Gael Lynch: Bio
Gael Lynch is a middle grade fiction writer, a story consumer and a teacher advocate whose travels have crisscrossed the landscapes of the US and Canada. She has written alongside many great authors, has been mentored by the late, great Patricia Reilly Giff, and has been sponsored in scholarship by Kent Brown and the Highlights Foundation. Currently, she is a member of the Carolina Society of Book Writers and Illustrators’ Equity and Inclusion Team. She believes in story, a place where likenesses and differences make us all a whole lot better, a place where understandings can take root and grow.
Gael is most proud of her years in the classroom, where young writers sprung up around her and stories bloomed each day. She hopes, perhaps she made even a short sentence in the stories of their lives, as she witnessed them finding their own ten- or eleven-year-old voices penned on an open page.
Stories take time. They take time to imagine, to grow and then be pinched back too. Themes and understandings emerge, and ideas become clearer for the writer and the reader. Gael has written a number of small books, a longer YA, but she finds her strongest voice in middle grade characters that populate her page. Characters who are sometimes thin-skinned stretch and grow and come out understanding the world in a new way. It is in these re-imaginings that all of us, regardless of age, have a chance to come to know ourselves and others, outgrow initial judgments, forgive, and forge ahead, which is the best human power of all.
Ivy Leigh is one such character who eventually grows in strength, but not before she falls on her face, embarrasses herself and finally learns to see herself through the mirror held up by the sometimes unnoticed, kindest of others who have surrounded her all along.
Gael lives in coastal North Carolina with her ultra-furry golden retriever, Reilly, and her rock and roll loving husband, Tom. She’s a kayaker, wave rider and baseball fanatic. When she’s not writing, she’s a part-time staff developer for Teachers College Reading and Writing Workshop and continues to promote reading and writing and great books in classrooms all over the US through her very small mom and pop shop called ‘Teach INK, Inc.’ She is always available to match the right book to the right kid and to promote writing anywhere and at anytime!