Ashleigh Walker has a great best friend and a cute new boyfriend, but the rest of her life is a mess. Falling behind in school and dealing with her parents’ messy divorce leave her feeling stranded—until she’s unexpectedly rescued by a cool new English teacher. Miss Murray is young, smart, reads aloud poems with dirty words in them and seems to really see Ash at a time when she’s feeling especially isolated. In Read Me Like a Book, things get complicated when Ash’s admiration turns into head-over-heels first love, forcing her to reconsider who she is and what she really wants.

British author Liz Kessler, best known for her Emily Windsnap series for middle grade readers, first wrote Read Me Like a Book more than 10 years ago. At that time, U.K. law Section 28 prohibited the distribution of books that promoted a homosexual lifestyle, particularly in a school setting, and so Kessler set the manuscript aside. Years later, Kessler's first YA book is finally being published. We asked the author a few questions about love, coming out and literature.

What does it mean to you that this book is finally being published?
It’s almost hard to put into words. It means kind of everything. It means that the world has moved on; it means that people are more accepting of difference; it means the YA book world is FANTASTIC; it means celebration, communication and openness; it means I am talking to young people directly from my heart and telling them that they can be happy to be who they are. Like I said, pretty much everything!

I like that you make it very clear this story isn’t about you. That being the case, why did you want to write a teen coming-out story?
Well, it was the first book that I wrote, and whilst it isn’t any more my story than any of my other books, it was strongly influenced by my thoughts about coming out myself. I wanted to write something that told a story I wanted to tell. I wanted to put a story about coming out into the world. I guess underneath that, I am sharing themes and messages that are in pretty much all of my books: be true to yourself; be good to your friends and your family; be brave; accept difference. I suppose these are the things that are in my heart, and whether I’m writing about mermaids or fairies or emerging lesbians, they seem to be the messages that my heart keeps wanting to share!

While it’s not without a bittersweet moment or two, I love that Ash’s coming out is generally a happy occasion; the few YA novels available in my youth were not that way at all. Was it a deliberate choice to keep things gentle? If so, why?
Sort of. I’m not a writer who sets out to shock or upset. In my books (and in my life) I like resolution, I like endings that feel at least full of hope and promise. In my youth, I remember that in the few books with LGBT characters that were around, many of them were quite depressing or negative in some way—and I very much wanted to go against that. I wanted this book to be as much a celebration of identity and difference as anything else. 

As Ash moves closer to being honest about who she is, she moves away from an old friend who’s a bit wild toward a new one who is slightly nerdy (no disrespect, Robyn!). Do you think some people still equate a coming-out journey with movement in the opposite direction—moving toward wildness? Did you intentionally subvert that model?
Gosh. Interesting question. I’d like to act all intellectual and say, “Oh yes, sure I intentionally did that.” But I didn’t! If anything, I think what I was doing was showing that Ash was moving towards a deeper understanding of herself instead of always acting out the stuff on the outside. And that when she did this, as well as uncovering her sexuality, what she also found inside was someone who had more honest dreams and ambitions than she’d let herself admit to previously.

Ash is adjusting to a lot of new normals: preparing for university and also dealing with her parents’ break-up. Does that tension heighten her attraction to Miss Murray?
In some ways, yes, these things heighten her attraction because Miss Murray becomes almost like a beacon of positive light in Ash’s life, when everything else seems to be falling apart. It’s not that she wouldn’t feel the attraction without the other issues that are going on in her life—but because of them, the contrast between the bad and good sides of her life is made stronger, and so this does intensify her feelings.

Miss Murray gets the class’ attention when she reads a poem with the F-word in it; I had a substitute in elementary school who did the same thing with a history lesson, and it’s such a big deal when it happens! Why does that make such a strong impression on kids?
I think we all like things that feel a bit naughty, especially if they come from someone in authority who we think shouldn’t say those words. It can be like a bridge between the world of the grown-ups and the world of the young people. Sometimes, though, it can backfire. Young people are not stupid and can quite often spot the adult who uses this kind of thing as a clumsy attempt to say, “Hi kids, I’m just like you and I’m cool,” when it’s not genuine. But as well as this, it’s about breaking down barriers—and this is part of why Miss Murray caught Ash’s attention more than any other teacher had done before.

There’s a very awkward sex scene between Ash and Dylan in the book, after which their relationship gradually falls apart. But they manage to maintain a friendship. How important was that to the story?
It was very important to me that Dylan wasn’t seen as a bad guy, so keeping a decent line of communication between them was enormously important. I didn’t want to run the risk of it looking like I was saying that Ash had a bad experience with a boy so she chose girls instead. It was very important to me to make it clear that this wasn’t a choice to reject boys; it was a positive choice and realization that she actively wanted girls!

I’m a grown woman who found herself a bit intimidated by these girls going out to the pub and knocking back a few, which only adds to my lifelong suspicion that the English are just cooler and I’d better get used to it. Can you confirm this? 🙂
Ha! I don’t know if we’re cooler, but yes, social drinking amongst older teenagers seems to be a much more common part of life over here than it is across your side of the pond!

What’s next?
I’ve just finished working on my second YA novel, Haunt Me. It’s out in October in the U.K. and I think 2017 in the States. It’s a ghostly love triangle, and I’m really excited about it!

