Colleen Olle writes incisive and quietly funny literary fiction for adults and charming, naturalistic picture books for children.
Colleen Olle writes incisive and quietly funny literary fiction for adults and charming, naturalistic picture books for children.
Recent Children’s Picture Book
Sophia and Sinclair wander into a strange forest. And get lost! They separate and become even more lost—and lonely. How will they find each other? How will they find their way out? Read more…
Recent Literary Fiction
CW: miscarriage/child loss
After misting our houseplants, wilting in an unseasonable September heat, I clomp into the fifth-floor laundry room with a basketful of clothes and find Janet and her three-year-old. Her right arm half-sunk inside the top-load machine, Janet glances over her shoulder and flashes me a smile. We met four years ago, shortly after her family moved into this building. I was in between jobs—a lost liberal arts major and former assistant manager at the big-chain bookstore now attending the community college for an AS in horticulture—and since she, a stay-at-home mom, seemed nice, we would visit with one another. She cried on my couch after her cat got run over. I reminisced about my grandmother on the second anniversary of her sudden passing. Read more…
Meet the Author
Colleen Olle
A tireless rabbit and a thoughtful turtle. A married woman who undergoes an unexpected metamorphosis on the Big Island of Hawaii. A newly sober single man squirming from physical and emotional pain during a dentist’s appointment. These are some of the characters who inhabit my mind and prose. I earned an MFA in fiction, and my prose has appeared in several literary journals. I am also the author of the children’s picture book Sophia & Sinclair Get Lost! and coauthor of Sophia & Sinclair Go on an Adventure!
From the Blog
Parallel Stories in Picture Books
After choosing the setting of a hay maze for Sophia and Sinclair Get Lost!, I knew that Sophia, a tireless rabbit, and her best friend, Sinclair, a thoughtful turtle, would argue and go their separate ways. This meant that I would be telling two separate narratives. Readers would need to track each character’s journey and, hopefully, enjoy them both. In other words, I would need to use parallel stories. But how exactly would I accomplish... Read more ❯
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