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By Megan Lord

Where did your love of books come from?

YSM: I was born and raised in Argentina, a country with a rich tradition of books, cinema, and music. I was inspired by the artists who bore their witness to the things our country experienced in its eventful history, especially, the last decades, and also the beauty that surround us, like: Alma Maritano, Maria Elena Walsh, Laura Devetach and others who have been acclaimed worldwide for their work in children's literature. Also my parents encouraged my love of books and stories, and my grandfather wrote aloud to me.

When and why did you begin writing?

YSM: I started writing as soon as I learned how, when I was 6 or 7. My grandfather had just passed away and it was a very traumatic event for me. I guess I have been processing life and loss through writing ever since. But it wasn't until I was in my late twenties, already a mother of four little ones, that I became serious about my writing and started pursuing publication.

What inspired you to write your first book?

YSM: I was inspired by the amazing life of Iris Valcarce, my dear friend, who passed away in early 2020. Her life was rich and beautiful, and someone needed to record it. I gave her a bound manuscript that will never be published, but it was my tribute to our friendship and her love for my family and me. Ever since, each of my stories has been dedicated to a particular person or group of people who have motivated me to tell their story. In the case of FURIA, it is my tribute to all las futboleras who love the beautiful game and made a place for themselves in the sport they love.

What cultural value do you see in writing/reading/storytelling/etc.?

YSM: Storytelling is a human trait we use to pass on survival skills, whether we know it or not. We can understand a society by the art it produces, and in my case, my writing is my activism and my way of bearing witness to the things I experience and observe.

Who are some of your favorite authors that you feel were influential in your work? What impact have they had on your writing?

YSM: I have so many favorite authors, but my literary ancestors are: Isabel Allende, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Melina Marchetta, Philip Pullman, Nova Ren Suma, Carolina De Robertis, Guadalupe García McCall, Meg Medina, Rick Riordan. They have taught me to be true to myself as a storyteller and to respect my audience.

How did it feel to be picked for Reese Witherspoon's book club?

YSM: Being part of the Reese Book Club has been an amazing opportunity to get my books to a wider audience. The whole RBC team and the authors are a group of people passionate for stories and readers, and it's been one of the greatest honors of my life to be part of it.

What's the background of how this story came to be written?

YSM: It was born of my love of fútbol and seeing so many girls and women fighting for the right to play it. At the same time, the Ni Una Menos movement has been a force that has spread all over the world, and its influence has called attention to the problems with gender violence and inequality that aren't endemic to Latin America but all of the world, unfortunately.

What was most challenging to you when writing this book?

YSM: Writing it wasn't challenging. Publishing it was a different story. In the early days of my career, I was complimented over and over on the writing and the story itself, but I was told repeatedly that there wasn't a market for a story like FURIA. Until We Need Diverse Books came along, and the market perception changed, and it found the perfect home at Algonquin Young Readers. Elise Howard and Sara Alpert, my editors, believed in FURIA and me from the start, and helped me take FURIA out into the world.

What are your fans saying about the book? Tell us about a unique interaction you had with one of your readers after reading your book.

YSM: The best has been the reaction of the Argentine readers in Argentina and all over the world, who for the first time see a girl from a barrio who truly represents them without stereotypes.

After reading Furia, what's one thing you hope a reader would take away?

YSM: I hope that they understand what a force teen girls are. How brilliant and powerful they are!

What was your favorite character's story to write and why?

YSM: They're all my favorite characters, but I enjoyed developing Karen because she's a younger version of Camila although they're so different at the same time.

What do you have in the works next? Are you currently working on your next novel and can you tell us anything about it?

YSM: I'm working on a multitude of projects: a middle grade anthology about menstruation stories (with Aida Salazar), a middle grade series about horse girls, a YA anthology of Latine horror stories (with Amparo Ortiz), an adult romance, and a second YA I can't say anything about, except that it's also set in Argentina.

About the Book

In Rosario, Argentina, Camila Hassan lives a double life. At home, she is a careful daughter, living within her mother's narrow expectations, in her rising-soccer-star brother's shadow, and under the abusive rule of her short-tempered father.

On the field, she is La Furia, a powerhouse of skill and talent. When her team qualifies for the South American tournament, Camila gets the chance to see just how far those talents can take her. In her wildest dreams, she'd get an athletic scholarship to a North American university.

But the path ahead isn't easy. Her parents don't know about her passion. They wouldn't allow a girl to play fútbol-and she needs their permission to go any farther. And the boy she once loved is back in town. Since he left, Diego has become an international star, playing in Italy for the renowned team Juventus. Camila doesn't have time to be distracted by her feelings for him.

