On the 16th of January the students from the K2 English classes attended a reading with The New York Times bestselling author Tom Franklin at Stuttgart’s city hall, about his novel “Crooked Letter crooked letter” which we had thoroughly studied in class beforehand.
Tom Franklin surprisingly started by apologizing to us for having to read his book, as it is part of our English “Abitur” curriculum. He also made a video of the audience as proof for his family “that he is actually working”.
He read the beginning of the third chapter to us, talked about his inspiration for the book and the similarities between him and his characters. Additionally, he gave helpful advice to young authors, saying that writing is a terrible process as you only get feedback at the end and you should give your readers a character they can root for.

Quote: “An author puts events from his life together in a novel in a way that they make sense” -Tom Franklin The reading was then followed by a Q&A session in which Tom Franklin took time to answer questions from the audience in detail. At the end we were given the chance to let him sign our books and even take selfies with him.
It was a great opportunity to get to know Tom Franklin and his perspective on the novel. Thank you to Ms. Sedkowska, Ms. Schmidt and Mr. Kuse for accompanying us.