Amie Kaufman is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author. Her multi-award winning work has been translated into nearly thirty languages, and is in development for film and TV. Raised in Australia and Ireland, Amie has degrees in literature, law, history and conflict resolution, and is currently undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing. Her series include The Illuminae Files, The Aurora Cycle, the Other Side of the Sky duology, The Starbound Trilogy, the Unearthed duology and The Elementals Trilogy. Her work has taken home multiple Aurealis Awards, an ABIA, a Gold Inky, made multiple best-of lists and been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Check out Amie’s podcasts Amie Kaufman On Writing and Pub Dates with Kate J. Armstrong and her newsletter Finding North.
Kate and Amie cover:
- Amie’s road to her first published book (co-written with Megan Spooner) via writing fan-fiction together (and many other things!)
- How Amie began and manages her collaborations with Megan Spooner, Jay Kristoff and more recently, Ryan Graudin
- Time management (and how Amie learned to do it better!)
- Amie’s top three reads on time management: Deep Work by Cal Newport, Essentialism by Greg Mckeown and Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, plus Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman (which Kate also adores!)
- Calendar blocking
- Saying no – (Amie asks ‘Would i want to do it if it was tomorrow?’)
- Managing mentoring and support for other writers and time for being a Good Industry Citizen
- How Amie manages social media (you can find her on instagram and tiktok)
- Top tips for writing YA and MG
- Worldbuilding and research for The Isles of the Gods (which Amie talks about on her Pub Dates podcast here)
- The importance of asking questions to inform the work
- How book marketing and publicity is changing and how Amie approaches this
- Mediation and conflict resolution (which Amie discusses here on her own podcast)
Amie’s advice:
Find a process that you love, figure out what works for you.
Enjoy it. Life’s too short.
Amie’s debut recommendation: Nightbirds, the debut novel by Kate J. Armstrong
The First Time podcast 