Evangeline Lilly Spins A Spooky Story With 'Squickerwonkers'
Evangeline Lilly is a familiar name to sci-fi and genre fans – she broke into Hollywood's major leagues playing Kate Austen in Lost, she was the female lead in 2011's supremely fun Rocky-meets-Rock 'Em Sock 'Em flick Real Steel, and most recently, she's risen to new heights of fame for her role as elven warrior Tauriel in Peter Jackson's Hobbit films.
But while she's best known for on-camera appearances, acting is merely one of facet of her creative impulse. Lilly's first authorial effort is premiering at San Diego Comic-Con this week: a creepy crawly children's picture book entitled The Squickerwonkers, that tells a story-in-verse of a terrible child and the puppet people she encounters and antagonizes. It's a quick and delightfully dark read, illustrated in at once unsettling and beautiful fashion by WETA designer Johnny Fraser-Allen – and thanks to the fine folks at Titan Books, we recently had the opportunity to speak with Lilly about the long and convoluted path that this tale has taken on the road to publication.