Brendan Kiely has spent a lot of time on the road. At 19, he went in search of love (and got turned down) on an epic road trip with his buddy Ted (who also got turned down). In college, he participated in a Freedom Summer re-enactment that stretched from Oxford, Ohio, to Oxford, Mississippi. His own parents practically sent him away to “go find the real America.”

“Young people, especially teens, are so eager to get the hell away from home,” Kiely says, laughing, in a call to his home in Greenwich Village. “I certainly was, and I needed to get out.”

So it makes sense that when I ask about the title of his new book, The Last True Love Story, his answer boils down to, “There is no love story. There’s the journey.” Love is not something you find, he explains. It’s something you create or discover when you’re on your own.

Kiely frequently draws his stories from some of the most intimidating, hot-button issues in today’s headlines, tragedies that are sometimes easier to ignore than to acknowledge, let alone fix. In 2014, Kiely hit hard with his young adult debut, The Gospel of Winter, about a teen boy who’s betrayed and abused by the local priest. He took on another controversial subject with All American Boys (2015), his Coretta Scott King Honor-winning collaboration with Jason Reynolds about race and police brutality. His forthcoming fourth novel, You Keep the Sky from Falling (2017), stars three teens whose friendships are threatened by a dangerous school tradition that encourages date rape. To Kiely, writing is an act of social engagement, but he always moves beyond the headlines to honor the people behind the events.

While Kiely’s third novel, The Last True Love Story, addresses some issues of race and sexism, it’s primarily concerned with the one thing we hope will save us: love. “It’s a book about family love, first love and trying to make love last forever,” Kiely says. And as the three characters at its heart make this epic road trip together, they learn how to love themselves, too.

Readers meet 17-year-old Teddy Hendrix somewhere west of Albuquerque, stranded in the desert with a flat tire. It’s a hopeless moment: He and a girl named Corinna are partway through a runaway odyssey. They’re smuggling Hendrix’s grandfather, Gpa, who has Alzheimer’s, from his assisted living facility in Los Angeles to take him to his former home in Ithaca, New York, one last time.

Readers then flash back to where it all began, in L.A., where Gpa’s eyes glaze over more and more often, Hendrix’s mother is always absent and working, and just-graduated, guitar-playing Corinna is looking for an escape. So they steal Hendrix’s mom’s car and head east. “They’re getting out of the city of dreams,” Kiely says, “and they’re heading out to find themselves and find ‘real’ love, as opposed to the dream version of it.”

Throughout this trip, Hendrix adds entries to the Hendrix Family Book (HFB), transcribing stories from his grandfather’s life in an effort to uphold his promise to never let Gpa forget his late wife, Betty. But the HFB is also a way for Hendrix to make sense of what love is, how it works and how to hold onto it. He’s also looking for some much-needed answers about his father, who died years ago after leaving Hendrix’s mom for another woman.

“As a teacher, I would often hear students . . . talk about their family legend with this reverence, and in some ways it was their personal mythology,” says Kiely, who taught high school English for 10 years before quitting to write full time. “I think Hendrix is searching for those family stories to give himself a foundation. . . . He’s lost, and he’s looking for the stories of his family to ground him.”

Of course, no road trip is complete without a soundtrack, and fierce Corinna provides the perfect playlist. Corinna may be strong and cool, but she’s also broken down by the fact that her white parents, who adopted her from Guatemala, refuse to be honest about race in any real way. “She plays bands with strong female vocalists, bands that are diverse,” Kiely explains. “I think that music is an empowerment tool throughout the whole book.”

Music empowers Gpa as well, providing a lifeline to his memories. Music is such an effortless language for Corinna that she’s able to anchor Gpa to reality through classic rock ’n’ roll of the Vietnam and post-Vietnam era—music originally introduced to him by Betty.

Little does Corinna know that this connection dovetails with real-life research into music therapy and Alzheimer’s. “Music is used as a salve,” Kiely says. “If you play a particular song for them—often it might be a church hymn—they tap back into memories and are ‘more alive.’ The memory of music resides in a different part of the brain than our long-term memory.”

The Last True Love Story is dedicated to Kiely’s grandmother, who for years hid from her large Irish family that Kiely’s grandfather had Alzheimer’s. When she couldn’t hide it anymore, Kiely, his grandmother, grandfather and uncle traveled to Ireland to find the family farm, from which Kiely’s great-grandparents emigrated. “It was a romantic idea and full of good intentions,” Kiely says, “but as you can imagine, it was not the smartest idea, and there were certainly moments that were very disorienting for him. I remember those very clearly, but I was grateful to be a part of it.”

In the United States alone, there are approximately 5 million people with Alzheimer’s. And as Kiely points out, if there are 5 million afflicted, think of how many family members are affected. “I wanted to write this book for all of the young people who have family members [with Alzheimer’s], who have to grapple with this, and remind everybody that even though someone has a disease like this, there’s still a lot we can learn from them.”

This article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Excuses. Excuses. Excuses. For many of us, they are the cause of frustration, but to 14-year teaching veteran and acclaimed author Jordan Sonnenblick, they are also the inspiration for his new young adult novel, Notes from the Midnight Driver.