Things aren't the same as when he left: she has her own passions and ambitions now, and La Furia cannot be denied. As her life becomes more complicated, Camila is forced to face her secrets and make her way in a world with no place for the dreams and ambition of a girl like her.

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Interview: Yamile Saied Méndez. Author of Furia.

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Yamile Saied Méndez talks about her novel Furia, her writing, favorite authors, and what it was like to be selected for Reese Witherspoon's book club. Find out more here: https://shelfmediagroup.com/interview/interview-yamile-saied-mendez-author-of-furia/

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Who is Yamile?

Meet Yamile Saied Méndez, an author with a passion for storytelling. Originally from Rosario, Argentina, Yamile has written over 20 books and short stories for readers of all ages, from picture books to young adult novels and even books for adults. Her works explore themes of home, friendship, and identity, and though they vary in genre and style, they all share a common goal of connecting with readers.

Yamile's love for stories began at a young age when she would create her own tales to share with friends and family. Despite having no direct connection to the writing world, she pursued her passion for literature and eventually earned a Master's degree in writing. Her writing is a reflection of her belief that stories are the perfect way for human beings to connect with each other, and she hopes that readers will find parts of themselves in her characters and their experiences. Whether readers are seeking a new perspective or a reflection of their own lives, Yamile's books offer a unique and insightful viewpoint.

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Meet Yamile Mendez, an Argentine American author of 20+ books for all ages, exploring themes of home, friendship, and identity. With a Master's in writing, Yamile believes stories connect humans and hopes readers find themselves in her characters. Her works offer unique, insightful perspectives.

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Sherman Alexie | CONVERSATIONS AT KCTS 9

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Learn about this potentially fatal condition that causes fluid buildup in the brain. It can cause a range of symptoms, from headaches to poor balance.

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Powwow, a celebration of American Indian culture in which people from diverse indigenous nations gather for the purpose of dancing, singing, and honouring the traditions of their ancestors. The term powwow, which derives from a curing ritual, originated in one of the Algonquian nations of the

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The Plane Crash that Inspired Ann Napolitano in Dear Edward

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The Plane Crash that Inspired Ann Napolitano in Dear Edward

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The 9-year-old Dutch boy who miraculously survived a plane crash in Libya returned to the Netherlands aboard an airborne ambulance Saturday and was whisked away to a hospital in his hometown, where he must begin to rebuild his life without his parents or brother.

Ruben van Assouw was the sole survivor, pulled unconscious from the wreckage of an Afriqiyah Airways jetliner that plunged into the desert less than a mile from the runway in Tripoli four days ago, killing 103 people.

Investigators from the U.S. and other countries were on the scene of the crash near the Libyan capital Saturday trying to determine a cause. Others began identifying the dead, who include 70 Dutch nationals.

Ruben returned with an aunt and uncle aboard a flight to a military air base in Eindhoven, then was taken to St. Elizabeth Hospital in nearby Tilburg, the hometown of the Van Assouws. Patrick, 40, Trudy, 41, and their son Enzo died in the crash.

Ruben underwent more than four hours of surgery to repair multiple fractures to his legs Wednesday, but doctors say he has been recovering well.

'In the arms of relatives'
A statement by close relatives said the extended family will care for Ruben, and asked the media not to contact them while they are grieving. Ruben was shielded from the media at the air base and hospital.

It was not yet clear where he will live, though much of the family, including grandparents, lives in Tilburg.

"Let's make sure he can catch his breath peacefully in the arms of relatives," Tilburg mayor Ivo Opstelten said on Dutch television. The boy and his relatives need to find "a kind of balance with each other, so they can start sketching a future."

The story of the boy's improbable survival and tragic loss has moved people around the world. Hundreds offered condolences and wished the boy well on a blog set up by his father to chronicle the family's vacation to South Africa. They were returning home when their flight from Johannesburg to Tripoli crashed.

At the Yore elementary school in Tilburg where Enzo was in 6th grade and Ruben is in 3rd, many students returned early from spring break to sign a condolence register for Enzo - and prepare for Ruben's eventual return.

"When he comes back - we don't know exactly how things are going to go - but when he comes back to school, we're going to take awfully good care of him," school director Elly Sebregts said.

"That's the school's job, I think. What we can do for him, in the school sphere, we will do."

Determining a cause
Investigators on a joint panel, which includes Americans, Dutch, French, South Africans and Libyans, met Saturday to plot their strategy to determine a cause of the crash. No findings were immediately released.

The U.S. investigators are from the National Transportation Safety Board team since the plane's engines were made by U.S. manufacturer General Electric. The team also was to include technical advisers from the Federal Aviation Administration and General Electric.

