Maggie Stiefvater, New York Times bestselling author, visited the Urbana Free Library on Wednesday to discuss her new book, “All the Crooked Saints.”

Some of Stiefvater’s other notable works include “The Wolves of Mercy Falls Trilogy,” “The Raven Cycle” series and “The Scorpio Races.” Her 2010 novel, “Linger,” debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Additionally, Stiefvater is also known for her music, as she played the bagpipes competitively in college and started a Celtic band.

The event was titled “On Dreams and Werewolves,” which was for Stiefvater’s “All the Crooked Saints” tour. In the panel, Stiefvater discussed the stories behind her novel, including its conception and development, as well as how many events in her life have influenced her writing overall.

The panel began with Stiefvater explaining when she started writing her book. She said she once had an encounter with a woman who, after finding out she was a paranormal fiction writer, told her some paranormal stories of her own. Stiefvater said she left the conversation with a newfound purpose.

“I had been working on this novel that would become (‘All the Crooked Saints’) while I was driving, but I was missing a huge piece,” Stiefvater said. “I was missing a sense of place, and unless there’s a sense of place, it’s not really a Maggie Stiefvater novel.”

With Stiefvater’s newfound clarity came a sense of certainty; she knew where she wanted the novel to go, and what she wanted her readers to see.

“She makes everything an adventure, every new place, every aspect of the storyline is an adventure, but not in the way that you’d expect,” said McKenna Novack, junior in Business. “It’s not like you go to one place to the next. It’s almost as if the entirety is an adventure in itself, if that makes sense.”

Stiefvater went on to discuss why she decided to write the book. She said that initially, she thought she was writing the book because of her fear of blindness.

“Basically, my eyeballs are really bad at being eyeballs, and I had a lot of dreams as a child where I was either partially blind or completely blind,” Stiefvater said. “So initially, when I was conceptualizing this novel, I thought it was going to be a horror story about blindness.”

However, as she started thinking and questioning more and more about inner wisdom and the parameters of which one can confidently give advice to another person, she decided to switch from an unrelatable horror storyline to a paranormal, yet somewhat applicable to reality, version instead.

Stiefvater said she feels this makes her storylines just a bit more relatable to readers.

Sydney Guillory, freshman in LAS, attended the event on Wednesday.

“I’m a big fan of magical realism, and the way that (Stiefvater) talks and writes about fantasy and the paranormal is somewhat relatable. It’s not too far out there; it’s possible,” Guillory said.

Stiefvater began to explain what the book is about by apologizing to her readers for the inconvenience that the content of her books may have posed for them, making the daunting task to decipher what a “Maggie Stiefvater book” nearly impossible to non-readers.

“It’s really about wearing your flaws on your sleeve. Your inner darkness takes on a physical form, a concrete manifestation that you have to deal with,” Stiefvater said.

Many, if not all of Stiefvater’s books, contain metaphors or strong themes of life lessons or learning about yourself or the world. Her take on werewolves in “The Wolves of Mercy Falls” depicts werewolves not as monsters, but as actual wolves who forget who they are and everything that makes them human.

This serves as a metaphor for losing one’s identity or sense of self. “All the Crooked Saints” could be seen as a metaphor for dealing with mental health.

Stiefvater followed the discussion with a book signing, writing a personalized message for each person.

“It’s the simple magic of the Earth and being around other people who love her that really makes her work special,” Guillory said.

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