Sonnenblick, a fifth-grade teacher in rural Pennsylvania, faced a flood of excuses after his class acted up for a substitute teacher. He was absent from the classroom for only one day, but that was enough for the substitute filling in for him and she left him a note saying so. "It was like her last note before she became overrun with the insurgency," recalls Sonnenblick, who was livid about the incident. "I felt so taken advantage of, and when I confronted the students about it, they just rolled their eyes."

So to make up for their misbehavior, he made each of them write a note of apology to their parents. Sonnenblick thought that exercise would be the end of it, but when he read the students' letters, he was appalled. "They were flippant, self-serving, non-responsible, blaming notes so much so that I couldn't even send them to the parents." A few days later, after his frustration had passed, Sonnenblick decided that this would be a great concept for a book. "It was my way of dealing with the stress of the kids having really made me mad, and once they heard the story, they completely realized it was their stuff."

Notes from the Midnight Driver follows a teenager, Alex, in the midst of his parent's breakup, who gets drunk on his dad's vodka, steals his mom's car, mortally wounds a lawn gnome and then blames everyone but himself for his behavior. Although the plot deals with divorce, drunk driving, estranged families and, ultimately, death, it is more a story of the narrator's growth from excuse-making boy to responsible young man.

"I don't think it pounds you over the head as a message book," Sonnenblick says, "but I needed it to be serious enough for the kids to get it." While the concept of excuse-making is deliberately drawn from the episode on that fateful day in the classroom, the characters themselves are drawn from Sonnenblick's own life. The main character, Alex, is fashioned after the author himself. Alex's best friend, Laurie, is a compilation of some of his students. And Sol, the crotchety old man Alex befriends, is based on Sonnenblick's wonderfully outspoken grandfather.

In a strange twist of fate, the author had received a call only hours after he decided to write the book, telling him that his grandfather was sick in a Florida hospital. Sonnenblick flew down to be by his side and when he arrived, his grandfather was sitting up in bed, belting out songs in Yiddish and making the nurses laugh. "I felt like it was a sign that he had to be in the book, and I had to write it," the author says.

This isn't the first time Sonnenblick knew he had to write something. His first book for young readers, Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie, was similarly inspired. "I had a student whose little brother had cancer," Sonnenblick says. During a parent-teacher conference, "I carelessly mentioned to the mother that her daughter seemed to be handling things very well. The mom replied, 'No. She's not. She's hiding it,'" remembers the author, who was mortified at his misunderstanding.

To make up for his mistake, Sonnenblick offered to find a book for the student that would help her cope with the ordeal. After quite a bit of research, he came up empty-handed. "I couldn't find a book to help her, so I decided to write one." Ten short weeks later, Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie was born. Getting that first book published however, proved to be a much more lengthy and difficult process. Initially, Sonnenblick signed with DayBue Publishing, which went out of business just four days after Drums was released. In the midst of that difficulty, Sonnenblick was hit with worse news: The brother of the child who inspired the book relapsed and died three weeks before the book came out. "It was bittersweet," Sonnenblick says. "I was excited for the book to be published, but it was too late to help the kid for whom I had written the book."

It wasn't too late for others, however. Since the publisher was going out of business anyway, Sonnenblick convinced the company to donate 4,000 copies to SuperSibs, a charity organization that supports siblings of cancer patients. "The swan song was to get it to those kids who really needed it," says Sonnenblick. After a bit more publishing turmoil, some lucky connections and a weird series of coincidences, Drums was picked up by Scholastic Press and reprinted. It received numerous honors, among them a nomination for ALA's Best Book for Young Adults 2005, a BookSense Pick for Teens and loads of great reviews.

Sonnenblick, who has continued to write a book a year since Drums in 2002, is taking a hiatus from the classroom this fall, but he says he has a good excuse to return to teaching middle school one day. "I love the ironic reaction I get from people: They are glad that I am doing it, but they think I'm a little nuts." And that's an excuse he can live with.

Heartless is the stuff of dreams, but not always happy ones.

In her bestselling Lunar Chronicles series, Marissa Meyer enthralled fans with super-cool sci-fi takes on Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Snow White. In Heartless, she turns her attention to a fairy-tale character who, in our popular imagination, isn’t considered as goodhearted as her fantastical peers—because her catchphrase is, “Off with their heads!”

The urge to figure out why someone behaves a certain way, especially when their actions seem inexplicably rude (or murderous), is not uncommon—so readers who delight in psychological analysis will love Heartless, Meyer’s first standalone young adult novel. It’s a backstory for the Queen of Hearts that has a little bit of everything: adventure, romance, familial strife, betrayal, terrifying monsters . . . plus the Hatter and the Caterpillar, among other beloved Lewis Carroll characters.

Heartless begins with our heroine (and eventual anti-heroine), Catherine, called Cath, baking scrumptious lemon tarts and commiserating with her gossipy friend, the Cheshire Cat. She secretly dreams of opening a bakery with her friend Mary Ann, one of the maids who works for Cath’s parents. 

Alas, Cath doesn’t realize just how strongly her parents will object to her becoming a business owner; they’re set on urging her into a romance with the foolish King, and Cath’s happiness is secondary, if that. As Meyer pulls readers further and further into Cath’s life, with its opulent clothing and fancy balls, magical vegetables and dancing lobsters, it becomes clear that the Kingdom of Hearts is a special, wondrous place—and that Cath is too naive, at first, to fully grasp her parents’ expectations or the risks she’d have to take if she wants to forge her own path.

