in.
In college, faced with the prospect of choosing a major, I did what most newly-minted-adults do, and picked a lane. I chose a career path that seemed both practical and interesting: computer science.
I threw myself into computer science whole-heartedly, nearly finishing the major by the end of my junior year, along with a half dozen TA positions, an internship each at Google and Facebook, and a lucrative job offer waiting for me in San Francisco when I graduated. Finally, I believed that I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up: a software engineer.
But I supposed I never fully evicted that five-year-old from my psyche. The one who wanted to be everything. An artist, a horseback rider, a musician, an office worker, a chef… and an author, apparently.
I had always loved words: big words, funny words, word games, word puzzles, alphabet soup, you name it. And as a freshman in college I began constructing crossword puzzles, publishing my first during Brown’s crossword week in the New York Times. And by the time I was a junior in college, I formalized that love of words by declaring a second concentration in literary arts, simply because I had taken so many of the required classes already that I figured I may as well receive a degree for it.
I even started writing a book.
It was the summer I was working at Google, and for some reason they didn’t have much work for me to do, so, as a respite from playing pool and eating five meals a day, I began to draft my magnum opus. It was a YA dystopian novel called The Frozen City that was nearly 100,000 words. It was terrible, and if you need proof of that, it should be enough for me to say that it began with a prologue that was also a dream sequence that was also a flashback. But I thought it was brilliant — time travel! Clones! Insta-love soulmates! — so I spent three years revising it and querying it before realizing that maaaaybe it wasn’t as genius as I thought. After dozens of form rejections, I was starting to understand that if I was serious about this whole writing thing, I was going to need help.
I decided to get an MFA.
I was still working full-time as a software engineer, but in order to figure out how to make it as a children’s book author, I enrolled in Hamline University’s low-residency MFA program in writing for children and young adults. That’s where I began drafting the book that would eventually become Emmy in the Key of Code.
Now, eight years and five published books later, I don’t have a single “career.”
My whole life lies in the in-between, and that in-between is my most favorite subject for my stories.
I like to call my first three novels—Emmy in the Key of Code, Recipe for Disaster, and Words Apart—my “in-between trilogy.” All of them are about kids torn between two seemingly-opposite worlds, and all three of those books mimic that in-between-ness in their formats. Each story combines verse with something else—computer code, recipes, prose, graphic novel, crossword puzzles—as if the books themselves, like the kids they’re about, don’t quite know what they want to be.
Because the truth is, I don’t fully know what I want to be. If you were to ask me today what I want to do when I grow up, I’m not sure I’d have a good answer for you.
On the outside, that may be hard to believe. I’m a woman in my mid-thirties who holds down not just multiple careers but also a home, a marriage, the life of a six-year-old dog and a two-year-old human. It certainly would seem that I am “grown up” and that I have decided how I want to spend my professional time. But the truth is that I’m still redefining myself. My life and career continue to shapeshift, evolving even after I think I’m settled. And at this point, I expect it will continue to do so as I continue to grow up and up and up and up.
Right now, I’m an author/crossword puzzle maker/trivia writer/public speaker/mother. And for now, that’s what is making me feel fulfilled. But it may not always, and when the time comes, I’m prepared to redefine my in-between, just like the characters do in my books.
I hope when you read my stories, when you meet Emmy and Hannah and Olive and Mattie, that you get a peek into their brains and also into mine. I hope you learn about how “or” in computer science always includes “and” and how you’re Jewish enough if you feel Jewish enough. I hope you learn about words like “contronym”—a word with two opposite meanings—and you realize that your definition, too, can contradict itself.
Maybe, by reading my books, you’ll be inspired to also allow yourself to exist in the in-between. To always be evolving and changing, because you’re never fully finished. Your definition is never static, and even when you’re old and gray, you are never entirely “grown up.”
So join me in the in-between. It’s where the magic happens.
SHORT BIO:
Aimee Lucido is the author of the middle grade novels EMMY IN THE KEY OF CODE, RECIPE FOR DISASTER and WORDS APART. She is also the author of the picture book PASTA PASTA LOTSA PASTA and chapter book, LUCKY PENNY. She got her MFA in writing for children and young adults at Hamline University and she lives with her husband, her daughter, and her dog in Irvington, NY. When she’s not writing books, Aimee writes and edits trivia and crossword puzzles, which are often published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Scientific American, and AVCX, among many others.
aimeelucido.com
Twitter: @AimeeLucido
Instagram: @AimeeLucido
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Profile images by Nina Pomeroy
ABOUT
I never thought I’d be an author. In fact, if you’d asked a five-year-old me what she wanted to be when she grew up, she wouldn’t have been able to give you a single answer. She would have described some hybrid non-job, a professional chimera of sorts, part artist, part horseback rider, part musician, part office worker, part chef, part detective. All I knew at that stage in life was that I was interested in everything and I hated being bored.
