In this, our second interview, I talk with award-winning children's author Tara Lazar about her new picture book, Flat Cat (Flamingo Books, 2023), illustrated by the also-illustrious Pete Oswald. We talk about where ideas come from, and the process by which the finished text leaves the author's hands and becomes an illustrated picture book. We also discuss her fabulous children's (everyone's, actually) dictionary of absurd words, published last year, and her Storystorm project in which thousands of writers come up with thirty ideas for new stories each January.

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