The plane's black boxes - the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder - were recovered intact and have been sent to Paris for review.

Naji Dhou, the head of the Libyan committee investigating the crash, told reporters that preliminary results indicate the plane had diverted about 4 degrees from the runway and landed about 400 yards in front of it.

He said debris from the crash was scattered in an 800-square-meter area, but investigators had only covered 150-square-meters of that so far.

He said there was no explosion until the plane hit the ground. Libya has ruled out terrorism as a possible cause of the crash, although an investigation was still under way.

Identification of bodies
Forensics teams began identifying the bodies of crash victims Saturday. Most of those on board the Airbus 330-200 flight were Dutch tourists, and the Netherlands' government has requested DNA and other information from victims' relatives to help the process.

The Dutch Ministry says investigators hope to complete the identification of the bodies within three weeks.

Rescuers responding to the crash found Ruben still strapped in his seat and breathing in an area of desert sand strewn with the plane's shredded wreckage. Both his legs were broken, but he had no serious injuries to his neck, head or internal organs.

Libyan doctor Sadig Bendala said the boy was continuing to recover.

"He's OK, he's fine today," Bendala said before boarding the plane with his young patient, calling Ruben "a miracle."

Ed Kronenburg, the top Dutch foreign ministry official in Libya, called the boy's return a "fantastic moment" despite his nation's sorrow over the crash's many victims.

"I hope he will slowly ... recover and pick up his life again, although it will never be normal," Kronenburg said.

The Dutch boy had gone with his family to South Africa on a dream safari vacation to celebrate his parents' anniversary. Ruben was informed of his family's deaths on Friday.
In his travel blog, the boy's father, Patrick Van Assouw, posted photographs and wrote about the camping trip that took them through some of the world's most spectacular natural wonders.

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Bittersweet return for Dutch boy crash survivor

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The 9-year-old Dutch boy who survived the plane crash in Libya arrived back in the Netherlands on a medical evacuation flight Saturday.

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In general, John Knowles does not write about his home territory. He writes about New England or Europe as a whole. In only one novel, Vein of Riches, and that is not his best novel, he has talked about West Virginia that is his childhood home.

His fictional world is a refined and naturalized one. It is composed of many people from many parts of the world. In this way, his fictional world is not provincial in attitudes or interests.

Knowles is a professional writer whose work is consistently of high quality. He has such a fine style. He is completely aware of the infinite resources and subtle differences in meaning, opinion, or attitude in the language.

Despite all these qualities, Knowles is a person who loves to live around the world. He is a rootless man. He is in search of extracting moral excellence from rootlessness.

Yet, as he says, he is one of the live-around-the-world people, rootless, nomadic, and making a virtue of that rootlessness. He is an expert in appreciating different cultures but he is the master of none. Perhaps, he is the believer of the subculture of the New England pedagogy.

One drawback of this very cosmopolitanism in Knowles' personality is the feeling of estrangement that Knowles feels from his fictional world. As an experienced person of many cultures, he finds this trait advantageous when he writes graceful travel essays for Holiday magazine.

On the contrary, he finds it a disadvantage when he tries to create a thoroughly convincing fictional character for Vein of Riches.

A Short Biography of John Knowles

John Knowles was born in Fairmont, West Virginia on September 16, 1926. His father's name was James M. Knowles who was a purchasing agent from Lowell, Massachusetts. His mother's name was Mary Beatrice Shea Knowles who belonged to Concord, New Hampshire. Knowles' father was vice president of a coal company who was able to earn enough income to give a comfortable living to his family.

Knowles went to St. Peter's High School in Fairmont, West Virginia, between 1938 and 1940. At the age of fifteen, he left Fairmont and continued studies at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. It was an elite prep school.

Knowles discovered that Exeter is both socially and academically challenging. His experiences in Exeter later inspired at least two of his later works: A Separate Peace (1959) and Peace Breaks Out (1981). He graduated in 1947.

After spending time at Phillips Exeter, Knowles spent eight months while serving in the U.S. Army Air Forces at the end of World War II.

Knowles received an academic degree from Yale University as a member of the class of 1949. From Yale, Knowles received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949.

Jobs and Literary Career of John Knowles

While John Knowles was still at Yale University, he wrote stories for campus humor magazine "The Yale Record." He served as a member of the Yale Daily News during his second-year undergraduate, junior, and senior years.

He was notably the editorial secretary when he was in his senior year. He was a record-holding university swimmer as well while he was in his sophomore year.

After graduating from college, Knowles served the Hartford Courant as a reporter. From time to time, he wrote theater evaluations for the newspaper as well. By 1952, Knowles was a freelance writer. By that time, he had many articles published in Holiday magazine. Later on, he also became an associate editor in Holiday magazine.

