Malinda Lo

I have determined the three winners of my Ash Across-the-Pond Giveaway!¹ They are:

Kristine T from Australia
Nicola from the U.K.
Meg from Canada

Congrats, ladies! I’ve emailed the winners, and as soon as they get me their mailing addresses, I’ll send the books out.

There were 243 entries² hailing from 33 different countries, including Iceland, India, and Saudi Arabia. Welcome! As I read through the entries, a few things came up.

• One of the entries was from someone named Kaisa, who hails from Estonia. (Hi, Kaisa!) If you’re familiar with Ash, you’ll know that one of the main characters is named Kaisa. Kaisa-from-Estonia asked me how I came to name my character Kaisa, and in response I’ll direct you to this blog post from last fall in which I explain the origins of the characters’ names in Ash.
• Several readers asked if I would come to tour their country, and the answer is: While I’d love to jet around the world, unfortunately I can’t do it on my own dime, so unless my publisher brings me, I probably won’t be visiting Australia or the U.K. anytime soon. However, I will be going to Ireland on vacation in May. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do any events while I’m there (it’s pretty much up to my publisher), but I’ll let you know if anything is scheduled.
• I also learned that there is a lesbian library in New Zealand! It’s called LILAC, the Lesbian Information, Library and Archives Centre, and it’s in Wellington. I think this is extremely cool, and if you’re in New Zealand, you should check it out!
• Lastly, Kate P commented that “the reason ‘UK’ English uses Grey instead of Gray is because the second version in Britain refers to the boy’s name, not the colour.” I thought this was really interesting. Anybody know any more about this theory?

Finally, I want to leave you with a shout-out to my Italian readers, because I recently saw this trailer for the Italian edition of Ash. It’s very striking! There is Italian in it, but the illustrations are interesting on their own:

Thanks to everybody who entered the contest! I was really amazed by the geographic diversity of the entries and it really made me happy to read all your notes. If you didn’t win, I hope you’ll have a chance to pick up a copy of Ash at your library or bookstore some time in the future.

1. I reserved one copy for non-North American entries, and the other two were for anyone. I chose winners from these two groups using the random number generator. [↩]
2. There were 271 comments, but some of the comments were not legitimate entries [↩]