Nick Lake’s novel In Darkness, about a boy who survives the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010, is a harrowing but beautifully written book, the kind of story that can open up a whole new world to its readers. Our reviewer called it “incredible,” and the 2013 Printz Award Committee agreed, giving In Darkness its highest honor. Lake, a children’s book editor at Harper UK (when he’s not writing his own books for children and teens), answered a few questions for us about what it’s like to win the Printz.

What was the first thing that went through your head when you found out you had won the Printz Award?
The first thing that went through my head was that it must be a mistake. This was also the second thing, and the third. I actually asked the committee if they wouldn’t rather give it to someone else. Evidently not an orthodox response because they laughed nervously over 5,000 miles of phone line. But really, there have been so many amazing books this year—Code Name Verity and The Fault in Our Stars, to name just two—that my predominant feeling was disbelief. Then gratitude, obviously, and elation. Followed swiftly by trepidation. That sense of: What if someone finds out I paid my dog to write it? (I don’t have a dog.) But I think my mind has a tendency to look for the catch. Is that weird? Maybe it’s weird.

Who was the one person you couldn’t wait to tell about your award?
My wife, Hannah—she is my inspiration, muse, and first and toughest editor. It’s a cliché, but I wouldn’t be writing at all without her. Then I tried to show my two-year-old daughter the webcast, and she turned it off and found Where’s Spot on YouTube instead.

Do you have a favorite past Printz winner?
I think it’s a tie between How I Live Now and Looking for Alaska. They’re both such utterly beautiful books, and beyond that, I feel that they changed the landscape of YA fiction; they rewrote the rules as to what it was possible to do in a novel for teenagers, much as Holes and Coraline did for middle grade. John Green and Meg Rosoff just tower over this genre, for me.

What’s the best part of writing books for a younger audience?
Oh, that’s a hard one. I don’t really know. I’m not one of those writers who particularly enjoys writing. When I’m actually working on a book it’s more like a compulsion, a desperate urge to get to the end and get it out of my head. And when I’m revising, it feels like torture—like rewriting homework. But when I’m not writing I feel unanchored somehow, and I’m constantly thinking of things and making notes that eventually build into a story that then has to be compulsively written down and it all starts again. So it’s just an endless cycle of frustration in some ways. I’m not in any sense comparing myself to George Saunders but I recently read an interview where he expressed a similar thing (more eloquently than me, of course), so at least I know it’s not just me.
But . . . I guess it’s the feedback—young people are so immediate and unguarded in what they say. If they don’t like something, they say so. Like, they email me to say that the ending of a book is totally wrong. And vice versa. I had an email from an ex-gang member in LA who had read Blood Ninja, and said it was the first book he had ever read, and it had inspired him to get into reading. I remember vividly thinking that I could give up at that point and feel satisfied.

Have you read or listened to past Printz acceptance speeches? Are you excited (or worried!) about your own speech?
Listened? They RECORD it? Oh god.
Worried. Very, very worried. Public speaking about my own work is my nemesis. Put me up there in my editor role and ask me to speak about one of the authors I publish, and I’m fine. But this? I am anxious about it already. Luckily I live a long way from Chicago, so a lot of my attention will be focused on how to get a toddler through a 12-hour flight. . . .

What’s next for you?
The next book is called Hostage Three. It’s published in the U.K. already and coming out in the U.S. this fall. It’s told by a very rich, very privileged girl called Amy, who is acting out at home but has gone through some bad stuff in her life, and is deeply scarred on the inside. Then her father makes the sudden decision to buy a luxury yacht and take Amy and her stepmother on a round-the-world trip, much against Amy’s will. But they don’t get far before the yacht is captured by Somali pirates. It’s kind of a thriller mixed with a fairy tale, and a love story of sorts too—because Amy gets close to one of her captors. Maybe too close. No, scratch that: definitely too close. And then everything unravels. . . .

Many young adult authors have taken to re-imagining fairy tales, but not many have done it with the creativity and fresh voice of Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles. Mixing futuristic and steampunk themes with the story of Cinderella, Cinder introduced a teenage android who discovers she's really a princess exiled by an evil queen. In Scarlet, the second book in the quartet, we meet Scarlet, who's searching for her grandmother and wonders whether to trust a strange young man called Wolf. When she crosses paths with Cinder, both their journeys expand, and they realize they must work together to save their world.

BookPage spoke with Meyer about adapting fairy tales and building a new world through her books.

Scarlet introduces a retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood” but also continues the story of Cinder, our cyborg Cinderella. Why did you decide to entwine the two fairy tales? How difficult was it to create one seamless story out of two very different ones?
When I was first planning this series, I’d expected each book to act as a stand-alone story—set in the same world, but with entirely different characters. However, as I plotted and brainstormed, the stories started to converge. Characters started having unexpected ties to each other, and the evil queen began tormenting everyone in the whole series. So I just let it happen, and pretty soon the stories had merged together into one continuous plotline oriented around Cinderella and a band of fairy-tale misfits as they all joined forces against the evil queen. It seemed to work, so I went with it!

Writing Scarlet definitely posed some problems, though, particularly when it came to balancing the multiple storylines. I wanted readers to feel invested in both Cinder’s and Scarlet’s stories, and to feel that they both came to an inevitable conclusion. It took quite a bit of finagling to get it to work out just how I wanted.

There isn't much mention of Little Red Riding Hood's parents in the original story. What made you want to include so much about Scarlet's parents?
Scarlet has been raised by her grandmother since she was a child, but I knew I couldn’t just leave it at that. Readers would be curious—where were her parents? And I wanted to know, too! So I started exploring more of Scarlet’s background and figuring out what had happened to bring her to her grandmother’s farm. I didn’t expect that we would ever meet Scarlet’s parents, but by the third draft her father had developed a small but important role in the story.

There’s a fascinating mix of high tech (cyborgs) and low tech (a pillowcase marking a diseased house) bumping up against each other in Scarlet. How do these elements find themselves in the same world?
Something about this dichotomy really appeals to me—you see it in a lot of great science fiction, such as Star Wars and “Firefly.” I can’t envision a world in which everything is high tech and fancy and shiny. I think we’ll always have places that are rundown, beat-up, gritty, broken . . . so I wanted my futuristic world to have those elements too. I also believe that, just because we are capable of great technology, doesn’t mean it’s always the best or most practical route. Sure, my futuristic farmers could probably put up invisible laser fences to keep trespassers away from the diseased house, but a black pillowcase on the porch is a lot cheaper and does essentially the same job.

If you lived in Cinder and Scarlet’s world, what piece of technology would you be most excited about?
The hovercars—not because they hover (although that’s cool too), but because they drive themselves! I would love to be able to just plug in my desired coordinates and take a nap or read a book while the hover takes me there.

Cinder is set in futuristic China, and Scarlet is set in France. How did you come up with your ideas for the future of these countries? Were you able to travel to either one?
I chose China for Cinder’s setting to pay homage to what many people believe is the oldest recorded Cinderella tale—“Ye Xian,” which was written in 9th-century China. (Many scholars think there’s a direct connection between this idea of the slipper fitting the smallest foot and the Chinese tradition of footbinding. I think that’s fascinating!)

For Scarlet, I wanted a location that had a history of werewolves, but werewolf mythologies are found all over the world. Then I watched a documentary on the Beast of Gévaudan. There was a slew of killings in 18th-century rural France, which many villagers believed were the result of a real werewolf. The beast was supposedly killed by a silver bullet, which is where our myth of werewolves and silver bullets comes from. That story had the perfect mix of truth and myth, fear and superstition, hence how Scarlet ended up in France.

I have been to China, but it was when I was a teenager, so I wasn’t able to go while I was researching for these books. I had to rely on books, the Internet and (lucky for me) my French editor for many setting details. I’d love to go to both China and France, though!