“In telling Cath’s story, I wanted there to be a series of things going on in her life that would constantly push her down the pathway to becoming Queen of Hearts,” Meyer says in a call to her home in Washington state. “Everything becomes the perfect storm pushing her toward making these decisions. . . . At that age, we’re all trying to figure out who we are and what we’re trying to become, pushing against boundaries, trying to find that independence.”

Heartless is the stuff of dreams, but not always happy ones: There are plenty of nightmarish and danger-filled goings-on, just like in Carroll’s wacky and weird Wonderland (the Jabberwock makes its terrifying presence known, too).

When it comes to characters, Meyer says she “didn’t have a whole lot of trepidation” about pulling from Carroll’s stories, because “when you mention the Mad Hatter or White Rabbit, people know them, but nevertheless there’s very little information about them. So there was a lot of room to grow and explore, and give my own view and twist on them . . . to pay homage to and not go against them, but still take them and make them my own.”

One aspect of Carroll’s work did give Meyer a bit of pause: “I really wanted to respect the vibe . . . and his brilliant word work, turns of phrases, clever little jokes throughout the book,” she says. “I don’t consider myself a master wordsmith, so it was a challenge for me in writing this book.” This led to a lot of research, including multiple readings of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (three times) and Through the Looking Glass (twice), plus researching scholarly papers.

Naturally, Meyer also considers Gregory Maguire’s Wicked to be highly influential in the creation of Cath’s story. “I felt like the doors were open to take a villain so infamous and well known in our culture and turn her on her head, go back into her past and look at it, to figure out how she became the character we see in Alice in Wonderland.”

Though many writers begin writing stories later in life, the 32-year-old has always known this is what she wanted to do. Meyer has two degrees in writing, wrote copious fan fiction during her teen years and attempted her first novel at 16. “It was my dream from the start,” she says. In many ways, Heartless is a masterful, magical culmination of Meyer’s lifelong love of fairy tales—and not just the pretty, happy ones. 

“When I was a kid, my grandmother heard I liked Disney movies and gave me a book that included the original Little Mermaid story, which of course is nothing like the movie,” Meyer says with a laugh. “I was just horrified and so disappointed in it—but it also made me very curious. That’s what launched me into reading other fairy tales, and into wondering, what happened to the original Cinderella? Aladdin?”

Like the source-material fairy tales of yore, Heartless doesn’t gloss over the painful, heart-wrenching parts of Cath’s story—and readers get an extraordinary opportunity to see the Queen of Hearts as a bit less mysterious, to travel along with her as romance and dreams, desire and fate, terror and adventure collide—forever changing the trajectory of her life. 

It’s an imaginative, exciting, sometimes shocking read. After all, says Meyer, “It’s in our nature to want to sanitize and protect children from [scary, sad things], but kids are fascinated by this. . . . They can handle a lot more than we want to give them credit for.”

This article was originally published in the November 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In the latest young adult novel from Justine Larbalestier, 17-year-old Australian Che has just moved with his family to New York City, where he struggles to keep both eyes on his 10-year-old sister, Rosa. He knows what she’s capable of, and her concerning behavior is beginning to increase beyond manipulation and stealing. Through conversations with Rosa, his parents and an incredibly diverse cast of new friends, Che confronts questions of morality, goodness, gender, sexual orientation, religion, his preconceptions as a young white male and so much more. My Sister Rosa is as provocative as it is creepy and entertaining.

BookPage contacted Larbalestier to learn more about this standout YA novel.

What inspired this story?
Tayari Jones did. She’s one of my favorite novelists so I follow her on Twitter. One day she was tweeting about William March’s The Bad Seed, a wonderful novel about a mother who slowly realizes her child is a psychopath. It occurred to me that it would be cool to tell that story from the point of view of an older sibling.

Talk to me about Rosa. Why do you think Che is able to love her unconditionally, while knowing what she’s capable of?
There’s something magical about holding a newborn baby in your arms. Che bonded with Rosa as soon as he held her, and became almost a third parent to her. I’m not sure there’s anything Rosa could do that will truly undo that. I’m pretty sure Che will always love Rosa. I don’t think he likes her though.

However, he is fascinated by her. He wants to be a doctor, and here he is living with a 10-year-old psychopath. She teaches him a lot about how complicated human nature is. He learns how to deal with a psychopath. After all, she does keep her promises to him. It’s just that she tends to find loopholes. . . . Basically, he’s living with a malevolent child lawyer who loves making tricksy interpretations of the rules. I suspect he also can’t help be captivated by how honest she is with him about her own lack of empathy. There’s something intoxicating about being trusted like that. Even if the truths you’re being told are disturbing.

Rosa and Che’s penetrating conversations explore a number of topics, most of which pivot around the definition of morality. How do you explain to someone what it means to be “good”?
It’s tricky to answer that question because it’s one of the central questions of the book. If someone doesn’t believe anyone but them matters, it’s very hard to explain to them why other people are as important as they are. Whether psychopaths can be treated, i.e. taught to be empathetic, is debated by those who study them. Some believe there’s nothing you can do but lock them up, which is hugely problematic for many reasons.

