• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Regal House Publishing

Advancing Finely Crafted Literature

  • Home
  • About Us
    • The Origin Narrative of an Indie Press
    • The Regal Mandate
    • Staff
    • Our Imprints
    • The Regal House Initiative
    • Our Professional Affiliations
    • RHP’s Climate Commitment
    • RHP Summer Scholars Program
    • Contact & FAQ
    • Blog
  • Authors
    • Our Authors
      • Regal House Authors & Poets
      • Fitzroy Books Authors & Poets
      • Pact Press Authors & Poets
    • Forthcoming Publications
    • Sour Mash: RHP’s Southern Literature Series
    • Fugere Books: RHP’s Novella Series
    • Regal House Reading Series
  • Submissions
  • Marketing & Distribution
    • Our Distribution and Printing Partners
    • Subsidiary Rights
    • Our Production Partners
    • For Retailers
    • Events
    • Book Spiel
    • A Conspiracy of Lemurs Podcast
  • Contests
    • The Fugere Book Prize for Finely Crafted Novellas
    • The Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction
    • The Acheven Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction
    • The W.S. Porter Prize for Short Story Collections
    • The Terry J. Cox Poetry Award
  • SHOP

Crissa-Jean Chappell

Photo credit: Harlan Erskine

Crissa-Jean Chappell was born in Miami, Florida. As a kid, she climbed the oaks in her backyard near the bay and imagined that their branches were the scaly skins of flying dragons. She spent a lot of time talking to invisible creatures. The hall closet was a time machine that could zap back to the days of brontos and T-Rex. Her friends were raccoons and foxes, opossums and burrowing owls, bats and blue crabs that scuttled up into the trees.

In high school, her city started taking cues from those neon-soaked television shows. The beach began to build fancy cafes and velvet-roped clubs. Miami was no longer a home for wharf rats. It was the treeless land of strip malls and sun-baked parking lots. Chappell watched it all from a distance. She put it down on paper, as she’d done since she could pick up a Crayola (starting with hand-stapled “horse books” on notepaper, which forced her unfortunate readers to turn the pages backwards). She studied fiction of all forms at the University of Miami: from black-and-white monster movies to ultra-serious plays. Chappell became known as the girl-who-writes-about-teenagers. It took a while to figure this out. Teachers said: write what you know. She wrote about elves and other dimensions. They said: write something that you’d actually want to read. She wrote about Florida girls who didn’t want to grow up.

Chappell now lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her debut young adult novel, Total Constant Order (HarperTeen) is a NYPL Book For The Teen Age and a VOYA Perfect Ten. Chappell’s second novel, Narc (Flux Books) is currently optioned for film. More Than Good Enough (Flux Books) is a Florida Book Awards medalist, which Kirkus calls, “compelling and emotionally nuanced.” Chappell’s newest YA novel is Snowbirds (Simon Pulse). “…an engrossing mystery,” School Library Journal. She holds a PhD and MFA from the University of Miami and has taught creative writing and cinema studies for over fifteen years. She is a professor of film and creative writing at Lehman College. When she misses South Florida, she talks to the parrots in Green-Wood Cemetery.

Regal House Publishing and Fitzroy Books are delighted to be publishing Crissa-Jean Chappell‘s YA novel Sun Don’t Shine in the spring of 2024.

Footer

The Regal House Enterprise

Regal House Publishing is the parent company to the following imprints:

Fitzroy Books publishing finely crafted MG, YA and NA fiction.

Pact Press publishing finely crafted anthologies and full-length works that focus upon issues such as diversity, immigration, racism and discrimination.

The Regal House Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that conducts project-based literacy and educational outreach in support of underserved communities.

From our Blog

Jeanette Horn

After 42 Years, The Muse Bookshop Still Promotes Literacy and Community

Arvida Book Company: A Warm and Nurturing Community Gathering Spot

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Google +
  • Email
Regal House Publishing · © 2017–2023 · Website design by Lafayette & Greene
 

Loading Comments...