Who has been your favorite character to write?
In Cinder it was Iko, Cinder’s android sidekick who has a penchant for fashion and a big crush on the prince. In Scarlet it was probably Captain Thorne—the handsome, overconfident thief that Cinder crosses paths with as she’s attempting to escape from prison. He’s both charming and slightly ridiculous, which is a very fun combination.

Do you read a lot of different versions of the fairy tales while writing the series? What elements of the original tales do you find most inspiring?
Mostly I stuck to reading the common Brothers Grimm tales, although I did read a book on the history of “Little Red Riding Hood” that contained a few different versions. It’s fascinating how much the story has changed from its original roots. It’s a very dark and eerie story! When I’m choosing which elements to include in the Lunar Chronicles, though, I try to balance those things that are most iconic (the glass slipper, the red hood) in order to keep a fairy-tale feel throughout the books, along with the things that I think would be fun to give a science-fiction spin. Why have Little Red trotting through the forest when you can put her on a high-speed maglev train?

The Lunar Chronicles grew out of your participation in NaNoWriMo. What was that process like? Have you continued to take part in the annual event?
I’m really fond of NaNoWriMo—it’s a wonderful program for writers who want to make writing a priority for just 30 days, and surround themselves with a fantastic, supportive community at the same time. Cinder was the third NaNo novel I ever attempted, and I went the crazy route that year and also knocked out the first drafts of Scarlet and the third book, Cress. (Total word count on November 30: 150,011.) I took a couple years off from NaNo after that, as I worked through revisions, but I did complete a brand new novel this past November that I’m very excited about.

What has been your most rewarding experience talking with fans of the books?
I’ve heard from readers who say they’ve never enjoyed reading, but that they loved the concept for Cinder so thought they’d give it a try, and ended up loving it. Often these readers are now looking for other books that they’re going to enjoy too. That’s such an amazing compliment—to think my book could have introduced readers to a new world of books and reading. I can’t think of anything more worthwhile.

The Lunar Chronicles quartet continues with Cress and Winter. Will Cinder and Scarlet return in the upcoming books? Can you give us any other hints?
Yes, every book builds on the last, so that Cinder, Scarlet, Cress (Rapunzel) and Winter (Snow White) will all be together by the fourth book, and by that point they’ll have realized they have a common enemy—evil Queen Levana. To defeat her and save the world, they’ll have to work together, but it’s not going to be easy.

Romeo and Juliet is often the first Shakespearean play students read, partially because it’s one of his easier works to grasp (though your average eighth grader may find that hard to believe), but also because the star-crossed lovers are so young: Juliet is 13, and Romeo is not much older. But can young readers really get it?

Author Rainbow Rowell, former newspaper columnist and current copywriter for a design firm in Omaha, wasn’t a romantic as a teenager. “I think probably my path has been to become more of a romantic,” Rowell laughs. However, she still believes that every young love story is a variation of Romeo and Juliet.

“When you’re that age,” Rowell tells me over the phone in soft, measured words, “you have maybe the greatest capacity [for love]. You feel love with your whole body. You can be consumed by it in a way that you’re not when you’re older, and yet you don’t have anything to offer the other person. You don’t even belong to yourself yet. . . . You can’t make any promises.”

So why would Rowell write a love story—such as her new novel, ­Eleanor & Park, the story of two teen misfits falling in love in 1986—if she believes young love is destined for heartbreak? A different question is posed in Eleanor and Park’s English class, but the answer is the same: “Why has Romeo and Juliet survived for four hundred years?” Skeptical, ferocious Eleanor dismisses the play as “Shakespeare making fun of love,” but Park ventures a guess: “Because people want to remember what it’s like to be young? And in love?”

Eleanor is the new girl at school, and her shock of red hair and weird clothes make her an easy target for her classmates’ derision. Park is a Korean-American punk rocker who offers her a seat on the bus—albeit scornfully, at first. Aided by comic books and ’80s mix tapes, the two begin to bond. Revealed through segments written from alternating perspectives, their tenuous friendship explodes into a first love that is romantic but never romanticized, complete with awkward moments and misconceptions. The interchanging voices expose Eleanor and Park’s intimate, raw emotions.

Their love doesn’t defy stars or make the moon envious. It is reticent and tentative, but also immersive and thrilling—and therefore heartbreakingly familiar. “True love can conquer all,” says Rowell. “I do think they’re truly in love. That’s the tragedy of being them. They’re too young. They don’t have anything.”

The breathless first moments of love, such as the tenderness of holding hands for the first time, have a submerging effect on the reader. These moments often go on for several pages, conveying all the precious flutters of a “first.”

“The first time I held someone’s hand, it was like stars going off. Not stars—bombs, maybe,” Rowell says. “I’m not going to speed past these feelings. I’m going to let these two characters really think about them the way you do when they happen to you. You’re not just like, ‘Oh, he held my hand,’ and then you move on. In the moment, you’re dazed. You’re reeling.”

Eleanor and Park come from starkly different backgrounds, but their respective concepts of relationships are greatly influenced by the adult world around them. Eleanor’s cynicism, in a reflection of Rowell’s own difficult childhood, stems from a terrifying home life, where love is temporary and the threat of her stepfather steadily darkens as the narrative progresses. Park, on the other hand, is overwhelmed and intimidated by the intensity of his parents’ love.

“As a teenager, you kind of want your parents’ relationship to be invisible,” says Rowell. “You want your parents to move into the background—like it’s your turn.”

Rowell wishes she had “had something that intense at that age,” but her own love story warrants mentioning. In seventh grade, during her “yucky years” with a bad stepdad, she found refuge in a group of “nerdy guys” who played Dungeons & Dragons and loved comic books, guys who helped shape the character of Park. One of them ended up becoming her husband after they graduated from college; they’ve been married now for 14 years and have two boys, ages 4 and 8.

“I believe really strongly that men are good,” Rowell says. “There are men who want love and who care and are sensitive to the same degree as women, just differently. . . . I hope when girls read [this novel], they believe that there are guys like Park out there.”

Eleanor & Park, much like Romeo and Juliet, should be read twice: once in youth, before that first love, and again after experiencing love’s ability to transform and consume. After all, as Rowell says, “You get beginnings when you’re 17, not endings.” It is that same optimistic spirit that suffuses Eleanor & Park and makes it a celebration of all the joys and sorrows of young love.

With a 20-year career in the music business, Ruta Sepetys was on an unusual course to become a best-selling author. But when her first teen novel, Between Shades of Gray, was published in 2011, her gripping story about two teens deported to Siberia during Stalin’s reign spent 16 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists and won considerable critical acclaim.

That success raises the stakes—and the attention—for Sepetys’ second historical novel, Out of the Easy, a very different, but compelling story about a girl growing up in a New Orleans house of prostitution in the seedy French Quarter of the 1950s.

Just before she began a tour to promote the book, BookPage caught up with the Nashville-based writer to find out more about her latest work.

How was the writing process different for your second novel? Was this novel easier/harder/more fun to write?
Writing Out of the Easy was very different than my experience with Between Shades of Gray. I spent two years crying while writing Between Shades of Gray. Out of the Easy was full of joy. It was pure fun creating the characters, and I literally laughed out loud as I wrote some of the scenes.

Josie Moraine, the lead character in your novel, becomes the hero of her own story. Why was that important to you and what do you hope young readers will take from it?
I hope that through Josie young readers will realize that they too can be the author of their own destiny. I want them to know that sometimes the families we build can be just as strong, or stronger, than those we're born into. 

Josie feels isolated from other girls her age because of her social and economic standing. How do you think girls today experience isolation?
In some ways it's the same as the period of the 1950s that I describe in the book. In many cases, our identity is attached to the family we're born into. I've met young girls at school visits who have quietly apologized for their circumstances—circumstances they have no control over. That's heartbreaking.

You’ve said that Chris Wiltz’s book, The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld, influenced your work in Out of the Easy. How did you discover that book and why did you find it intriguing?
I discovered the book when I was living in Santa Monica, California. One rare rainy day I jumped into a bookstore to avoid getting wet. While browsing I found The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld. Once I started reading, I couldn't stop. The way that Chris described Norma Wallace and the secrets of New Orleans was unforgettable. The book not only inspired me to visit New Orleans, it made me want to write, to try to investigate and capture little known stories and characters the way Chris did. 