Che (and his parents) grows more and more concerned about violence in his life, and whether that violence is something he can control—or is even aware of. Regarding Che’s violence and Rosa’s cruelty, what do you think is the line between nature and nurture?
There is no line between nature and nurture. When I was researching this book I read a great deal about the current thinking on what causes psychopathy. It seems to be a very complex interaction between environment, brain morphology and genetics. But those aren’t as distinct as you would think. Your environment can affect the structure of your brain. And it turns out your environment can affect your genes, too. The new field of epigenetics is showing us our genes are not as fixed as we thought, in that your environment can affect the expression of genes. The old nature/nuture binary is dead.

Tell us about the writing process for this book. What was the easiest part? The hardest?
Disturbingly writing Rosa’s dialogue was by far the easiest part. If I had written the whole book from her point of view, it would have been a piece of cake. But instead I wrote it from Che’s. I found it very hard to write from the point of view of someone who is that nice, that good, that compassionate. (Not because I’m a terrible person—at least I hope not—but because we readers have been trained to find good people boring and anti-heroes fascinating.)

Che says Rosa has made him cynical, but every time he meets a new person he does, in fact, assume the best of them. It was so hard to write his voice without him being so cloyingly nice he became annoying. It took many, many drafts to get there. He’s the point-of-view character—the whole book is filtered through Che’s gaze—so nothing was working until I got his voice right.

On top of that, there’s a lot Che is oblivious to. Trying to communicate important things Che is unaware of while not having him seem so clueless that readers turn on him was another challenge. I came very close to giving up.

There was no light-bulb moment where I finally figured Che out. I just kept writing and rewriting until I found his voice. I deleted close to 100,000 words in the process. Some books are much harder than others.

Do you ever get creeped out by your own books/characters?
I have some attempts at ghost stories I never finished because I got too scared. I suspect the technical challenges of writing My Sister Rosa, i.e. the fact that finding Che’s voice was so hard, contributed greatly to it not creeping me out.

This book manages to be extremely diverse while starring a white male lead. You explore racism, gender equality and other necessary issues from this point of view of a white male—and it works. Why do you think it works?
I’m not sure that’s a question I can answer. But I’m pleased you think it worked. Thank you! One of the things I’ve been trying to do while writing novels full of the many different kinds of people that are in my worlds is to explore whiteness itself.

In NYC I live in a neighborhood that has folks from all over the world: black, white and brown. You can walk a block and hear 10 different languages. The way people dress is super diverse. No matter what I wear when I go out no one is going to stare at me. Be it a fluorescent ballgown or a bathrobe.

I wanted to show that wide range of being human in My Sister Rosa. I wanted to show why I love my NYC so much. While My Sister Rosa is a creepy thriller about a 10-year-old psychopath, it’s also a love letter to the East Village, the Lower East Side and everyone who lives there.

You’ve written on your blog that you “only write white protagonists” as a way to help with the lack of diversity in YA. It’s a complicated endeavor to write a book about a community not your own, but is the solution to stick to your race? (For you, specifically, as well as more generally.)
Eek! That’s not actually what I’ve been saying. It’s kind of a complicated point, which I’m obviously not making clearly, as you are definitely not the first person to think that.

Let me try again: What I’m saying is that white authors writing PoC and Indigenous characters does not help change the overwhelming whiteness of young adult literature. For many years now white authors have written from the points of view of folks from different cultures and it has changed very little. The problem of lack of diversity extends far beyond the race of the characters in the books. It’s a systemic problem.

For the genre to more accurately reflect the world we live in there has to be more Indigenous authors and more authors of color; more editors, publishers, sales and marketing people, publicists, booksellers, librarians, reviewers etc. Publishing right now is more than 90 percent white, which is why not nearly enough books are published by PoC and Indigenous authors.

We white authors need to buy more books by PoC and Indigenous authors. We need to talk up those books that we love wherever possible. (Love Is the Drug by Alaya Dawn Johnson! Allegedly by Tiffany Jackson! The Tribe series by Ambelin Kwaymullina!) We can also help by blurbing these books and by mentoring and recommending PoC and Indigenous authors to our agents, etc.

In short, the best thing we white authors can do to make YA publishing more inclusive is to give PoC and Indigenous authors the same leg up many of us were given at the beginning of our careers.

As for my personal decision about my own writing, I’ve never said I will only write white protagonists. That would be a lie as my first six novels all have PoC or Indigenous narrators. What I said is that I will write white protagonists when I’m writing a novel from a single point of view, such as My Sister Rosa. (The events of Rosa are told from the point of view of white boy, but many of the other characters are PoC. It’s not a white book set in an all-white world.)

I have other novels I’m working on that have multiple points of view. They all have PoC narrators as well as whites. I don’t live in an all-white world, so I won’t write all-white worlds.

However, writing from points of view outside your own culture is a huge undertaking that can hurt the people of those culture. I’ve written in detail about that process here.

My personal decision to write more white protagonists is not about making YA more inclusive; it’s about dealing with my own blind spots. One of the reasons I wrote from PoC and Indigenous points of view was because I thought that was the only way to write about race. I was operating under the delusion (unfortunately it’s a common one among us white folk) that white people don’t have a race and are unaffected by race. In Razorhurst and now My Sister Rosa I’ve started writing about race from a white point of view.

Hmmm, that makes it sound like I’m writing essays, not novels. If I’m doing it right, my readers get caught up in the story. From reading my reviews, it’s clear not all readers notice the technical and theoretical aspects of what I’m trying to do. That’s fine. Novels should work on multiple levels.