When Knowles put forward his completed novel to American publishers, the manuscript was rejected. At last, Knowles found a British publisher, Secker, and Warburg, for submitting and processing his novel.

The success of the novel freed Knowles to write further and expand his understanding through travel. As a result, his next two books were Morning in Antibes (novel, 1962) and Double Vision: American Thoughts from Abroad (1964).

The second book is a collection of travel essays. Knowles took inspiration for writing this book from wanderings on the Riviera and in the Middle East.

Themes in the Books by John Knowles

The themes of John Knowles' books are more social and broad in scope. They are relatable and understandable because they belong to this world. They show the reality that is hidden under layers.

Peace Breaks Out (1981) is the sequel of A Separate Peace. It also discusses student rivalry in the same setting. However, it is discussed from the perspective of a troubled young teacher who has recently come back from World War II. In this way, Knowles aims to discuss human relationships and the effects of outside chaotic circumstances on them.

In Indian Summer (1966), Knowles again discussed the theme of boyhood friendships that he had already delved into in A Separate Peace . There is a good deal of cultural primitivism in this book. However, the characters are unconvincing.

For this reason, critics declared their dissatisfaction because their expectations were not realized in this book as they were in Knowles' first and greatest work.

One of the central themes of this American fiction is money versus land. It is a pleasant novel. However, Knowles has not given thorough attention to its characters. It shows that coal does not interest Knowles as much as New England prep school life does.

All critics have praised the author's work and his much relatable and social themes. However, they still consider and agree that the best novel written by Knowles was his first, A Separate Peace.

Writing Style and Beliefs of John Knowles

Knowles appreciated many authors and their different writing styles. He praised academic classics to experimental literature. It suggests that he was an open-minded person who embraced this trait in his university class.

There is no specific writing style of Knowles, yet he has a certain uniqueness that helps readers recognize his work. There are many secrets of his creative writing that he talked about in an interview in the 1990s.

Unconscious Use of Symbols

According to Knowles, a writer must never intentionally put symbolic meanings in their work. He thought that those writers who purposely insert symbolism into writing are misguided. In other words, symbolism must come naturally in a piece of writing. For this reason, he has only put two conscious symbols in A Separate Peace.

In his work, the symbols emerge from his subconscious and enter into his work because his mind works symbolically. The characters in his novels do everything symbolically. They dress up to show something about themselves. Every character goes after a thing not because of its apparent reason but because of its symbolic place in the scheme of things.

In this way, in the case of Knowles, he writes truly and deep enough and this is how symbols emerge originally. Also, through this technique, he suggests that people must trust their subconscious.

Freeing the Imagination

Knowles' works are true and deep. He said that there is a technique to approach writing to help make this happen. The technique is that Knowles never became too willful or determined whenever he sat down to write. He used the trick of freeing his imagination so that it will in return help his imagination come into play and make his writing better.

Keeping his Personality out of his creations

According to critics, some of Knowles' works are such that the story and sense of play are so strong that it seems like the story could have taken place without the author himself.

In this way, Knowles tried to be unobtrusive. Whenever the readers read his work, they do not think about him, his style, personality, or anything. Therefore, it can be said that Knowles has a style of having no style.

He believed that a real artist is forgotten by the readers when his work is read because of his work because they are enthralled by what is transpiring by his characters and story.

Writing for Himself

Inspiration for His Work

Many of Knowles's books are heavily fictionalized but they come from his direct experience. He was raised in West Virginia. He then lived in New England. Additionally, he traveled a lot. All these things helped in becoming a worth-reading writer.

He never went for these materials purposely. He believed that what he is doing is literature and not journalism. Therefore, the search for inspiration in literature is self-defeating. For this reason, he just followed his interests and his life as it unfolded naturally. He did not travel to get some material for writing.

He said that he traveled because he was eager to see the world and when he went to the Mediterranean, he found some things there to write about. This is why Knowles did not go out to find literature but it happened naturally.

Never Stopped Writing

Knowles started writing at the age of twelve. When he was at Exeter, he wrote a lot. Later on, he said that he remembered none of them. He also wrote at Yale but he believes but his art flowered when he was in his teenage years. He also believed that his art sort of went underground when he got into his early twenties. He worked and studied at that time.

In his late twenties, his art re-emerged in full bloom. That was when he produced work like A Separate Peace.

Never Planning Plot for a Novel in Advance

Knowles was asked in an interview if he figures out everything in the plot in advance. He answered that he never does it. Knowles wrote the way he felt. This is why his work is organic. Sometimes, later events grow out of earlier events.

