Allie and Bea

Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of nineteen published and four forthcoming novels, including Pay It Forward (made into a major motion picture starring Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Haley Joel Osment), Becoming Chloe, Jumpstart the World, Take Me with You, When You Were Older, Love in the Present Tense, and Electric God. Her work has been translated into twenty languages and published in thirty-five countries.

She is also the author of two collections of short stories, Earthquake Weather and Walk Me to the Distance, as well as the editor of the anthology Stories for World Peace. Her short fiction has been published in literary journals and magazines such as Zyzzyva, The Sun, The Barcelona Review, and Mississippi Review, and anthologized in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Mystery Stories, and others.

Hyde has been the recipient of a number of awards, including a 2006 Quill Award for Pay It Forward and the 2010 Alice B. Readers’ Award for Becoming Chloe. She was also a finalist for the 2010 International Book Award in Literary Fiction for Take Me with You.

There is no set series of work that will be written for this course. However, students will be expected to produce a number of writing samples throughout the duration of the course. These writing samples may include, but are not limited to, essays, research papers, and creative writing pieces.

Allie and Bea are fraternal twins who live in a small town in the middle of nowhere. They’re both outcasts at school, but they have each other. Bea is the more outgoing of the two, while Allie is more shy. They both love animals, and they have a pet dog named Max. They’re both incredibly smart, but they don’t do well in school because they’re bored. Allie is interested in fashion and dreams of being a fashion designer one day, while Bea is interested in astronomy and dreams of becoming an astronaut.

If you’re interested in hearing Allie and Bea discuss their songwriting process, scroll down to the player section below.