What do you hope readers will take away from this book?
I hope they’re freaked out! Every reader who’s let me know how disturbed they were by My Sister Rosa has absolutely made my day. I aim to have readers looking at their family and friends suspiciously and asking themselves, is Uncle Steve actually a psychopath?!

Just kidding.

Maybe.

What are you working on next?
I’m always working on multiple books, but the one that’s getting the lion’s share of my attention is a book from the point of view of a psychopath. OMG. It’s so much easier than it was writing from nice guy Che’s point of view. I’ve decided that’s not because I’m evil (I hope!) but because psychopaths have a limited range of emotions and think they’re right about everything.

Most of us have doubts. We get confused. We worry. Not psychopaths. When you write from their point of view everything is clear. They never say to themselves, “Argh! Why did I just say that? What is wrong with me?”

A psychopath’s thoughts are straight lines, not endless branching trees. It’s refreshing to write from such a straightforward point of view. Also scary. Very scary.

Author illustration by Patrick Thicklin.

In a futuristic Earth where humanity has finally conquered death, humans only ever meet their true ends by one thing: the hand of a scythe. Unlike murderers from back in the “Age of Mortality,” scythes are highly trained assassins that are both government-sanctioned and socially accepted—as there’s nothing else to keep the planet’s population growth in check. And even though it’s a great honor to become a dealer of death, it comes with even greater sacrifice.

So when teenagers Citra and Rowan are offered the opportunity to apprentice under one of the most revered scythe in the order, they risk their lives for such an honor. And as they learn the “art” of taking life, they also discover that not every scythe is as honorable as the airs they put on—and that these gods among men are just as flawed as the people they glean.

Neal Schusterman, award-winning author of nearly 40 books and a recipient of the National Book Award for his novel Challenger Deep, is a wildly talented novelist and screenwriter. And just as deftly as he has in the past, he ensnares his readers with Scythe and keeps them clinging to the pages for dear life.

The main concept for this tale—that humans have defeated death and are now responsible—is refreshingly unique. What inspired it? What do you hope young readers will take away from it?
After 10 years of dystopia on the bookshelves, I wanted to look at the realistic consequences of utopia. Not a dystopia masquerading as utopia, but a true utopia—a perfect world, by our human definitions of perfect. Turns out there are consequences to perfection—not the least of which is immortality, and a need to thin the population. But who would be responsible for that? I conceived of a group of highly moral, ethical people who would do the job out of service to humanity. My hope, as with all my novels, is that readers will think about their own world from a perspective they hadn’t considered before. The more perspective we have, the more equipped we are to make important decisions in our lives, and in the world. 

For your central characters, you’ve crafted the complex and introspective Rowan and Citra. In the face of all their training, gleaning and bloodshed, what is it about them that enables them to maintain their humanity?
The very reason that Scythe Faraday chose them is what enables them to maintain their humanity. They are compassionate and innately good kids. Even though they are put through difficult trials, they emerge with their humanity in tact. Although one of them does end up a little damaged by it . . .

"Historically we’ve always seen cautionary tales of the dangers of artificial intelligence. I wanted to take the less travelled path of AI that actually turns out to be the best thing we’ve ever created."

Throughout your novel, you use a variety of narrative vehicles to beautifully weave this tale. How did splitting the narrative between the perspectives of both central characters alter your telling of the story? And what additional insights did the use of the journal entries offer?
I felt it important to tell the story from the points of views of a female teen and a male teen, so we could see their different perspectives. So it was balanced. The journal entries give readers insight into the conflicted and conflicting mindsets of the scythes themselves, as well as providing important background about the world that’s important for readers to know.

Within the world you’ve crafted in Scythe, every single character is suffering from the same problem: population control. But their solution only addresses the tail end of the issue—the gleaning of humanity’s overabundance. Why not just (or also) limit the births and population bloat on the front end? Why not stem the flow rather than only deal with the aftermath?
Well, in a perfect world, we should have the freedom to choose how many children we have, without imposed limits. If there was a forced birth quota, that wouldn’t be a perfect world. I tried to conceive of this world where there were no limits on personal freedom, as long as it didn’t impinge the freedom of others.

In many futuristic or sci-fi novels, technology ultimately causes humanity’s downfall. But in your novel, you have a society that’s invented the Thunderhead, benevolent machinery that uses artificial intelligence to be a more effective governing body than any organization of humans. As opposed to a device with a malicious agenda—or a heartless machine that the world grows to fear and hate—the Thunderhead is omnipresent yet passive. What is it about the current nature of the relationship between human and technology that so often prevents us from imagining this type of future? Is today’s technology flawed because of humanity’s inherent flaws, or are we just too distrusting to give up that much power, even if it’s for our own good?
I think it’s difficult to trust in something so opaque as artificial intelligence.  But, paradoxically, I also think that we trust our technology a little too much. So what happens when it’s not just our technology that we’re trusting, but a living entity behind it. Historically we’ve always seen cautionary tales of the dangers of artificial intelligence. I wanted to take the less travelled path of AI that actually turns out to be the best thing we’ve ever created. It’s a concept I felt has not been sufficiently explored.

