Featured Author of the Week

Author of the Week: Jude Watson
Judy Blundell, pseudonym Jude Watson, is an American author of books for middle grade, young adult, and adult readers. She won the annual National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2008 for the young-adult novel What I Saw and How I Lied, published under her real name by Scholastic Books.

Blundell lives in Katonah, New York with her daughter and husband. Her husband, Neil Watson, is the Director of the Katonah Museum of Art.

[edit] Writing Career
"Jude Watson" is better known than Judy Blundell, primarily as an author of Star Wars books. Her publisher Scholastic calls her "most celebrated author in the prequel-era of the Star Wars phenomenon". That is, author of fiction set prior to the original 1977 movie Star Wars.

Writing for the Star Wars franchise she works with editors from LucasBooks as well as Scholastic. Her debut came when LucasBooks recruited her to write the Star Wars Journal Captive to Evil by Princess Leia Organa, published by Scholastic in 1998.

Beside the journals of Princess Leia, Queen Amidala (1999), and Darth Maul (1999), Watson is the author of three series that comprise about forty books: Jedi Apprentice (except for the first book), Jedi Quest, and The Last of the Jedi. She is also a co-author with K. D. Burkett in the Star Wars: Science Adventures series. Scholastic says that the primary audience is children age 9 to 13.

Her other books include the romance series Brides of Wildcat County, the parapsychic science fictions Premonitions and Disappearance, and three books in the 39 Clues mystery adventure series, all written for young adults.