You took several trips to New Orleans during your research for the book. What was the most surprising/interesting thing you learned about the city?
I learned that as an outsider you can never really "know" New Orleans. You can visit and spend time there but to really be stitched within the seams of the city, you have to be a native or have lived there for decades. It's either in your DNA or it's not. 

Ruta Sepetys on a street in the New Orleans Garden District
where part of the novel takes place.

Why are you fascinated with the era of the 1950s?
My father arrived in the U.S. in November of 1949. He had fled from Lithuania and lived in refugee camps for nine years before arriving in America. I often wondered what the country was like when he arrived. I had a vision of perfection and happiness, but when I began researching it I realized that there was a lot of pain, suffering and secrets in post-war America. It made me want to dig deeper.

Both your books have intensely realistic settings: Soviet-occupied Lithuania and the gang and prostitute culture of New Orleans. Why do you choose to write teen fiction as opposed to adult fiction or even nonfiction?
Writing for teens is an honor and a privilege. Unlike adults, teens don't yet filter material through preconceptions. They experience a character's journey with an unpolluted emotional truth and the stories touch them deeply. Books we read at the age of 12 to 15 years old can have a profound impact on our lives. We carry those books with us forever. That's the audience I want to write for. 

Tell us about the college scholarship contest that’s being sponsored for readers of Out of the Easy.
My amazing agent, Steven Malk, came up with the idea of a scholarship opportunity and essay contest aligned with the themes of the novel. One high school senior will win $5,000 toward tuition at the college of their choice and the sponsoring teacher or librarian will win a shopping spree in the Penguin catalog! The essay question and full rules and an entry form can be found online. 

You’ve gone from being an unknown writer to having a best-selling book that’s been published in 41 countries (and 26 languages!). How does that feel? Can you share any favorite moments from your around-the-world book tour?
It's inexplicably gratifying to know that through the novel, readers in 41 countries are learning about the country of Lithuania and totalitarianism. Through historical fiction, statistics and facts become human and suddenly we care for a nation of people we previously knew nothing about. That's incredible. One of my favorite moments was at a school visit in the Midwest. A boy stood up and said, "Between Shades of Gray is like The Hunger Games, but for real. If you lose to Stalin, you die. And that's really scary."

Indeed, that's very scary.

A survey of Mary E. Pearson’s seven novels to date reveals an interesting trend. Namely, all of her protagonists are the same age: 17.

“That’s true! You’re the only one who’s noticed that and asked about it,” Pearson says in a call from her home in Carlsbad, California. “I just like that age. . . . You’re as old as you can be as a teenager and not considered an adult.”

Plus, she explains, “It might sound weird, but I feel like I had all of my adult sensibilities at 17, my world outlook. Hopefully I’ll always continue to change, and I have been changing, but I do feel like I was pretty much aware of the world then. I think the decisions we make at that age are adult decisions, and they last us a lifetime.”

That’s certainly true of Locke Jenkins, the 17-year-old at the heart of Fox Forever, the third and final installment of Pearson’s Jenna Fox Chronicles.

Readers first became aware of Locke in the first book, The Adoration of Jenna Fox, as one in a tight-knit trio of teens: Jenna, Locke and Kara. In that first volume, Jenna told her story, an astonishing, often disturbing tale—one in which her friends seemingly disappeared under tragic circumstances.

In book two, The Fox Inheritance, Locke recounted what had happened to him and Kara: Like Jenna, their minds were kept alive after a terrible car accident, their only physical form a couple of cubes sitting on a shelf. But unlike Jenna, who awoke after a year, Locke’s and Kara’s minds were kept in a terrifying limbo for 260 years. As they travel to a reunion with Jenna, the two must face a new reality: They’re 17, but also 277—and while their existence arguably represents a triumph of science, it’s also illegal.

Now, in Fox Forever, it’s time for Locke to strike out on his own. He wants to return to Boston, where he’s from, and search for any traces of his family. At Jenna’s urging, he’s adjusting to life as a young man who in many ways is the 17-year-old he appears to be, yet has endured things that have aged him well beyond most people. And most urgently, he needs to repay the help, or Favor, extended to him by an underground resistance group known as the Network . . . an endeavor that will be much more complicated than he anticipates.

The near-future world Pearson has created is carefully constructed and vividly depicted, from the Network to the intricate transportation system to the memorable Bots, who are programmed to be loyal but dare to have their own dreams, too.

Says Pearson, “I grew up watching ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Lost in Space,’ so the idea of something that is really like a robot but has much more humanity to it—this story gave me a chance to explore that. I’m always interested in exploring what makes us human, the differences between humans, is one person more human than another. . . .”

She adds, “Another thing I liked exploring, probably more than anything, is our relationships and how they feed and nurture us. [For some of the characters], there’s probably not any actual genetic connection after so many generations, but now they still need somebody to feel connected to this world. . . . I have to say, I cried like a baby when [certain key characters] met. I like it when a scene makes me cry—this was one of those instances where I felt like I was outside of myself and really watching it happen.”

Pearson also raises questions about science and technology, and whether the benefits of scientific advances outweigh the repercussions. It makes for a heady read, because it leads to larger questions about the effects our choices can have—not just now, but also rippling ahead through time in ways we can’t even imagine.

“I always love how science says one thing, and then a few years later, it’s ‘Maybe this is possible after all,’” Pearson says. “Science is kind of an art, too. There’s always something being discovered and unfolding, and that’s what makes it exciting.”

Pearson also enjoys writing about the near-ish future—just a few hundred years ahead—because some of the things she describes aren’t really that unlikely. “I did a lot of research, like with the colonization of Mars. Scientists are predicting it, and we’re already landing things on Mars, so it’s not so far-fetched that we’ll have people out there by then,” she says. But just in case, she’s glad that the futuristic setting means “No one can ever tell me if I was right or wrong!”

Clearly, her enthusiasm for scientific inquiry has struck a chord, to judge by all the letters she receives from science teachers. “A lot of them are using the Fox series as the literature in their science classrooms, which I think is pretty cool,” she says. “I do love exploring gray areas. The books don’t give answers, I hope, they just raise questions, and I think that’s why they’re using them.”

Pearson is certain, though, that regardless of technology or time period, “there are some things that never change, the things that truly matter.” That notion is physically embodied by the locations Pearson chose for Fox Forever, which begins in California and moves to Boston, where Locke returns for the bulk of the book’s goings-on involving the Network, numerous Bots, political intrigue and new friends and enemies. “It’s a fun thing in a futuristic book to have that old history. In The Adoration of Jenna Fox, the mission . . . in California terms, that’s old, a few hundred years. And that’s one of the things we always try to hold onto—our heritage. Since Boston is the birthplace of our country, it was a great place to have so much of Fox Forever take place.”

Bringing such a complex, thought-provoking, action-packed trilogy to a close was no small task, not least because Pearson initially had no intention of writing a series. In fact, she says, “There was a point in my life when I said I’d never write a series! I always wanted to try something new and challenging, but I realized that, after writing all different kinds of books, writing a series was a challenge.”

Pearson’s experience taking a story through three books and two narrators will smooth the way for her next endeavor: another series, The Remnant Trilogy. Although she can’t share too much about the series, she did reveal that it “explores various histories and how they contradict each other. . . . There’s definitely a romance, too, and it appears to take place in medieval times.”

If the Jenna Fox Chronicles are any indication, the new trilogy is sure to benefit from Pearson’s facility for world-building and character development, not to mention a willingness to embrace her own penchant for the far-out. And yes, for the 17-year-old protagonist—this time, a princess.

After all, she says, “People sometimes think of teenagers as some other kind of being, but they’re adults, just young ones. And ages are arbitrary. . . . Age doesn’t necessarily make you the more wise or knowledgeable person.” Wisely said.