The Rule is There is no Rule

There is no specific style or format of Knowles's writing. He was a rootless man and for this reason, he never attached to any standard or rule in his writing. He said that there is no fixed rule in writing. He did not even believe in using recognizable language.

Just like James Joyce made his language for Finnegan's Wake and George Orwell wrote about pigs in Animal Farm, Knowles has a different style and different language for each of his characters.

Awards

John Knowles won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He also received the Rosenthal Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

Death

John Knowles died on November 29, 2001, at the age of Seventy-five in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S.

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John Knowles' Writing Style and Short Biography | LitPriest

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Read our study guide on the literary writing style of John Knowles, as well as his short biography.

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Stephen Chbosky was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on January 25, 1972, to Fred, a former CFO consultant, and Lea, a tax preparer. He grew up in Upper St. Clair, graduating from the local high school. He received his Bachelor of the Fine Arts degree from the University of Southern California’s fi…

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Laurie Halse Andersen on growing up and early education

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Laurie Halse Andersen on growing up and early education

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What's being done to improve the teaching of reading and writing in our secondary schools? And what can you do to teach reading and writing more effectively in your classroom? Learn more about the state of adolescent literacy, get practical advice on teaching reading and writing, and browse the library of research, reports, and guides.

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Laurie Halse Anderson after Receiving the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award

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Laurie Halse Anderson after Receiving the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award

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Photo: Susanne Kronholm

What were you doing when you received the phone call from the jury?

- I was revising chapter 14 of my new book. I saw that the call was coming from Sweden and I was going to ignore it, because I don't know anybody who lives there. When I finally answered, I was really confused and thought that someone was playing a joke on me.

Why do you write?

- Even if I had never published a book, or ever worked as a journalist, I would still be writing. I find the world to be a very confusing place and writing helps me make sense of it. Putting things into words on paper is how I see the world more clearly.

Where do you get your inspiration?

- A lot of my books started because I was angry about something, like injustice faced by teenagers. When I'm writing about American history, I'm writing about things that I think we should all know about. Here in the United States, we're just now beginning to be honest about our history, which is very bloody and filled with injustice. I write from anger, I write from curiosity, and I write from confusion.

Speak (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), Wintergirls (Viking, 2009), The Impossible Knife of Memory (Viking, 2014), Shout (Viking, 2019).

Do you remember your first important reading experience?

- I was sitting on my mother's lap in my pajamas and I had just had a bath. We had a favorite book about a family of ducks who lived in Boston, and my mom was very good at making voices and making the story come alive. The first time I fell in love with a story that I read myself was with Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie. She just brought the whole world alive for me. I had a hard time learning how to read when I was a little girl, it took me longer than it took my classmates, and I didn't like books because they made me feel dumb. But my teachers were patient and I got extra help, so by the time I was ten years old I was really a reader.

I write from anger, I write from curiosity, and I write from confusion.

When did you know that you wanted to become a writer?

- I never thought I would be a writer. I didn't like English class when I was in high school; the books we had to read were pretty boring and I got so frustrated when the teachers made us analyze them and talk about things like symbolism. It was not until I had children, and my daughters were sitting on my lap and I was reading to them, that I thought I should try writing myself. It took me a while to learn how to write properly though. I had plenty of ideas, but the first stories I wrote were all terrible.

You have been writing in several different genres and for different age groups. Why is that?

- I have a very short attention span. I get bored so easily and I really don't like being bored. So going back and forth between different types of books is the only way that's pleasant for me.

Photo: Susanne Kronholm

In the jury's motivation, they say that you "never shy from even the hardest things." Is there a reason why you write about topics such as pain, anxiety and sexual abuse?

- My childhood was wonderful, and my parents were so lovely. But I have first-hand experiences of how hard it can be when children are hurt, and they don't know how to talk about what's hurting them. My father was a war veteran and turned to alcohol to help cope with his bad memories. He lost his job and we had to move several times. In the middle of all that, when I was 13, I was raped and I didn't tell anybody about it.

- Many of my books are banned in the US and the reason is because some people feel that children shouldn't read about these hard things. But to try to protect children from the reality of the world makes them vulnerable. As adults, I wish we could take our responsibility to be honest with children.

What were you like as a teenager?

- I was pretty angry. I was raped just before I started high school, my family had just moved and I didn't have any friends in the neighborhood. So, the first year of high school was a mess and I was in a really dark place. But then I joined some sports teams. I began to make friends and the coaches were great influences on me. I started to pay attention in class, I became happier and healthier. My final year of high school I was an exchange student in Denmark and that was an extraordinary experience. My host family were the most welcoming and kind people I have ever met. I felt safe, for the first time in years.

