A.M. Luzzader has published more than forty books for young readers, and the one she’s bringing to the Salt Lake Book Festival opens with a warning. Arthur Blackwood’s Scary Stories for Kids Who Like Scary Stories is a horror series narrated by a host who spends his first page trying to talk you out of continuing: this is not for the faint-hearted, you have been warned, turn back now. Nobody turns back. Inside are haunted museums, creeping spiders, beasts in the dark, and a boy who is no longer certain he is himself.

Luzzader decided she wanted to write for kids while she still was one. She was writing short stories by fourth grade, bought a typewriter at a garage sale in fifth to get them into print, and added her own illustrations in sixth. She now writes full time, with the middle grade series A Mermaid in Middle Grade and the mystery adventure Hannah Saves the World also to her name, and was chosen Writer of the Year for 2019–2020 by the League of Utah Writers.

She lives in northern Utah with her husband — who edits her work and illustrates some of her books — their two sons, and a cat named Cosette who interrupts the workday daily. Join her for a reading from the series that dares kids to keep going.