Once Upon a Twilight!: Blog Tour: One by Sarah Crossan | Interview

Check out our 5 tree review of ONE here!

One
Author: Sarah Crossan
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary
Released: September 15th 2015
Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Tippi and Grace share everything—clothes, friends . . . even their body. Writing in free verse, Sarah Crossan tells the sensitive and moving story of conjoined twin sisters, which will find fans in readers of Gayle Forman, Jodi Picoult, and Jandy Nelson.

Tippi and Grace. Grace and Tippi. For them, it’s normal to step into the same skirt. To hook their arms around each other for balance. To fall asleep listening to the other breathing. To share. And to keep some things private. The two sixteen-year-old girls have two heads, two hearts, and each has two arms, but at the belly, they join. And they are happy, never wanting to risk the dangerous separation surgery.

But the girls’ body is beginning to fight against them. And soon they will have to face the impossible choice they have avoided for their entire lives.

INTERVIEW

1. In less than 140 words, how would you promote ONE on twitter?

One will make you think about identity and love. (I’m sorry if it makes you cry.)

2. For the readers: can you tell us a little bit about ONE and the characters?

One is the story of Grace and Tippi, sixteen-year-old conjoined twins living and thriving in Hoboken, New Jersey. They have been homeschooled all their lives, but as the book opens they are forced to attend a real school and face all the horrors that come with high school. But just as they feel their lives are changing for the better, they get quite sick and have a horrible decision to make.

3. Who was your favorite character to write? What about your least favorite?

Grace is the narrator, so I love her and feel I know her so intimately. I didn’t have a least favorite character to write!

4. Did you come up with the title prior to writing the story, in the process of writing the story, or afterward?

The story and the title came along at the same time, really. I know the point of the book is to show that these girls are actually two people with two different lives, but somehow One felt that it spoke to all the ways in which others see them and also to how they even see themselves, at times.

5. Can you share with us a fun fact, either about yourself or your book?

The character of Yasmeen is named after a friend of mine called Yasmeen Ismail, who is a brilliant children’s writer and illustrator and who illustrated the cover of my previous novel, Apple and Rain.

Sarah Crossan is Irish. She graduated with a degree in Philosophy and Literature before training as an English and Drama teacher at Cambridge University and worked to promote creative writing in schools before leaving teaching to write full time. She spent several years living and teaching high school in New Jersey before moving to London.

She completed her Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Warwick in 2003 and in 2010 received an Edward Albee Fellowship for writing.

She currently lives in NYC.