As a writer describing young people's lives, do you keep yourself updated somehow with the language and culture of today's teens? Do you think you need to?

- It's important to recognize what changes and what doesn't from generation to generation. I don't worry too much about the language, about slang and jargon, because I could hear something a teenager says today, write it in a book, and by the time that book is published, the language could have changed again. I try to listen, to pay attention to what's important for whatever audience I'm writing for - but what's more important is to be respectful of the challenges they're facing and tell a story with characters they will identify with.

To try to protect children from the reality of the world makes them vulnerable.

What does the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award mean to you?

- It means that my work has been recognized and lifted to a height that I could never have imagined. Astrid Lindgren herself is a superhero of children's literature, both in terms of the joy she's brought to children around the world with her stories, but also how she used her visibility to advocate for children around the world. To be honored with a memorial in her name is the greatest honor I've had, and will ever have. There's nothing beyond this.

Tell me about your creative process! Do you have the whole story figured out before you start, or do you just sit down with a blank sheet of paper and start writing?

- It depends. When I'm writing teenager books that are set in the world of today, I do a little bit of research, but not too much. Usually, I identify something that teenagers are struggling with and begin to think about my characters. When I can hear the voices of the characters, I do a very rough draft with scenes and dialogues. After a couple hundred pages, it's all a terrible, terrible mess. But it gives me something that I can work on and from there I start to figure out the plot.

- My historical fiction is very different. I will spend a couple of years researching the time, place and historical events that my characters will experience. Then I figure out who my characters are and how these historical events affect their lives, and after that I write a detailed plot outline.

The yearning for love and belonging is a recurring theme in your books. How come?

- I think that every child and every teenager feels that in their hearts, that it's a human need. If you're writing about kids or teenagers, and you want to reflect real experience, you have to write about the need and hunger for love and belonging.

Your YA novels are all narrated in the first person. Why did you choose this narrative style?

- There's an immediacy, a certain power, in a first-person narrative, and as a teenager I think it's much easier to understand another person's experiences if the story is told from that person's perspective.

You also write historical fiction. Where does your interest in history come from?

- I think it's because my father was such a good storyteller. Parts of his family were Irish and hearing his family stories, and understanding how they tied into American history, was really interesting to me. I also love gossip, I'm a very nosy person, so finding out about what was going on in people's lives back in the day is a lot of fun. And I think storytelling is a much more effective way of telling history than making children memorize dates of battles.

Seeds of America Trilogy: Chains, Forge, Ashes ( Atheneum, 2008-2016).

What do you do if you get writer's block?

- Writer's block is always a sign that I need to exercise. That it's time to go for a walk or a run, or to ride my bike. If I move my body, my mind starts to flow again!

Why is literature for children and young people important?

- Because children are more important than adults! I believe that every generation tries to make it better for the generation that follows and to prepare our children for the world that they will inherit. Giving them the best stories is a way of doing that.

What do you like to read yourself?

- I read a lot of Scandinavian noir mysteries. Especially by Danish authors, since I love Denmark and miss living there. The murders are scary of course, but a good author creates characters that you want to be friends with, and the books give you a little glimpse into what it's like to live in a certain place. It's a great way to travel in your imagination, and much cheaper - especially if you borrow the books from the library!

Lastly, do you have a favorite Astrid Lindgren character?

- Pippi. Why? Because I want to be Pippi when I grow up!

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"Writing helps me make sense of the world"

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What were you doing when you received the phone call from the jury? - I was revising chapter 14 of my new book. I saw that the call was coming from Sweden and I was going to ignore it, because I don't know anybody who lives there.

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Author's website

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Ann Napolitano’s novel, Hello Beautiful, was published by Dial Press in March 2023 and was an instant New York Times bestseller and the 100th Oprah Book Club pick. The novel will be published by Viking Penguin in the United Kingdom in July 2023, and currently has twenty-seven international publisher…

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The Spokane Tribe of Indians ancestors inhabited much of northeastern Washington which consisted of approximately 3 million acres. At times they extended their hunting, fishing, and gathering grounds into Idaho and Montana. They are one of the Interior Salish speaking tribes, others include: the Coeur d' Alene, Kalispel, Colville, San Poil, Nespelem, Okanagan, Lakes, the Shuswap of Canada and the Pend Oreille and Salish of the Flathead reservation.

Spokane ancestors were a river people, living a semi-nomadic way of life hunting, fishing, and gathering all creator had made available to them. Living along the banks of the Spokane and Columbia rivers and scattered up the tributaries. Their primary diet consisted of what was taken from the water ways in the form of salmon, steelhead, eel, and shellfish which made up 60% of their diet.