It’s safe to say that readers of all ages would benefit from pondering the big-picture questions Sara Zarr explores in The Lucy Variations: Are you obligated to “use” your talent, or is it all right to simply enjoy it? And what do you do when someone you love makes decisions you abhor?

Thanks to a family that pushes her toward achievement to the exclusion of all else, at age 13 piano prodigy Lucy Beck-Moreau found herself at a crossroads: She could keep buying into the compete-at-all-costs ethos, or just . . . quit. No more competition, no more pressure, no more piano. But after so many years of playing, a life devoid of piano isn’t one she can sustain.

That’s where Zarr introduces us to Lucy: She’s 16 now, a pariah in her own home with plenty of free time to explore her San Francisco hometown, make non-pianist friends and contemplate a future that’s no longer preordained. It’s a revelation to Lucy that there are options beyond the ones she’s been spoon-fed. Flashbacks to her 13th year reveal the circumstances that led her to quit, and in Zarr’s skillful hands, Lucy’s growing awareness becomes a delicious inevitability, as well as an object lesson for readers who aren’t quite comfortable living a life of supposed-tos but don’t know how to make changes.

Zarr herself grew up in a musical family; her parents were both accomplished musicians, and Zarr played clarinet through high school. But her parents never pushed her toward a career in music. In a phone call from Salt Lake City, where she lives with her husband and pet parakeet, she explains, “Lucy’s family couldn’t be more different from mine in that way. My mom was not ambitious, though she is extremely smart and talented. My late father lost his career as a musician and college professor because of his drinking. . . . There was a lot of pain around that. And my mom was just trying to survive. No one pressured me to do anything, and there was never any talk about what I wanted to do when I grew up.”

For a teenage piano prodigy, there is joy when the music stops.

Fortunately for fans of her work—four previous novels, including her debut, 2007 National Book Award finalist Story of a Girl—Zarr found her way to the writing career she believes she was meant to have. Now, with The Lucy Variations, Zarr says she wanted to try new things.

“It was a very different experience to write about a family so driven by tangible success and appearances. Usually I write close-to-middle-class or struggling-middle-class kinds of stories,” she explains. Creating characters with different concerns was a challenge the author welcomed. Also on Zarr’s to-do list: creating a story “about a relationship between a teen girl and an older man that wasn’t about abuse.” She’s done so with Lucy and Will, the charismatic young piano teacher who’s hired to teach Lucy’s younger brother Gus. Will, with his unapologetic appreciation of the beauty in life, becomes a catalyst for Lucy’s new outlook.

Zarr is aware that Lucy and Will’s relationship might make some readers uncomfortable, but she knows from experience that such friendships can be wonderful. “When I was a teen, I got involved in community theater and had a life in the world of adults in my own way. I felt like, I have a place in this world, people like me and respect me, expect me to do a good job, and treat me like an equal. That was really great for me, because I didn’t feel accepted and respected with my peers in that way.”

She adds, “Obviously there’s a line where it is something terrible, and people should be concerned, but there’s a whole range of appropriate behavior and gray area. . . . There is so much fear around it, and I don’t think it’s necessary.”

Ultimately, facing fear in its many forms is at the heart of The Lucy Variations. Because of Lucy’s crisis-induced life changes, her family and friends experience uncertainty, too. Some of them are unwilling to stray from their expected paths; after all, change and choices can be scary, especially when the people around you want to maintain the status quo.

Not unlike her protagonist, the author says she’s thinking about a change in her life. “This is my midlife crisis disguised in this book about Lucy,” Zarr says with a laugh. “I’m definitely at the point of burnout. . . . I intentionally got to the point where I don’t have any pending things that I owe anyone, and I’ll be in that space for a while before I do whatever I’m going to do next.”

Before her hiatus began, Zarr did co-write a novel with Tara Altebrando: Roomies, due out in the fall. “It felt super-easy and fun—it was a complete delight,” she says. And despite her plans to take some time off, Zarr also feels that her writerly life so far has been delightful: “My whole career has been a big surprise—I’m really grateful. . . . It’s a great place to be.” Her readers certainly hope it’s a place she’ll return to when the time is right.

Jennifer Bradbury’s debut novel, Shift, was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and BookPage raved about her second novel, Wrapped, calling it "Pride and Prejudice meets The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles." In 2005 Bradbury lived in India, where she participated in a Fulbright Teaching Exchange. Her experiences there helped provide the inspiration for her new book, A Moment Comes, which is set in India in 1947, in the tumultuous period before partition. BookPage caught up with the versatile author in her office, a converted milking parlor in Burlington, Washington.

A Moment Comes takes place in 1947 in Jalandhar, a city in India near the modern border with Pakistan, just before India was divided into two separate nations. What drew you to this time and place and the challenge of telling a very complex story?

The story started for me when I was teaching in Chandigarh in 2005. Chandigarh was created post-partition to serve as capital of both Punjab and Haryana [two of India’s states] and is full of people with vivid recollections of partition. The friends I made were kind enough to answer my questions and share some of their stories with me, and the more I learned, the more I wanted to know. A few years later, the seeds of the story hadn’t left me, so I began writing the book, trying to find my way to a deeper understanding of the time and place.

Your previous book, Wrapped, was a mystery set in 1815 London. A Moment Comes undertakes very serious political themes. What appeals to you about writing historical fiction, and what led you to tackle a different kind of story with this book?

I love carving a story out of the existing narrative, of filtering the history through characters and a place. Most of all I love the chance to create something that could have happened and simply been forgotten. The act of figuring out that balance is really rewarding for me. And as for why I jumped from an adventure/lark of a book like Wrapped to A Moment Comes, I don’t really have a great answer. It was a little bit of the “do-the-thing-that-scares-you” motivating me, as the subject was difficult and the history huge and the responsibility to be faithful to it daunting. But mostly I was writing the book I wanted to read.

"I can’t pretend to know it all or have all the answers, but young adults know how important both these countries are for so many reasons and always have good questions."

One fascinating aspect of the book is the perspectives of the main characters: Tariq, a Muslim boy; Anupreet, a Sikh girl; and Margaret, an English girl new to India. What inspired you to tell the story from those three particular points of view? Was any character easier or harder to write than the others?

I decided early on that I wanted to try and write the book from those three perspectives in order to try and represent the three major groups that were at work on the partition of India. And I wanted to show the pain and the loss suffered by all sides, as well as try to make sense of why these wounds are still so near the surface even now. Tariq, oddly enough, was easiest to write initially, but then during rewrites with my editor, pulling Margaret’s voice out and having her see and taste and hear India for the reader became really fun and a wonderful way to sort of relive my first impressions of life in the Punjab.

You say in your author’s note that there were very few cartographers working in India at the time of the country’s partition. Why was it important to you to make Margaret’s father a cartographer?

The men working on the boundary award were under an impossible deadline and faced with an equally impossible task, so it was impractical to do much of what Margaret’s father does in the novel. It just seemed the best way to be close to the British Raj without going to the usual suspects of Radcliffe (who drew the actual boundary award) or Mountbatten (the last viceroy).

How did you conduct your research? Was there anything that surprised you as you delved into this time period?

Most of my initial research came from talking to people in the Punjab, even asking the students I was teaching about the history. I was sort of stunned by how little I knew about the roots of the conflicts between Pakistan and India and was very lucky to have people generously share with me. And once I decided to write the novel, I read a couple of books to anchor me in the events—Alex von Tunzelman’s Indian Summer is both immensely readable and painstakingly researched. I was also able to get copies of Margaret Bourke-White’s Life magazine pictorials. She was the field photographer for Life during the time the book takes place, and the images are haunting and powerful. What surprised me most was the scale of the devastation and how relatively forgotten it is in the West. The partition still stands as the greatest human migration in history, and some estimates at the loss of life rise as high as two million. Those staggering numbers, and the fact that more people don’t know about them, still surprise me.

