What will Kentucky Book Festival visitors find on your table?
The Chaperone tells the story of 17-year-old named Stella Graham who decides she wants to escape from New America, a near-future society where adolescent girls are not allowed to go out in public without a government-assigned chaperone.

Whom do you invite to stop by? Who will benefit from reading your book?
The Chaperone is dedicated to “All the young people out there who long for a better world,” so it’s specifically written for young readers. But the truth is that adult readers have fallen in love with Stella’s story too. Anyone who liked The Hunger Games, The Giver, The Handmaid’s Tale or The Grace Year will love The Chaperone.

Could you please tell us something curious about you and/or your book?
I’ve been writing for 28 years, and The Chaperone is my first published novel. My dad had a poster in our house that said, “The race is not to the swift, but to those who keep on running,” and that has really been my motto in life.

Is this your first time participating in Kentucky Book Festival? If yes – what are you looking forward to the most? If you’ve participated before – what was your favorite experience at the Festival?
This is my second time participating in the Kentucky Book Festival as an author, and I am most excited to meet Kentucky book lovers and share Stella’s story with them.

M Hendrix holds a PhD in creative writing from the University of Cincinnati, where she was a Taft Fellow. The Chaperone tells a story of a young woman’s fight back against the oppressive world she knows, risking everything to set out on a dangerous journey.