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LATEST NEWS: Jill’s YA horror novel, SO WITCHES WE BECAME, will be published by Little, Brown Children’s in July 2024! Find out more here.

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Jill Baguchinsky grew up fluent in darkness and Disney. She spent much of her life on a barrier island just off the coast of Southwest Florida, where she read way too much Stephen King and dodged more hurricanes than she could count.

Jill’s first novel, a lighthearted ghost-hunting story titled SPOOKYGIRL: PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR, won the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Young Adult Fiction and was published by Dutton Children’s Books in 2012. In her next book, MAMMOTH (Turner 2018), Jill tackled topics like bullying, body image, and the struggle of young women to stand out in male-dominated scientific fields. “Green Thumb,” Jill’s post-apocalyptic blend of science fiction, horror, and proper succulent care, was chosen by guest judge Ken Liu as a winner in Uncharted Magazine’s 2021 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Short Story Award contest, and her Baba Yaga-inspired piece, “All Bitterness Burned Away,” appeared in the women-in-horror anthology INTO THE FOREST: TALES OF THE BABA YAGA from Black Spot Books in late 2022.

Jill still lives in Florida, but after one hurricane too many, she and her mini menagerie of rescue animals moved inland. Aside from the manatees she used to watch in her backyard canal, she doesn’t miss much about island life.