Your descriptions of Margaret’s Western clothes and how ill-suited they are for India’s climate are so palpable readers will feel like sweating along with her. How did you manage to capture the sights, smells and feel of 1947 India?

Probably a lot of that was just my remembering what it was like to move from the Pacific Northwest (we live an hour north of Seattle) to India and the 100-degree temperatures. I quickly discovered the genius of a cool cotton salwar kameez. And when I started writing the story and began researching the clothes Margaret would have been expected to wear, the heat and discomfort became that much more palpable.

As far as how I managed to capture the time period, I just did my best to take what I experienced and try to dial it back several years. And having been to various parts of India made that easier—the architecture and traditions and foods have changed little in many places even though there are mobile phones and a great deal more cars than there were before.

The story leaves the readers with questions, especially about what might happen to Tariq. Are you thinking about writing a sequel?

No. I did want to leave the reader with questions, and I knew I was taking a risk with that, but I was trying to be true to the period. This is a time and place when people were completely lost to each other—either permanently or for extended periods. I spoke with one man who remembers walking out of Pakistan with his family only to become separated from his father. Seven years later, his father found them settled in India after they’d given him up for dead. It was important to me to end the book on that note of uncertainty because of stories like that one.

Tensions between Pakistan and India still exist, of course. How do you speak to American teens about this conflict, and what do you think they should know to have a better grasp of the political and historical context?

I do my best to share what I’ve learned, and I hope the book is a good starting point to develop awareness of the period and the roots of those tensions. I can’t pretend to know it all or have all the answers, but young adults know how important both these countries are for so many reasons and always have good questions.

What are some of your favorite time periods to read about?

I’m all over the place, but I do love the 1940s. Code Name Verity was brilliant.

What are you working on now?

I’m in rewrites on my next book with my editor, Giant’s Coffin. Set in 1838 at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the story starts at the tuberculosis hospital that was established inside the cave. It will be my first middle grade novel, and my first set in my home state of Kentucky.

Matthew Quick may be best known for The Silver Linings Playbook and the Oscar-winning movie it inspired, but he’s never really stopped being a teacher. Writing for teens simply lets him send his intended messages to a wider audience. “If you care about kids,” he says, “teaching is the hardest job in the world.”

In Quick’s new YA novel, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock, Leonard plans to celebrate his 18th birthday by using an old Nazi handgun to kill his former best friend and then himself. But first he has gifts to deliver to the four people who mean the most to him: an elderly neighbor with whom he trades Humphrey Bogart quotes; a classmate whose violin music soothes him; his completely out-of-reach crush; and his Holocaust studies teacher, Herr Silverman, who plays a crucial role as Leonard draws closer to what may be his final act.

Just as Leonard carefully chooses whom to trust with his secrets, Herr Silverman must decide what he’s willing to do to help a student in need. “I really wanted to show that conflict,” Quick says in a call from his Massachusetts home. “When you have to grade 80 five-paragraph essays for kids trying to get into Harvard, and some kid comes to you with some type of crisis and is crying, which do you choose? Do you comfort that kid or do you grade the essays? Or do you comfort the kid and grade the essays and tell your wife you can’t go out that weekend? I wanted to set up that relationship as something that was challenging. When is it time to break down those boundaries, play loose with the rules? How far do you go?”

Helping these students can save their lives, but as Leonard’s favorite teacher learns, it can also create a set of ethical questions without any easy answers.

“You can’t put a price tag on empathy.”

Quick—who left his job as a high school English teacher in New Jersey to pursue an MFA in creative writing—understands that teens want to be on equal footing with their adult teachers while still needing them to be dependable authority figures. Connections between teachers and students matter—and linger. Quick tells an anecdote about a lonely student who once approached him for advice. Quick told the young man, “You don’t know who you’re going to meet in five years. Your best friend could be out there, your life partner could be in some other high school, having all the same issues and the same problems—you don’t know who they are yet, but you’ll meet that person eventually.”

Quick soon forgot about the conversation, but his student didn’t. Eight years later, the former student returned to introduce Quick to his wife and told him, “You were right about that.” Quick was touched. “The things we tell teenagers are powerful,” he says. “They remember.”

So why did Quick leave the classroom for writing? Several reasons, he says, including returning to an earlier passion and “knowing how to find balance.” During his own teen years, Quick was discouraged from pursuing a career in writing, as it was considered “unmanly” in his blue-collar hometown. But Quick found that teaching, counseling, coaching and chaperoning left little time for writing—or anything else. Becoming a full-time author made him feel “fully alive” while also providing for himself and his family.

Leaving teaching was a risk, but one that paid off. Along with The Silver Linings Playbook, Quick is now the author of three books for young adults and the upcoming adult novel The Good Luck of Right Now, set to be published by HarperCollins in 2014. And since the success of The Silver Linings Playbook, he’s found himself with more readers, sales, translations and speaking engagements than he ever expected.

“But that’s not why I write,” Quick emphasizes. Instead, what drives his novels is the idea that everyone—even those who don’t consider themselves bookish types—can benefit from the increased sensitivity that fiction provides. “You can’t put a price tag on empathy,” he says.

Although most of Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock is told from Leonard’s point of view, a series of letters interrupts the narration from time to time. These letters come from a lighthouse on the edge of a post-apocalyptic world. No ships have been seen in decades, but the lighthouse keepers—a man, his wife, their daughter and the man’s father-in-law—faithfully maintain the beam anyway. The significance of the letters, and how they relate to Leonard, becomes clearer as the novel progresses.

“Leonard is damaged, angry—but wonderful,” Quick says. “He’s sending out light. He just wants to be loved, and no one sees it.”

According to Quick, the ambiguity at the heart of this novel was intentional—and any actual resolution irrelevant. Teens “will tend to exaggerate to make their point because nobody’s listening,” Quick says, and this sense of drama can kick into high gear on especially symbolic days, like birthdays. “Leonard has to take it to this crazy height and level to get people to see how much pain he’s in.”

But YA literature allows for unresolved conflicts and open endings just as much as hopeful, happy resolutions. Says Quick, “I don’t think that YA should be required to do anything except make kids think.”

With books like Boy Meets Boy and Will Grayson, Will Grayson (co-authored with John Green), David Levithan has gained a reputation for writing emotionally charged, ultimately positive portrayals of gay teens. In his latest book, Two Boys Kissing, Levithan offers a story that is both very personal and also historical, as it positions today’s gay youth within the historical context of the gay men and boys who came before them. Levithan answered a few questions for BookPage about what inspired him to write this “panorama of queer teen life now.”

You’ve said that there was a real-life event that inspired the story of your characters Harry and Craig, who are attempting to set a world record for longest kiss. Can you tell us a little more about that true story?

Yes! In September 2010, Matty Daley and Bobby Canciello, two teens from New Jersey, broke the world record for longest continuous kiss as a way of drawing attention to inequality. A few weeks later, Matty emailed me to tell me he’d thought of Boy Meets Boy during the 32 ½ hours he and Bobby kissed. I of course had to hear all about it—and that’s when (with Matty’s permission!) the idea for Two Boys Kissing started to take shape.

You also explore a number of other stories in the novel. Were those similarly inspired by real-life situations, or perhaps by stories your young fans have told you?

None of the other stories really tie so tightly to real events. A few days after Matty and Bobby completed their kiss, another New Jersey teen, Tyler Clementi, killed himself. Although I don’t tell Tyler’s story in this book, that juxtaposition of tragedy and triumph is certainly present, and Tyler was very much on my mind.

One of the most striking things about the novel is its unusual narrator(s). Where did you get the idea to narrate the novel in the collective voices of a generation that lost their lives to AIDS?

I have Michael Cart to thank for that. He asked me to write about the current queer generation for an anthology, How Beautiful the Ordinary. In thinking about what I wanted to say, I realized that I hadn’t really written about the generation that came before mine—my uncle’s generation, which was devastated by AIDS. So I wrote the story of the generation before mine talking to the generation after me . . . and the voice stuck with me. So when I realized this book was going to be a panorama of queer teen life now, it made sense to see it from their point of view. I didn’t even realize I was using a Greek chorus until my editor told me I was.

