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Author Sarah Prineas finds her voice in fantasy

By Loren Keller

Despite having written a three-book series for HarperCollins, children’s fantasy author Sarah Prineas is probably the most obscure writer living in Iowa City’s Manville Heights neighborhood.

“I live on the same street as Ethan Canin and Marilynn Robinson, within three blocks. James Galvin walks his dog past my house," she says of the three well-known University Iowa Writers' Workshop instructors. "It’s a really kind of funny, weird little nexus.“

But some say Prineas and her debut novel “The Magic Thief” could be the next big thing in children’s fantasy literature — though the author bristles slightly at comparisons to Harry Potter series author J.K. Rowling.

“Would you ask a new band if they’re the next Beatles? There’s no next J.K. Rowling. She opened the shelves for books like mine, which is great,” Prineas says.

“One of the reasons Rowling’s books really grabbed people – there were a lot of reasons – but one of them is that she plays with some of the standard tropes of fantasy: magic and wizards and people finding out who they are. My book takes up some of the same kinds of ideas. I do different things with them than she does. There’s a storehouse of fantasy, magical things that people like to use and reuse. It’s comfortable to do that, but yet to do something new with them is a challenge I really enjoy.”

Prineas, also a part-time scholarship coordinator for the UI Honors Program, will discuss her work at the Iowa City Public Library at 1 p.m. Wednesday. A book signing and a serving of biscuits (a feature in “The Magic Thief”) will follow.

Prineas has already completed the second book of the series, which centers on Conn, a resourceful young pickpocket turned magician’s apprentice whose life changes forever when he steals a precious stone necessary to create magic spells. “The Magic Thief Lost” is set for publication in June 2009 and Prineas is currently revising the third, “The Magic Thief Found,” and is generating ideas for a fourth Conn-centered novel.

“His adventures aren’t over yet,” she says. “I really do love writing these characters, so I would like to continue to write them if the book publishing world wants to publish more of them. I have ideas for other books too but this is what I want to do for now.”

“The Magic Thief” was published by HarperCollins Children’s in the United States last month and will be distributed in the United Kingdom through upstart publisher Quercus Books. Prineas will launch a promotional book tour in the UK in September.

“They’re trying to make a splash for themselves too, so I sort of lucked out that my book was the one they decided to do that with,” she says.

Prineas went on a short US prepublication tour for the book this spring. “That’s a new thing in publishing. Publishers are starting to send out an author before a book is released to meet with booksellers, and in the case of children’s writers, librarians and teachers. I did a tour in April where I went to five or six cities and had dinner with people. It was really nice.”

Prior to “The Magic Thief” series, Prineas wrote fantasy stories for adults during a period she calls her “apprenticeship.” She say she was inspired to write for children after reading the letters section of the December 2005 issue of Cricket magazine, which included a correspondence from a girl in Maryland asking the editors for more fantasy stories.

“It was like finding my voice,” she says. “I really found what I loved to do.”

Prineas has drawn inspiration from her husband John, a UI associate professor of physics (she calls him a “mad scientist” and references a device in his lab in her book) and her two children.

“Kids of this age, it’s almost like they don’t distinguish between fiction and reality,” she says. “They talk about characters like they’re real. They’ve been really important during the process of writing the books. If I have ideas or I get stuck I just talk about it with them and they give me lots of great ideas and suggestions. I don’t take them all of course, but it’s great to have little guys to bounce ideas off of.”

Prineas has taught classes on fantasy and science fiction to college students, but doesn’t sound quite like professor when talking about her passion for fantasy.

“All of the things I love most about fantasy are dragons and wizards and magic, and that’s what kids love to read about too,” she says. “I didn’t have to try to be literary anymore, I could just write the fun stuff.”