Author of the week: Chris Colfer

last updated 8 January 2015

Chris Colfer is leading a fairy-tale life, said Susan Carpenter in the Los Angeles Times. The 22-year-old, who had his singing and acting wishes come true on the television show Glee, has just realized another dream, publishing his first children’s book, The Land of Stories. A tale about 12-year-old twins Connor and Alex, who find themselves in a world populated by classic fairy-tale characters, it’s a project he’s been working on since he was 10. “I was just born to be a storyteller,” he says. “There were some lines I remember writing when I was 10 that stayed with me that I made sure were in the book.” Once a frequent target of middle-school bullying, the openly gay actor says his make-believe stories acquired a simple moral over the years: “‘Happily ever after’ is something that you make,” he says. “It’s not given to you.”

Much of Colfer’s book comes straight from questions he had about fairy tales as a 10-year-old, said Alicia Rancilio in the Associated Press. “I just tried to clarify the questions that I had as a kid,” he says. In The Land of Stories, Snow White’s evil queen is more misunderstood than malicious. “A villain is just a victim whose story hasn’t been told,” he writes. For the moment, he’s happy to have finished the book, which he wrote on the Glee summer tour. “I’d be singing ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ and I’d think of something really witty for Connor to say. Had to run downstairs to the changing booth, type it into my computer, run off and do ‘Single Ladies’ in a leotard. It was an interesting summer.”