The story you bring up in the afterword about your uncle is a poignant and personal one. How do you view your generation’s connection to the generation of gay men who came before you?

I think we are lucky to be alive. I think we should be grateful for avoiding most of the suffering that came before us, and the most genuine way to express that gratitude is to not forget everything they went through in order for us to be where we are. It already feels like a different world to me, and I can only imagine what it feels like to someone 20 years younger than me.

For today’s young people, the truly frightening beginning of the AIDS epidemic, before the advent of effective treatment, probably feels like ancient history. What would you want today’s gay youth to know about the generation who narrates your novel?

The whole novel is my answer to this question, isn’t it?

Your novels have been celebrated for portraying teen homosexuality as a fact of life rather than as a “problem” to be dealt with. And yet some of the characters in Two Boys Kissing are dealing with pretty big challenges. What hurdles do gay youth stlll face today? Do you see any of these struggles changing any time soon?

You are still facing off against so many societal norms, and that can sometimes (not always, but sometimes) take a toll. And I think that while the advent of the Internet is remarkably liberating in many ways—you no longer feel you’re the only one—in other ways it has fueled a different kind of loneliness. So that needs to be navigated. But, of course, it’s getting better all the times, and as the haters die out, we don’t feel nearly as hated, and the difference will take less of a toll.

Your first YA novel, Boy Meets Boy—which was something of a landmark in YA publishing—celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. How has the publishing landscape changed over the last 10 years, in terms of LGBT characters or themes in books for teens?

I think writers now have a confidence to write as truthfully as they want about these themes and teenagers. There’s much less inner censorship, just as there is less outer censorship (although there still is some of both). LGBT YA lit still needs more diversity, but we’ve come a long way when it comes to both reflecting reality and creating reality.

It’s refreshing for young people coming to terms with their own sexuality to see such a range of fictional versions of themselves in your novels. Were there any books you remember reading as a boy or young man that enabled you to see yourself in that way?

The homage to David Leavitt’s The Lost Language of Cranes in Boy Meets Boy is not accidental. Reading that novel blew my mind when I was in high school—not just because of the gay subject matter, but because he’s such a marvelous writer. That opened many doors to me.

What other (fiction or nonfiction) books or resources would you recommend to young people exploring their sexuality?

The great thing is that there are so many books to choose from—I hardly know where to begin, and any list of authors is going to feel woefully incomplete. So I’ll just say that looking at the ALA’s Rainbow List and the list of Lambda Awards finalists is always a good start in finding quality queer lit for teens.

What’s next for you?

Touring!

There are words for the vampire in nearly every culture: “Vampyr in the Netherlands, upir in the Ukraine, vrykolaka in the Balkan region, penangglan on the Malay Peninsula.” It is a myth so saturated with literature’s many variations, it might seem impossible to add another, yet with her new young adult novel, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black proves that the vampire—and the vampire myth—is still immortal.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown has all the gore and terror of classic vampire fiction but brings the myth into the 21st century. The days of ancient, hidden vampires are over. Vampirism has swept the world like a plague, leaving new vampires to inherit the earth. Walled cities called Coldtowns quarantine new vampires, infected humans and humans desperate to be infected. From inside Coldtowns, streaming video broadcasts the decadent and depraved parties, the gore and the violence to the rest of the world.

A girl named Tana awakes after a vampire attack to find her ex-boyfriend, bitten but not yet turned, trapped in a room with an injured vampire. She decides to drive them both to Coldtown and finds herself sucked in deeper than she ever could have expected.

BookPage caught up with Holly Black at the American Library Association’s annual conference this summer. Sitting in the lobby of her hotel in Chicago, low lighting turning her scarab earrings gold and pink, Black chatted about vampire folklore and her fictional world’s obsession with the beautiful monster.

BookPage: I’m about halfway through, and I have to say, I’m really enjoying it.

Holly Black: Oh, I’m so glad. I had a lot of fun writing it. I really got back to my middle grade, early high school true love of vampires and vampire fiction. My eighth grade research paper was on vampire folklore. I was obsessed, and I had kind of forgotten about all of that stuff, so I got to put all of this stuff I really loved into the book.

It’s obviously influenced by Anne Rice. It’s very much a nod to Interview with the Vampire, especially concerning the relationship between the vampires Lucien and Gavriel, maker and progeny.

[Laughs] I must’ve read that book every night when I was a kid. At night, I would fall asleep reading Interview over and over again.

It’s almost impossible to talk about vampire fiction in YA without mentioning Twilight because it just exploded. But there’s something very sustainable about vampire fiction. It’s been several years since Twilight, and there’s some room again.

You know, I had for a long time thought I would never write a vampire book because there’s so many great vampire books. There’s so many beloved vampire books that it’s this big sort of intimidating genre, and as much as I really loved reading them, I thought, do I have anything to say?

Also, it is hard because it feels like vampires are always in a state where there are so many books that you’d be crazy to write one. Or no one can ever imagine wanting to read a vampire book ever again. And I realized there’s never going to be a time when that wasn’t true. In my life there’s never been a time when vampires weren’t either so big that you couldn’t write one, or so “over” you couldn’t write one. I thought, all right, I’m gonna write the book and see what happens.

You introduce your own version of the mythology, which I think is the hardest part, creating a new story that will mesh well with the established myth. Personally, I think that’s where Twilight ran into some troubles. The sparkly vampire often didn’t sit well with people who have loved the vampire myth their whole lives.

People have very traditional ideas about how vampires work.

Definitely, but you introduce the idea of going “Cold.” When a vampire bites a person, that human becomes “Cold” and has 88 days to sweat out the infection. If they drink human blood during those 88 days, they become a vampire. It allows the ability to come back from the brink of death.

I think it’s different, but I think it has a relationship to some vampire stories we’re familiar with. If we look at Dracula, for instance, there’s a whole period where Dracula comes in and harasses Mina and Lucy in the night, biting them and also feeding them his blood. They are in a liminal state that you could say is an “infected” state, where they’re susceptible to him, where he can influence their minds. It’s not the same as being infected in The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, but it has . . . some folkloric precedent.

“Vampires are kind of our best and worst selves. They’re ourselves eternally young, living forever with all the potential knowledge, all the potential strength, power.”

I think it also makes it more possible for that sustainable worldwide vampire state that you were trying to achieve.

I think the idea that you didn’t have to taste the vampire’s blood to become infected was the reason why you can have basically a plague narrative. This is a plague narrative. We are overrun. It’s really hard to halt it because when you have new humans being infected and then becoming vampires, not knowing how to prevent themselves from spreading the infection further, you have a problem. You have your sort of old school, original vampires doing pretty well at keeping infection from breaking out, but now you have no control at all over what’s happening with these idiot new vampires. It’s like, “Vampires these days! God!”

What was it like going back to your roots and getting in touch with a former self?

I sat down and reread all of the old books that I had loved. I reread Tanith Lee’s Sabella. I reread Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls and all the Sonja Blue books and the original, the first two Anne Rice books to try and remember what this stuff was really like, how much of my memory was close to what it really was, and so that was part of what I did. Then I just tried to think, what are the parts I really love? I think infection is a big part of ‘90s vampire fiction, the fear of infection.

There is a very established literature surrounding the vampire myth, but YA in particular has really latched onto it. Why do you think that is?

There’s something about the vampire that really catches us. I think part of it is the way vampires are kind of our best and worst selves. They’re ourselves eternally young, living forever with all the potential knowledge, all the potential strength, power, fabulousness, good clothes. They’re also our most horrible selves, our most base, our most bloodthirsty, our most cruel. I think in that juxtaposition we find endless amounts of stories.

With vampire folklore, we start out with the vampire as a villain, as the creature we fight, the truly terrifying thing, closer to a zombie. In our current incarnation, we have embraced the vampire and brought them from antagonist to protagonist over the course of our literature. But it’s a cycle. You can put them right back to antagonist, and then you can have your antihero, and then you can go to protagonist again, and I think that cycle too keeps us really interested.