We learn that the Thunderhead controls nearly every facet of the world, save for the scythedom. But the scythedom has its own issues, with different players all trying to push their own political machinations. If self-governing humans were the problem to begin with, then why let a subset of humans govern themselves?
The Thunderhead, in its wisdom, realized that the only thing it should not have control over is mortality. Humans stole death from nature, therefore they should be responsible for administering death. I called it the separation of scythe and state. It’s one of the basic precepts that the society is based on.  

In the eyes of society, scythes are seen as royalty, celebrities, superstars, heroes, martyrs and a necessary evil. And the cult of the scythes is almost like the priests of death, which is interesting when juxtaposed with the Tonist religious cults that choose to remove themselves from this modern society altogether. But if being a scythe is a voluntary job that society needs, then why are they elevated to such a high status? Aren’t they just glorified trash collectors? Or is this akin to the lifting up of sports players to hero status?
In the first chapter, Citra muses that “Scythes are no more supernatural than tax collectors in the grand scheme of things.” Even so, every society must have its celebrities. Scythes are the only ones with the power over life and death—and power is a very attractive thing. The idea of these scythes as sort of superstar “Jedi” really intrigued me. Some of them shun the stardom, others revel in it. It’s interesting to see how the world is shaped not just by the scythes, but by how the public perceives them.

As we get to know Scythe Goddard, we see that he’s written as something of an antagonist—or at least the product of the antagonistic scythe system. However, as Rowan points out, nothing that Scythe Goddard does is in violation of the 10 Scythe Commandments, even if frowned upon. So why is Scythe Goddard pitched as “the bad guy”? Sure, his methods may be uncouth, but he’s not intrinsically evil for having different ideas for how the scythedom should be run—is he?
Throughout history, laws have been distorted by interpretation. People manipulate the rules to their own ends—and very insidiously. Sometimes despicable arguments can be very compelling—but it doesn’t make them less despicable. There are plenty of thoroughly despicable interpretations of law that we see earning public approval every day. It’s frightening. I see scythe Goddard as a cancer on the scythedom. What interests me is how a cancer like that can grow unchecked and undetected. Perhaps if we, as readers, take a long hard look at that, we can spot it and take action before it becomes deadly.

"People manipulate the rules to their own ends—and very insidiously. Sometimes despicable arguments can be very compelling—but it doesn’t make them less despicable."

This story is set mostly in MidMerica. Will we see an exploration of the larger world of scythes in book two?
Yes, we will, but even so, this is a personal story of individuals facing issues that are larger than themselves. Even when the story expands to include the larger world, it will still be the personal stories of the characters that resonate.

If you lived in this world and were offered the opportunity to become a scythe, would you take it? Why or why not?
Tough question. I don’t know if I have the courage that Citra and Rowan have. But on the other hand, a scythe’s family is immune from gleaning for the entire life of a scythe—and no one can glean a scythe but themselves. Very tempting. I’m glad I’m not in the position to make the decision! I just get to put others in that position!

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

In her raw and eye-opening debut novel, A List of Cages, author Robin Roe draws from her real-life work of counseling and mentoring at-risk teens to craft this heart-wrenching tale. BookPage contacted Roe to discuss her new book and how even the smallest of kind gestures can save someone’s life.

The bio on your website mentions that you’ve counseled adolescents in Boston and run a mentoring program in Dallas for at-risk teens. How have these experiences changed who you are, and how has writing about it here helped? Also, how did all this shape Julian’s character?
My experiences in working with children and adolescents through the years have had a huge impact on who I am. They’ve taught me about resilience. They’ve taught me to notice when someone needs help. They’ve taught me to have hope. A List of Cages is essentially about the relationship between two boys: Julian (who’s being abused) and Adam (who cares about Julian and wants to help him). I’ve lived both sides of this, so it felt very natural to write their story.

While reading, there were a number of times I got misty-eyed when seeing what happened to Julian. And even though, to me, the way you told the story felt almost matter-of-fact—like journal entries that were later assembled into a novel—it also felt so coldly real. What was your writing process like for this book? And since this is your first novel, how is it different from other writing you’ve done?
Writing A List of Cages felt like eavesdropping on someone’s thoughts. Julian and Adam’s story came to me in a flood of ideas, and I wrote 70,000 words in the first month. I spent a year editing what I’d written, then another year working up the courage to send it out to agents. The level of intensity and passion I felt while writing Cages was something I’d never experienced before.

Throughout the novel, you unfold your tale from the alternating perspectives of Julian and Adam. How did splitting the narrative between the central characters alter your telling of the story? What did these dual voices enable you to do or say that you couldn’t have otherwise?
Writing in alternating perspectives felt very natural for me in this novel, and it’s hard to imagine the book any other way. I believe we get a clearer understanding of who Adam and Julian are when we see them through each other’s eyes.

Through your other characters, you describe Adam as a big brother and friend to all, with “a smile that could light up an entire room.” But why had it become Adam’s responsibility to help or save everyone else? Had his friends and family all asked too much of him, and had he sacrificed too much of himself in the process?
Adam is a caretaker who does his best to support the people in his life, whether they’re his friends, family or even his teachers. It’s not his responsibility to save anyone, but he has such a huge heart that he does whatever is in his power to do. At times, this might be to his own detriment.

