Jeff Fleischer
Jeff Fleischer is a Chicago-based author, editor, and journalist. He is the author of A Hot Mess: How the Climate Crisis Is Changing Our World (Zest Books, 2021), Votes of Confidence: A Young Person’s Guide to American Elections (Zest Books, 2020 and 2016), Rockin’ the Boat: 50 Iconic Revolutionaries (Zest Books, 2015) and The Latest Craze: A Short History of Mass Hysterias (Fall River Press, 2011). His fiction has appeared in more than seventy publications including The Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Journal, Shenandoah, The Saturday Evening Post, and So It Goes by the Kurt Vonnegut Library and Museum. He has a master’s in magazine journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and a bachelor’s in both journalism and history from Indiana University.
Interview
What was your favorite book when you were a child?
There are way too many to pick one, but a lot of them are still favorites of mine.
What’s your favorite line from a book?
“My heart has joined the thousand, for my friend stopped running today.”—Watership Down, by Richard Adams
Who are your top three favorite authors or illustrators?
Not sure I can narrow it down like that. It depends what I feel like reading at a certain time.
Why did you want to become an author or illustrator?
Like a lot of people, I fell in love with books early in childhood and knew I wanted to do something related to writing as a career. I’ve written hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, published more than seventy fiction stories, and written.
Do you have any advice for future authors or illustrators?
Read a lot, write a lot, and try to write things you’d enjoy writing.