It’s also more complex than just your typical monster. There’s an intelligence to the vampire.

We think of the vampire as our most sophisticated monster. They’re our aristocracy of monsters. We think of werewolves as our blue-collar monsters. [Laughs] I’m not sure why. We have set up the vampire as our aristocrat. Our ruling class. I think there is something to that—the elegance versus the real crudeness of what they’re doing, which is, you know, drinking blood.

There’s a great moment in The Coldest Girl in Coldtown when Tana is on her way to Coldtown with her infected ex-boyfriend and the vampire Gavriel. They stop at the Dead Last Rest Stop and meet an elderly lady headed into Coldtown, a migration typically dominated by teenagers. The old lady says, “What? You think dying is just for the young?” Throughout the book, the obsession with death does seem reserved for the young.

I feel like there is a spirituality to being a young person and trying to figure out how the world works, not just the seen world but the unseen world. I feel like as I’ve gotten older, I’m much more obsessed with the day-to-day. I remember really being fascinated with mysteries of the universe and thinking that perhaps there was a way that things could become knowable.

There’s also something about teenagers that makes it so easy to obsess.

The things I loved when I was younger, I have loved more than anything. They meant more to me. And I think it was, at least for me, because I was defining myself at that point. I was learning what I liked, and by learning what I liked, I was learning who I was. And maybe that’s also why it was important for me to think about the mysteries of the universe, because if I figured out what I believed, I figured out who I was.

The kids in this book are defining themselves by being obsessed with death, which is such a dangerous obsession. With this book, you’re exploring how far that obsession can go. There is a point of no return.

I was thinking a lot about reality television and a lot about the way that we both blog and livestream, and I was thinking about how bad things often are the things that get people famous. People are often famous for the truly embarrassing thing that happened to them online, or that truly terrible thing that someone recorded them doing. [It’s interesting how we] tune in to that, and we experience . . . a mixture of envy—like, look, this person is out there, they are doing this thing, they are experiencing life, they are doing whatever—and also, “Haha! Look! A terrible thing has happened to them.” And it’s sort of the balance between our desire to experience something like that and our feeling that we would make it—cause they sure didn’t. It’s part of the pleasure of watching, and I thought it would be interesting to have it writ larger and darker.

You definitely took it to an extreme. You put death on reality television.

You’re watching it and you’re going, “Wow I hope they make it, and I sort of hope they don’t.”

Put yourself in your book. What would you do if this happened to the world?

I would like to say that I was not the person that would watch this on livefeeds, but I’m sure I would.

Would you go to Coldtown?

No. No, I’m old. [Laughs]

Would your younger self go to Coldtown?

Probably. The desire for something to happen and something to change is, to me, the defining thing I remember about being a teenager, just wanting something to happen. Anything happening would’ve been better than the nothing happening that I felt like was omnipresent in my life.

Is this a book you’ve been waiting to write?

This is a book I never knew I wanted to write until I started writing it. It’s funny, because I started writing it, and my husband—who’s known me since I was pretty young—said, “You know, I always thought you were going to write a vampire book.” I didn’t! I didn’t know. But it was a ton of fun.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Coldest Girl in Coldtown.

Most YA writers wouldn’t describe a story about Somali pirates as a “fairy tale.” But Printz Award-winning author Nick Lake is not most YA writers.

In Lake’s new novel, Hostage Three (available November 12), 17-year-old Amy has just failed out of high school when she reluctantly agrees to join her banking executive father and new stepmother on a yacht cruise around the world. Her father plans to use the cruise as a way to break the cycle of bad decisions that have plagued Amy since her mother’s recent suicide. But when the yacht is boarded by Somali pirates—including one young and magnetically attractive boy—their pleasure trip takes an unexpected turn.

“I dreamed the plot,” Lake tells BookPage from his home in Oxford, England. “I don’t know why Somali pirates were rattling around in my subconscious.”

After listening to a radio documentary about Somali pirates, Lake was struck by the program’s focus on wealthy shipping firms, rather than on what would drive young Somali men into seizing seagoing vessels in the first place. “You’ve got a group of people who live in a place where there’s virtually no government, virtually no law and order, and virtually no other opportunities,” Lake says. “To me it would almost seem surprising if you were an 18-year-old man who lived on the Somali coast and you didn’t get into piracy.”

Lake’s long-standing interest in cultural globalization also contributed to his choice of topic. “I think there’s something very interesting about a group of people who are using the tools and the technology of Western business but turning them against Western business,” he says. For example, after boarding the yacht, the pirates in Hostage Three use cell phones to record a video of their conquest, which they then upload via satellite link.

So what makes Hostage Three a “fairy tale”?

“The stepmother angle,” Lake explains. “In a sense that’s really what the story is about—Amy reconciling herself with a new family.” The pirates and the action are essentially just the means to an end.

Hostage Three is Lake’s second literary thriller, after his 2013 Printz winner In Darkness, which is set in Haiti. His first books, the Blood Ninja trilogy, “didn’t come from inspiration”—instead, these tales of vampire ninjas were designed specifically to appeal to boys who wanted books like Twilight, only with more action. While Lake enjoyed this project, he reached a point where he wanted to explore new directions.

“I was probably finding my voice,” Lake muses. “The third person [point of view] didn’t quite work for me. As soon as I clicked into doing the first person in In Darkness, I thought, ‘This is what I should be doing.’ ” His agent agreed, saying, “I think you need to stop looking at the market and write something that comes from inside.”

Even when he’s actively eschewing a market perspective, Lake—who is also publishing director at Harper­Collins Children’s Books U.K.—brings considerable knowledge of children’s publishing to his writing. “Helping other people to shape and fashion stories kind of was an intensive creative writing course,” he says. “It did mean I was hugely aware of what’s out there and what other people are writing.”

The roles of writer and editor are different in some ways—“If you’re an editor, what you’re trying to do is be a loud hailer [megaphone] for the author’s voice”—but both are, to Lake, “an extension of the same thing, which is tinkering and playing around with stories.”

When asked if he ever considers giving up editing to write full time, Lake says absolutely not. “If you’re someone who loves books, I don’t think there’s much that’s more fulfilling and satisfying than working with someone on a story and getting it to where it can be the best expression of what the author really wants it to achieve. And also, you never know what’s going to come across your desk next. You never know when the next amazing thing is going to come in.”

Writing and editing young adult literature in particular resonates deeply with Lake. “So much of YA literature is about going from being one thing to being another. A lot of fiction for younger children is based around a more literal kind of quest narrative, but I think in YA literature the ‘quest’ is more about self-understanding and acceptance.”

This quest often comes with a message for teens, and Hostage Three certainly does. “At some point, something is going to come along and break you into pieces. But actually you can put yourself back together,” Lake says. “I’ve always found it interesting when people view In Darkness and Hostage Three as very dark, depressing books, because I very consciously wanted them to have that kind of feeling of hope and redemption and positivity. You’re put through hardship and deprivation, but then in the end, you achieve your quest.”

Julie Berry has entranced middle grade readers with her romantic fantasies, The Amaranth Enchantment and Secondhand Charm, and thrilled them with the hilarious adventures in her Slurch Academy for Disruptive Boys series. So it should be no surprise that her new novel for teen readers, All the Truth That’s in Me, surpasses the highest expectations.

The story of Judith, a teen girl tormented by memories of a murder and a silence she cannot break, is difficult to read at times. Berry creates a nearly primitive village, ruled by religious fervor and violence, yet Judith’s voice is lovely as she reveals her story, addressing the boy she has loved her entire life. The bleak setting only emphasizes the purity of Judith’s love. It’s a story that will stay with readers long past the final page.

Julie Berry answered some questions for BookPage about the origins of Judith’s character and how Berry herself became a writer.

