Each week, an accomplished published author takes over the YEM Twitter account for Thursday’s Twitter Takeover. Each week, the YA author will answer questions, tell stories, and give advice on our social media. This week author Catherine Linka will be taking over our Twitter account.
Books have always been important to Catherine Linka. She has a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults. When she is not at home, Catherine loves to travel to remote corners of the earth. She’s the author of the young adult novel What I Want You To See. She also wrote the dystopian duology A Girl Called Fearless and A Girl Undone. Catherine lives in Southern California and watches hawks and hummingbirds when she should be writing. What I Want You To See is her newest book.
Winning a scholarship to California’s most prestigious art school seems like a fairy tale ending to Sabine Reye’s awful senior year. After losing both her mother and her home, Sabine longs for a place where she belongs. But the cutthroat world of visual arts is nothing like what Sabine had imagined. Colin Krell, the renowned faculty member whom she had hoped would mentor her, seems to take merciless delight in tearing down her best work — and warns her that she’ll lose the merit-based award if she doesn’t improve.
Desperate and humiliated, Sabine doesn’t know where to turn. Then she meets Adam, a grad student who understands better than anyone the pressures of art school. He even helps Sabine get insight on Krell by showing her the modern master’s work in progress, a portrait that’s sold for a million dollars sight unseen.
Sabine is enthralled by the portrait; within those swirling, colorful layers of paint is the key to winning her inscrutable teacher’s approval. Krell did advise her to improve her craft by copying a painting she connects with. But what would he think of Sabine secretly painting her own version of his masterpiece? And what should she do when she accidentally becomes party to a crime so well-plotted that no one knows about it but her?
To follow along with this week’s Twitter takeover with Catherine Linka, follow our Twitter account @YoungEntmag and follow the hashtag #YAAUTHORTAKEOVER.