In 1858, with no treaty established or adequate communications from the Federal Government, the Spokane's defended their families and country as U.S. soldiers marched through their country.

In 1881, President Rutherford B. Hayes formerly established the Spokane Indian Reservation of approximately 154,602 land acres known as Chief Lot's reservation.

In 1887, the Upper and Middle Spokanes signed an Agreement to move to the Coeur d'Alene, Jocko (Flathead) or Colville reservations; ultimately some did move to the Spokane reservation.

In 1951, the Spokane Tribe officially became one of 574 recognized tribal governments within the United States following the passage of their formal Constitution that governs them today.

Today the Spokane Tribe of Indians primary government operations are located in Wellpinit Washington with a citizen population of approximately 2,900 enrolled members.

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The Spokane Tribe of Indians ancestors inhabited much of northeastern Washington which consisted of approximately 3 million acres. At times they extended their hunting, fishing, and gathering grounds into Idaho and Montana. They are one of the Interior Salish speaking tribes, others include: the Coeur d' Alene, Kalispel, Colville, San Poil, Nespelem, Okanagan, Lakes, the Shuswap of Canada and the Pend Oreille and Salish of the Flathead reservation.

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Northwest Profiles: Spokane Tribe Culture Week

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Spokane Tribe Culture Week | Northwest Profiles (2019) | KSPS PBS

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Two years after the rise of the #MeToo movement, educators continue to grapple with how to deal with writers and artists accused of abuse.

Emily Gowen, a literature instructor at Boston University, had a "provocative conversation" with her students about whether it was appropriate for her to assign works by a writer accused of harassment. Credit... Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times

For Martina Myers, a high school English teacher on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, Sherman Alexie's novel "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" seemed too good to be true: funny, well-crafted and focused on Native American youth.

Her students at Piñon High School, many of whom struggled with substance abuse and mental illness, took to it immediately. They wrote poems in response, on native pride, addiction, self-acceptance and suicide attempts.

So when Ms. Myers learned last year of the allegations of sexual harassment against Mr. Alexie, who issued a statement admitting he had "harmed other people," she felt two waves of betrayal - first for her students and then for herself, a survivor of abuse.

"When the # MeToo movement happened I told my story," Ms. Myers said. She knew some of her students, too, had experienced sexual assault.

But she decided not to tell her class about the accusations against Mr. Alexie. "They thought it was the coolest thing in the world to have that role model; why take that away from them?"

Two years after the #MeToo movement exploded from a social media phenomenon to a national reckoning over harassment and gender discrimination, toppling powerful figures in nearly every industry, many continue to grapple with how to treat the work of men accused of sexual abuse. The issue is especially thorny in high school and college classrooms, where young people can form deep attachments to the writers and artists whose works help shape their worldviews.

Questions have swirled on campus about what to do with certain cultural mainstays: Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby," Chuck Close's "Big Self-Portrait," even Neil deGrasse Tyson's books on astrophysics. Should they be canceled - banished from public engagement like some of their creators? Or should they continue to be studied, only with frank discussions about abuse and harassment?

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Novels and films like Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" and Woody Allen's "Manhattan" are at the center of the debate. Credit... Photos clockwise from upper left: James Nieves/The New York Times; AP Photo; Tony Cenicola/The New York Times; The New York Times; Patricia Wall/The New York Times; United Artists/Getty Images

Savanah Lyon, a theater major at the University of California, San Diego, who graduated in June, racked up more than 20,000 signatures on a petition last year calling on her school to cancel its longstanding "The Films of Woody Allen" course, after allegations that the filmmaker assaulted his adopted daughter. (Mr. Allen has consistently denied the claims.)

For Ms. Lyon, the question of whether to stop studying the works seemed a no-brainer. But the school's academic senate rejected the petition in a statement, citing concerns about free speech.

Canceling a course because its materials are controversial or seen as morally problematic, the senate said, "would undermine both the value of free inquiry and the associated rights of faculty to engage in such inquiry by choosing their course content."

Ms. Lyon was unmoved. "When you teach works like Woody Allen's you're normalizing and romanticizing the culture of abuse he was part of," she said, noting the parallels between accusations against Mr. Allen and the relationships his characters have with younger women in films like " Manhattan." "It's not censorship to be selective when you choose the art you teach."

Educators say that their worries about curriculum changes are more complex than censorship, and wonder whether some perspectives, especially those of authors of color, can be replaced.