There are so many remarkable qualities that make All the Truth That’s in Me unique, and the force that pulls it altogether is Judith’s voice, raw and uncensored. She tells her story in second person, which is hard to do convincingly. Where did her voice come from, and why did you decide to structure the narration this way?

All the Truth That’s in Me began as a writing exercise. I never had the idea to write about a character like Judith, or one with her problems. I simply asked myself, one day, if I could write a second-person novel, or even part of one. I flipped open my laptop, had a bit of a think and began to write. “You didn’t come,” the first line, is all I had to go on when I started typing. Judith appeared and took over, conjuring a scene that revealed to me her longing, her isolation, her pattern of skirting notice and flouting her mother’s rules to snatch glimpses of the thing she desperately wanted, but couldn’t have: Lucas. I couldn’t believe the treasure I’d stumbled upon when she visited my impromptu writing exercise. Judith, to me, is self-existent, and her voice is distinctly her own. It’s certainly not mine. Her story is told in second person because that’s how she wanted to tell it; the fact that her narration, like everything else about her, points insistently to Lucas when we first meet her, is something beyond her control.

The setting in the story is not specified beyond the name of the settlement: Roswell Station. Why not? Did you have a real place in mind as you wrote the story? (Any relation to Roswell, New Mexico?)

I’m embarrassed to admit that Roswell, New Mexico, never once crossed my mind. I get a giggle out of the association every time I see someone raise the question online. Roswell is a solid old Anglo name, and that’s what I went for. The world Judith inhabits, and her particular community within that world, are very loosely inspired by the dynamics that led to the formation of the British colonies in North America. I wanted a world readers would recognize as resembling our Puritan heritage, and I needed a small community perched on the unstable border between two worlds—civilization (the motherland) and emptiness, wilderness and sea. I shaped the kind of world Judith’s story needed, but I was determined to paint it only loosely, impressionistically, because I did not want real places or real chronologies (in other words, capital-H History) to overshadow the story that very much belonged to one girl.

"Much of literature explores this question of whether it is possible to find ourselves happily ever after, alone together."

The narrative is non-linear, almost mystical in its wandering nature through Judith’s past and present. How did the story evolve into this shape? Why do you think this unconventional structure works for this story?

The order of details in the book wasn’t the result of any kind of architecture or planning. It’s how I wrote the piece, or as I think of it, how Judith revealed her life to me. I made almost no changes to the order of sections. It works in the way it does because it’s organic, I think, to her consciousness. I’ve come to see that despite the meandering timeline, there is a logical flow to the order of chapters. Details from the present and from several layers in Judith’s past weave together in the stream of her consciousness, following the associative leaps Judith makes as she goes through her day. If it’s working, I believe it’s because Judith’s experiences have fractured her life, so it follows that her experience of the world would likewise be fractured, leaping from past to present to try to make sense of senselessness.

Why did you decide to silence Judith? And why in such a violent way?

Judith showed up silenced. In fact, “silenced” and “obsessed” were all I knew about her after I wrote the first page. I didn’t yet know why. As for the violent way Judith’s speech was stolen, it was clear from the start that when she said she was “forbidden from telling,” nothing short of an absolute, permanent and physical silencing had taken place, an act which had to come from savagery. Her silence was not built solely on fear or trauma, though those elements were also present. For most of us, these muzzles can be more than enough.

Of the many emotionally charged scenes in the book, perhaps the most intense is when Judith returns home, mutilated, and is rejected by her mother. Your portrayal of the mother’s cycle through joy, horror and revulsion is particularly vivid. Was this difficult to write?

Not difficult creatively, but painful emotionally, without question. I could see it, smell it, feel it, so rendering it in prose wasn’t unusually hard, but feeling for Judith—and for her mother—was heartbreaking.

Judith is isolated through her muteness, and the town of Roswell Station is isolated as well. In Roswell Station, this isolation contributes to the inhabitants’ ability to practice their own interpretation of the Bible. Why is isolationism such an important part of this story?

As I wrote the story, I felt rather than understood the kind of world Judith needed to inhabit. Since writing it, though, I’ve come to see Roswell Station as a mirror into Judith’s psyche. Like her, Roswell Station is young, newly formed, struggling to cohere and uneasy in its place in the world. It has only barely weathered catastrophes that ought to have crushed it, yet it proves its resilience surprisingly. It is, as you say, singularly alone, cut off and at war with its motherland, with only the most tenuous links to neighboring villages that might offer support. Tweak this description slightly, and we can apply it to Judith herself.

Aloneness is a recurring theme in young adult literature. Sometimes, like the Puritans, we want to be alone, whether to escape society for its impositions, or flee Babylon for its excesses, so we can live life on our terms. Sometimes we are alone in crowds when we very much wish to be otherwise. Young people, and the not-so-young, navigate between their solitary and communal natures, and much of literature explores this question of whether it is possible to find ourselves happily ever after, alone together.

YA fiction right now is full of hyper-violence and teens thrown into the worst situations imaginable. Why do you think that is? How do you see your book contributing to the genre?

Well, peril and violence make for good drama, which makes for good reading, so that’s probably where it starts. Also, as film technology advances, high-concept action-film narratives become more popular and convincing, and this shapes the tastes of young readers. These stories are much more in the zeitgeist today than they were when I was a teen.

More to the point, fiction dramatizes, outwardly, conflicts that are more internal, more subtle and less visible, and the young adult years are replete with turbulence on every front: social, parental, emotional, romantic, biochemical. Violence serves to simplify and polarize a conflict—now we no longer wonder whom the enemy is, nor what the appropriate way is to engage in battle with them. So I’m especially interested in the young adult literature that subverts that sense of certainty, and complicates the polarity of good and evil, even amid violent struggles.

That said, I never thought of myself as writing a violent story when I wrote All the Truth That’s in Me. It’s all there, I know—war, assault, captivity, mutilation—so it’s probably laughable that I didn’t see it that way, but I really felt myself to be writing a very intimate, private, interior type of novel. The violent elements I listed are there, but they’re not, in the end, what Judith’s story is really all about.

You grew up in a family of book lovers. Do you think that influenced your desire to write? What’s one book you read as a child that has stayed with you?

Growing up in a houseful of book lovers made me desperate to read. I couldn’t bear to be left out of something so important to my sibs. Writing was a natural byproduct, I think, just as people who seriously love food inevitably figure out how to cook. I was the youngest of a brood much older than me, so they discussed Anna Karenina as I struggled through The Secret Garden (long before I was ready for it, in typical over-reaching youngest-kid fashion).

Our family owned a small but well-curated library of children’s classics, and I re-read them obsessively. They all shaped me, but I do remember one book I read for the first time at 12, one which left me both swooning and vowing that I would someday, somehow write a book that made others feel the way I felt. That book was Beauty by Robin McKinley.

What would your teenage self think of the books you’re writing now?

My teenage self would be flabbergasted that I actually managed to write and finish a book, any book, since her writing attempts all floundered on very short, very bad stories. I think she might be distracted from the novel itself by her desperate curiosity to know who this Berry guy might turn out to be (and oh, what a treat lay in store!). We’d have to withhold from her the truth that I am she so as not to warp the space-time continuum. I do hope she’d love my books, and I think she would, since she’s the girl I try to write for, and I write from both her memories and the books she loved.

What’s the best thing about being a YA author?

The writing itself is my favorite thing about being an author. Making a new story is the happiest part of my job. The challenge is to make sure that I don’t let other parts of the job (travel, promotion, teaching, business management, correspondence) eclipse writing in my nutty schedule.

The freedom to write is a gift. I’m grateful every day that I was raised and educated in such a way that writing became an option for me. I’m lucky to have a family that encourages my writing, and I’m lucky to live in a place and time where education, libraries, affordable computers and ubiquitous Internet access remove any real barriers I might face. Regardless of what the market may do, no one can take writing away from me. That feels like freedom to live the life I want to live, and I’m grateful.

What’s next for you?

I have a couple of projects for several age levels at various stages of exploration and play, and I’m working on a new YA novel for Viking that I’m very excited about. Details will be announced very soon.