There’s a line in your novel that Julian repeats again and again, that “people don’t mean to hurt other people, they’re just unhappy themselves.” To a certain point, I can believe this, but when it comes to extreme levels of child abuse, the line has already been trampled on and crossed. Why does Julian try to justify Russell’s actions with this mantra?
Julian does this, in part, because he sees the world through a very compassionate lens. He forgives things most wouldn’t because he understands people lash out when they’re hurting. But Julian also sees the world through the eyes of an abused child. Russell is his sole caretaker, so Julian is completely dependent on him. Like many kids in Julian’s situation, he doesn’t know that he’s being victimized, and instead believes what’s happening to him is justified.

So many of the authority figures in the story seem blind to the troubles that these young people face. Adam’s mom is too overprotective, Julian’s well-meaning counselor is unable to get him to open up, and other adults are uncaring or even damaging. In this situation, why are there so few adults for Adam and Julian to turn to? Why do these kids seem to be on their own?
Adam grew up with a loving mother who advocates for him. He has a lot of self-worth and has developed positive relationships with adults. Julian, on the other hand, like many children who’ve experienced abuse, has learned not to trust people. There are adults he could turn to, but he doesn’t know how to elicit their help or how to respond when one shows him kindness. Adam also has adults he could confide in, but he’s afraid of making Julian’s situation even worse.

If I could give your novel a subtitle, it would undoubtedly be A Lesson in Empathy, as you show how deeply one person who truly cares can affect someone else’s life. So often we’re too busy dealing with our own “lists of cages” to care about anyone else other than ourselves. What do you hope readers will take away from this book?
I hope readers realize they have immense power—in their own lives and in the lives of others. It’s human to get consumed by our problems at times. If we’re really struggling, we have to trust that there are kind people out there, and be willing to accept their help when it’s offered. Then once we come up for air, we can be that savior for someone else.

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

Scandalous affairs, decadent parties, steamy rendezvous and scheming friends: In her new novel for young adults, The Luxe, Anna Godbersen captures the essence of Gilded Age New York high society at its most lavish and luxurious.

Told in a series of vignettes from the perspectives of several interwoven characters each with his or her own agenda The Luxe follows a young debutante, Elizabeth Holland, as she navigates the world of late 19th-century New York aristocracy, a world filled with backstabbing friends, salacious affairs, strict societal rules and lots of gossip.

In all, the characters seem remarkably similar to teenagers today or at least the ones we see on Gossip Girls or The Hills. And with a first printing of 200,000 for this first entry in a scheduled three-part series, HarperCollins is expecting this clique of characters and their charmed lifestyle to be just as popular. The author of this teen sensation got her start in writing as the assistant to the literary editor at Esquire magazine. I wrote a review almost every week, Godbersen recalls, and it was a real learning experience. Though she reviewed mostly male-oriented books for Esquire, her personal reading on the side included plenty of more girly books. From there she went on to ghostwrite a series of books for teen readers under a pseudonym. It was a fun thing to do, Godbersen says, and I made a small amount of money. Ultimately, she got a lucrative book deal of her own, and this one, The Luxe, became her labor of love, she says.

Once Godbersen got the green light for the book idea, she started researching the Gilded Age in New York. "I had a fondness for the Edith Wharton-type of novel," says Godbersen, a Berkeley, California, native and Barnard graduate. She also expected the glamour and excesses of the time to appeal to her teenage readers. Because she lives in New York City herself, it was easy to choose Manhattan as the setting for the book.

"New York was where that type of society was strongest during that period, she says, and I thought readers would be able to identify and recognize the places here." As for the characters, Godbersen tried to create believable and empathetic personas, each with his or her own issues. " Elizabeth is the heart of the book and I wanted her to embody certain aspects of the period," she says. "As the eldest daughter of a wealthy widow, Elizabeth must maintain a certain type of decorum in order to marry well. I started thinking about the ways that she would have had to conform to the period and that she would want to appear to be a very pristine, elegant and obedient girl of the time," Godbersen recalls.

But Elizabeth has secrets that even her closest friends and family do not know, including a clandestine love affair, a dark secret about her deceased father and a passionate yearning to escape the life she has been born into. "I ended up thinking about all of the hyper-accomplished women in high school these days who have high test scores, play sports and have lots of extra-curricular activities and the frightening pressure that all of that encompasses," the author says. "They are so taxed by having to appear perfect all the time."

But not all of the characters in The Luxe are do-gooders and overachievers. Elizabeth's supposed best friend, Penelope Hayes, is just the opposite. " I really wanted her to be evil," Godbersen says. And through backstabbing, man-stealing, blackmail and quite possibly murder, the author gets the job done. As for the men in the book, the author has tried to create a certain fantasy about men through her male characters. "I think they embody a type of courtliness that is true to the times," she says. " Not because they were more romantic, but because there were so many more layers of ritual and subterfuge associated with their courting." But she doesn't portray the men as infallible either: Henry Schoonmaker, Elizabeth's betrothed, is a known womanizer and drunkard; Teddy Cutting is lovelorn romantic who himself has proposed to the eldest Holland girl on several occasion; and Isaac Philip Buck is a scheming hanger-on who helps to plot Elizabeth's demise.

With the publication of her book this month, Godbersen will learn whether her pampered 19th-century party girls (and boys) and her vision of long-ago decadence will catch the imaginations of today's teen readers.

Heidi Henneman writes from the decadent city of New York.