If you asked teenage me what she wanted to be when she grew up, her answer would have been a bit more practical: “Probably something in business,” I might have said, despite having no idea what it meant to be “in business” or even which “business” I wanted to be in.
In college, faced with the prospect of choosing a major, I did what most newly-minted-adults do, and picked a lane. I chose a career path that seemed both practical and interesting: computer science.
I threw myself into computer science whole-heartedly, nearly finishing the major by the end of my junior year, along with a half dozen TA positions, an internship each at Google and Facebook, and a lucrative job offer waiting for me in San Francisco when I graduated. Finally, I believed that I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up: a software engineer.
But I supposed I never fully evicted that five-year-old from my psyche. The one who wanted to be everything. An artist, a horseback rider, a musician, an office worker, a chef… and an author, apparently.
I had always loved words: big words, funny words, word games, word puzzles, alphabet soup, you name it. And as a freshman in college I began constructing crossword puzzles, publishing my first during Brown’s crossword week in the New York Times. And by the time I was a junior in college, I formalized that love of words by declaring a second concentration in literary arts, simply because I had taken so many of the required classes already that I figured I may as well receive a degree for it.
I even started writing a book.
It was the summer I was working at Google, and for some reason they didn’t have much work for me to do, so, as a respite from playing pool and eating five meals a day, I began to draft my magnum opus. It was a YA dystopian novel called The Frozen City that was nearly 100,000 words. It was terrible, and if you need proof of that, it should be enough for me to say that it began with a prologue that was also a dream sequence that was also a flashback. But I thought it was brilliant — time travel! Clones! Insta-love soulmates! — so I spent three years revising it and querying it before realizing that maaaaybe it wasn’t as genius as I thought. After dozens of form rejections, I was starting to understand that if I was serious about this whole writing thing, I was going to need help.
I decided to get an MFA.
I was still working full-time as a software engineer, but in order to figure out how to make it as a children’s book author, I enrolled in Hamline University’s low-residency MFA program in writing for children and young adults. That’s where I began drafting the book that would eventually become Emmy in the Key of Code.
Now, eight years and five published books later, I don’t have a single “career.”
My whole life lies in the in-between, and that in-between is my most favorite subject for my stories.
I like to call my first three novels—Emmy in the Key of Code, Recipe for Disaster, and Words Apart—my “in-between trilogy.” All of them are about kids torn between two seemingly-opposite worlds, and all three of those books mimic that in-between-ness in their formats. Each story combines verse with something else—computer code, recipes, prose, graphic novel, crossword puzzles—as if the books themselves, like the kids they’re about, don’t quite know what they want to be.
Because the truth is, I don’t fully know what I want to be. If you were to ask me today what I want to do when I grow up, I’m not sure I’d have a good answer for you.
On the outside, that may be hard to believe. I’m a woman in my mid-thirties who holds down not just multiple careers but also a home, a marriage, the life of a six-year-old dog and a two-year-old human. It certainly would seem that I am “grown up” and that I have decided how I want to spend my professional time. But the truth is that I’m still redefining myself. My life and career continue to shapeshift, evolving even after I think I’m settled. And at this point, I expect it will continue to do so as I continue to grow up and up and up and up.
Right now, I’m an author/crossword puzzle maker/trivia writer/public speaker/mother. And for now, that’s what is making me feel fulfilled. But it may not always, and when the time comes, I’m prepared to redefine my in-between, just like the characters do in my books.
I hope when you read my stories, when you meet Emmy and Hannah and Olive and Mattie, that you get a peek into their brains and also into mine. I hope you learn about how “or” in computer science always includes “and” and how you’re Jewish enough if you feel Jewish enough. I hope you learn about words like “contronym”—a word with two opposite meanings—and you realize that your definition, too, can contradict itself.
Maybe, by reading my books, you’ll be inspired to also allow yourself to exist in the in-between. To always be evolving and changing, because you’re never fully finished. Your definition is never static, and even when you’re old and gray, you are never entirely “grown up.”
So join me in the in-between. It’s where the magic happens.
SHORT BIO:
Aimee Lucido is the author of the middle grade novels EMMY IN THE KEY OF CODE and RECIPE FOR DISASTER, as well as the brand-new picture book PASTA PASTA LOTSA PASTA, chapter book, LUCKY PENNY, and the upcoming middle grade novel WORDS APART. She got her MFA in writing for children and young adults at Hamline University and she lives with her husband, her daughter, and her dog in Irvington, NY. When she’s not writing books, Aimee writes and edits trivia and crossword puzzles, which are often published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Scientific American, and AVCX, among many others.
aimeelucido.com
Twitter: @AimeeLucido
Instagram: @AimeeLucido
Profile images by Nina Pomeroy