ing young adult novels? Are
there any books you read
as a kid that truly stuck with
you? I have to admit, I sort of
stumbled into it. I wrote what I
thought was a comedic comingof-age story, and my agent was
the one who told me it was YA.
I was pretty young myself at that
point, and I just wasn’t savvy
enough to say “oh, of course we
should market this book about
teenagers for teenagers.” It all
seems obvious in retrospect,
but with the first book, I didn’t
sit down and say “and now I
shall write YA.” I thought I was
writing a zany Catcher in the
Rye. Or, like, a book version of
“Rock and Roll High School.”
But then as I approached rewrites, yeah, I started thinking
back to the YA books that really
made an impression on me as a
kid. I was a huge fan of Cynthia
Voigt’s Tillerman books when I
was young, as well as Gordon
Korman, Francesca Lia Block,
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2015 - ISSUE 11
ARTICLES
83