Naomi Novik: Uprooted

“Come and meet my mother,” I said. I reached out and took his hand.

I know this may puzzle many a reader: it’s pronounced ag-NYESH-kah. The name comes from a fairy tale that I demanded from my mother endlessly as a child called Agnieszka Skrawek Neiba (Agnieszka “Piece of the Sky”), the version by the wonderful Natalia Gałczyńska. The heroine and her wandering yellow cow make a small cameo appearance here, and the roots of the Wood are planted in the wild, overgrown las of that story.

This book owes an enormous debt to Francesca Coppa and Sally McGrath, who beta-read and cheered me on throughout the entire writing process on a near-daily basis. Many thanks as well to Seah Levy and Gina Paterson and Lynn Loschin for early reading and advice.

Thank you to my wonderful editor, Anne Groell, and my agent, Cynthia Manson, who encouraged and embraced this book from its very beginnings, and to everyone at Del Rey for their help and enthusiasm.

And most of all so many thanks and so much love to my husband, Charles Ardai, who makes my life and my work better and more true. Not every author is lucky enough to have a fellow writer and brilliant editor in-house for her first reader, and I am so glad that I am!

From my mother, and for my daughter: from root to flower. Evidence, when you are old enough to read this book, I hope it can be a connection for you back to your Babcia and the stories she gave me. I love you so very much.

NAOMI NOVIK was born in New York in 1973, a first-generation American, and raised on Polish fairy tales, Baba Yaga, and Tolkien. Her first novel, His Majesty’s Dragon, the opening volume of the Temeraire series, was published in 2006 and has been translated into twenty-three languages and optioned by Peter Jackson, the Academy Award — winning director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

She has won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel, and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. She is one of the founding board members of the Organization for Transformative Works, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the fair-use rights of fan creators, and is herself a fanfic writer and fan vidder, as well as one of the architects of the open-source Archive of Our Own.

Novik lives in New York City with her husband, Edgar Award — winning mystery novelist Charles Ardai, their shiny new daughter, Evidence, and a recently and ruthlessly winnowed set of fourfive computers.

You can find out more at her website (http://naominovik.com) and follow her as naominovik on Livejournal, Twitter, and Facebook.