{"id":4671,"date":"2011-11-11T11:11:42","date_gmt":"2011-11-11T11:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jomec.co.uk\/altcardiff\/?p=4671"},"modified":"2011-11-11T11:11:42","modified_gmt":"2011-11-11T11:11:42","slug":"cardiff-character-gabriella-lepore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cardiffjournalism.co.uk\/altcardiff\/2011\/11\/11\/cardiff-character-gabriella-lepore\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardiff character: Gabriella Lepore"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Gabriella Lepore has realised a dream as a published author<\/h2>\n<div id=\"attachment_4676\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"width: 480px\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cardiffjournalism.co.uk\/altcardiff\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2011\/11\/Culture_6_GabriellaLepore_Big_SW.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4676\" title=\"Culture_6_GabriellaLepore_Big_SW\" src=\"https:\/\/cardiffjournalism.co.uk\/altcardiff\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2011\/11\/Culture_6_GabriellaLepore_Big_SW.jpg\" alt=\"Gabriella Lepore\" width=\"480\" height=\"220\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cardiffjournalism.co.uk\/altcardiff\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2011\/11\/Culture_6_GabriellaLepore_Big_SW.jpg 480w, https:\/\/cardiffjournalism.co.uk\/altcardiff\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2011\/11\/Culture_6_GabriellaLepore_Big_SW-300x138.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4676\" title=\"Culture_6_GabriellaLepore_Big_SW\" src=\"https:\/\/cardiffjournalism.co.uk\/altcardiff\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2011\/11\/Culture_6_GabriellaLepore_Big_SW.jpg\" alt=\"Gabriella Lepore\" width=\"480\" height=\"220\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cardiffjournalism.co.uk\/altcardiff\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2011\/11\/Culture_6_GabriellaLepore_Big_SW.jpg 480w, https:\/\/cardiffjournalism.co.uk\/altcardiff\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2011\/11\/Culture_6_GabriellaLepore_Big_SW-300x138.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gabriella Lepore saw her first novel The Witches of the Glass Castle published this year<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Gabriella Lepore was born to be a writer. Influenced by supernatural, magical worlds since childhood, the 27-year-old Cardiff author saw her first novel, <em>The Witches of the Glass Castle<\/em>, published earlier this year. Now she is ready to embark on another adventure.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Witches of the Glass Castle<\/em> was published in September, but the journey to success has been long and gruelling for Gabriella. She started writing seriously in her early 20s, and had to go through five unsuccessful manuscripts, endless streams of rejections and countless disappointments before a publisher finally accepted her story about teenage siblings Mia and Dino, who discover that they are witches and are sent to a magical castle to develop their abilities.<\/p>\n<p>Writing young adult supernatural stories wasn&#8217;t a genre the author chose, as much as it was the genre that chose her. Gabriella confesses that she&#8217;s experimented with other genres without success, but shrugs and says, \u201cI&#8217;ve tried to write older and I&#8217;ve tried to write younger, but I can&#8217;t, and I&#8217;m quite happy with that. I&#8217;m stuck in that genre but I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sitting in a crowded caf\u00e9 sipping her latte, there is little about the slight, nervously excitable woman that reveals the many fantastical worlds and stories in her head, yet they have always been a part of her. \u201cI&#8217;ve always read a lot of young adult so I suppose you write with where your passion for reading lies,\u201d she muses, listing the works of Diana Wynn Jones and W.J. Corbett among her favourite reads.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Witches and woodland walks<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Gabriella has always had a particular fascination with witches, something which stems from her childhood. She explains, \u201cFor family holidays we used to go to a little town called Burley in the New Forest, it&#8217;s dedicated to witches. It&#8217;s like a magical place, and I love it. So I can&#8217;t help wondering if that&#8217;s what influenced my writing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And even now, when Gabriella writes, she continues to escape to the magical world of the woods. \u201cEvery time I start a new book I go away for a few days, to somewhere I&#8217;m completely isolated,\u201d she says. \u201cI like to go to woodland type places, and I&#8217;ll just walk around and just kind of daydream for a few days.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was on one of these walks that she got the idea for <em>Glass Castle.<\/em> \u201cI was doing one of my woodland walks at the time,\u201d Gabriella remembers, \u201cand I saw a little stone with &#8216;Spangles&#8217; written on it, and it was in a really sort of spooky setting, and the ideas just started to unfold.\u201d And she is happy to note that the &#8216;Spangles&#8217; tombstone ended up making it into the completed novel.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Magic, nature and overpowering emotions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Gabriella is very fond of her first novel, and explains how the magic in the story links to one of the over-arching themes: the power of emotion, and how human beings can sometimes find themselves slaves to their feelings. The author also confesses that this is something she has experienced in her own life.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI genuinely believe that it&#8217;s a very human attribute to be driven by your emotions,\u201d Gabriella says. In the novel, this is symbolised through the characters&#8217; use of nature-bound magic. \u201cI think using those powers to reflect nature and to combine human emotion with nature was very interesting for me to do, because I personally have an interest in those sorts of things,\u201d she admits.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Everything she ever asked for<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Aside from writing, Gabriella runs a small bookshop\/caf\u00e9 in Cathays called Paravel with her father, a retired schoolteacher. \u201cHe likes coffee, being Italian, and I love books,\u201d Gabriella grins. \u201cIt&#8217;s very small, and it&#8217;s a really nice environment for us. I&#8217;m very happy with it and I know he is too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gabriella has a second book lined up for publication in July of next year, <em>How I Found You<\/em>, a young adult novel about a girl named Rose Winchester who meets two mysterious brothers with supernatural secrets. Looking ahead, Gabriella plans to go back and rewrite some of her earlier manuscripts, and is also thinking about a sequel to <em>Glass Castle<\/em>. On top of that, she is about to embark on a series of creative writing workshops with children across the country, and she is excited to be able to pass on her knowledge and experience.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLife is good,\u201d Gabriella grins, revealing that she has already seen her life dream realised. Finishing up the interview she smiles, and says, \u201cIf just one of two people read my book and enjoy those characters and take those with them, even just for a day or a week, then that&#8217;s enough for me. Because then I&#8217;ve achieved everything I could ask for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gabriella Lepore has realised a dream as a published author Gabriella Lepore was born to be a writer. Influenced by supernatural, magical worlds since childhood, the 27-year-old Cardiff author saw her first novel, The Witches of the Glass Castle, published earlier this year. Now she is ready to embark on another adventure. The Witches of the Glass Castle was published in September, but the journey to success has been long and gruelling for Gabriella. She started writing seriously in her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":252,"featured_media":4680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1073,1074,1075,596,1076,1077,1078,1079,1080],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-author","tag-gabriella-lepore","tag-novel","tag-supernatural","tag-teen-fiction","tag-the-witches-of-the-glass-castle","tag-witches","tag-ya","tag-young-adult"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Cardiff character: Gabriella Lepore - alt.cardiff<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cardiffjournalism.co.uk\/altcardiff\/2011\/11\/11\/cardiff-character-gabriella-lepore\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cardiff character: Gabriella Lepore - alt.cardiff\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gabriella Lepore has realised a dream as a published author Gabriella Lepore was born to be a writer. Influenced by supernatural, magical worlds since childhood, the 27-year-old Cardiff author saw her first novel, The Witches of the Glass Castle, published earlier this year. Now she is ready to embark on another adventure. The Witches of the Glass Castle was published in September, but the journey to success has been long and gruelling for Gabriella. 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