Kirstin Cronn-Mills, author of Rules for Camouflage
Young Adult Literature Category
Each week leading up to the 37th annual Minnesota Book Awards, we are featuring exclusive interviews with our finalists. You can also watch the authors in conversation with their fellow category finalists here.
What inspired you to write this book – or inspired you while writing it?
I was inspired to write Rules for Camouflage by my neurodivergent loved ones and their goofiness, along with the wildly inaccurate ways neurotypicals view neurodivergents and how we move through the world. As I was writing, I was inspired by the neurodivergent community and our awesome hilarity (LOLOL, but it’s true).
What is one detail you wanted to include in this book, but couldn’t find a place for?
There were so many funny neurodivergent moments from so many people’s lives – too many to include!
Tell us about someone (whose name isn’t on the cover!) who proved instrumental to the creation of this book.
I couldn’t have written Rules for Camouflage without Nadine and Tessa at the Maui Ocean Center, who allowed me to talk to and be gripped by two different octopuses. Their octopuses are captured near Maui by free divers, then returned to the ocean after a few months to finish their lives as wild creatures. Such a tactile and awe-inspiring visit – each octopus was evaluating ME, rather than me evaluating them. I couldn’t have written the scenes with Aretha (or her Backword) without that experience. I’m indebted.
Please tell us something about yourself that isn’t widely known. (It doesn’t have to be about the book in question – or even about your writing at all.)
I drive a Prius (I know, so stereotypical for a writer and teacher), but i secretly want a Mustang convertible, the louder the better.
Share your thoughts on the role and value of libraries.
Librarians are national treasures, and libraries are sanctuary spaces for so many. We need more of both, and I’m so grateful to each and every librarian who’s ever shared one of my books to a kid who needed to know they were okay just as they are. I wish I had a way to honor them all.
Kirstin Cronn-Mills is the author of children’s books including the Minnesota Book Award finalist The Sky Always Hears Me And the Hills Don’t Mind and Beautiful Music for Ugly Children, which was a Stonewall Book Award winner and a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her third novel, Original Fake was a Minnesota Book Award finalist in 2017, along with her third nonfiction volume for high school libraries, LGBTQ+ Athletes Claim the Field. Cronn-Mills currently teaches at South Central College in Minnesota.