Nadia Celis, an associate professor of literature at Bowdoin College, had her "Teaching the Caribbean" class upended when the author Junot Díaz was accused of harassment and unwanted sexual contact with at least two women last year. M.I.T., where Mr. Díaz teaches, cleared him of misconduct after an investigation found no evidence of his wrongdoing, but the accusations prompted intense debate in the literary world.

News reports of the allegations spread the same week Professor Celis's class was discussing Mr. Díaz's novel "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." She had planned for her students to discuss the novel's themes, including toxic masculinity and abuse of power. Suddenly, she said, it seemed those subjects had come to life.

Her students were disheartened. Professor Celis had previously brought Mr. Díaz to campus to address students on navigating professional success as a man of color. Now she felt torn about using his most famous book - and still has not made up her mind about whether to assign it this year.

"I'm convinced that teaching the mind of male domination is important," Professor Celis said. "But now I'm teaching against the book."

As educators like Professor Celis wrestled with questions in the wake of abuse allegations, many readers had already made up their minds. In April 2018, a month after reports of Mr. Alexie's abuses, sales of "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" were down 39 percent compared with the same period the previous year. Sales of his memoir dropped 59 percent that month.

For Mr. Díaz, total print sales of his books in the United States dropped nearly 85 percent in the seven months after the reports against him, according to the market research firm NPD Group. A study of e-book circulation in American public libraries, by the e-book company Overdrive, found that the number of people who checked out Mr. Alexie's 12 e-book titles and Mr. Díaz's five declined in 2018.

Some argue that tossing out works by men accused of abuse creates an opportunity to break up the "old white guys" club that for too long defined school reading lists.

Amy Hungerford, dean of humanities at Yale, who previously taught "The History of the American Novel Since 1945," began her course one semester with a question: "Who's missing from the syllabus?"

The students perused the list of names. Flannery O'Connor had made it. Cormac McCarthy. Toni Morrison.

Amy Hungerford, dean of humanities at Yale, decided after several years of teaching a course on the American novel to remove David Foster Wallace's works from the syllabus. Credit... Monica Jorge for The New York Times

They ventured guesses - John Updike, maybe? - and eventually landed on David Foster Wallace, who died in 2008.

Professor Hungerford had decided after several years of teaching the course to remove Mr. Wallace's works from the syllabus. Her decision was shaped by several factors, she said, including stories of his abusive behavior toward women. The lesson once focused on Mr. Wallace now draws on the work of the graphic novelist Alison Bechdel.

"There's always more to read than you can ever read, and when you're thinking about the opportunity costs on a syllabus, that can certainly be a consideration," Professor Hungerford said.

But others have stuck to their reading lists, sometimes even addressing the moral stakes of their decisions in class.

Emily Gowen, a literature instructor at Boston University, asked her freshmen to read Mr. Díaz's short story "The Cheater's Guide to Love" alongside his essay in The New Yorker about being sexually assaulted as a child. Then she asked whether it was appropriate for her to assign his work in light of the accusations against him.

What ensued, she said, was an "unbelievably provocative discussion."

"I wanted them to feel entitled to question the syllabus, which is this thing students take for granted as neutral even though it's actually loaded," Ms. Gowen said. "I wanted them to know that art is nuanced and complex, and in any artist's life there is going to be something objectionable, but that's not an excuse to close ourselves off from engaging with the art."

Abi Hulick, a sophomore at Boston University, said the conversation served to remind her that the classroom is not a "vacuum" - it is an open environment, subject to all the forces of political and social change. But she also said she might not have wanted to financially support Mr. Díaz by buying his book, and was relieved when the teacher sent out a PDF.

Clare Hayes-Brady, a professor of American Literature at University College Dublin, teaches Mr. Wallace's work with reasoning similar to Ms. Gowen's: No artist's history, she said, is free of controversy.

"Shakespeare abandoned his family. Norman Mailer stabbed his wife," Ms. Hayes-Brady said. "We don't love the people we love because they're morally virtuous." She added, though, that students who found Mr. Wallace's work especially "triggering" were permitted to skip the class conversation on his work, or decline to read it.

Vinny Ramos-Niaves, a junior studying literature at Ball State University, initially questioned his professor Jeff Spanke's decision to assign a book by Mr. Alexie. But after a class conversation that stretched late into the night, he changed his mind.

"The more we talked about him, the more I realized that the whole question of canceling books written by people who aren't great is an important conversation to have," Mr. Ramos-Niaves said. "We wouldn't be able to have that conversation without understanding what the work was."

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Do Works by Men Implicated by #MeToo Belong in the Classroom? (Published 2019)

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Two years after the rise of the #MeToo movement, educators continue to grapple with how to deal with writers and artists accused of abuse. For Martina Myers, a high school English teacher on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, Sherman Alexie's novel "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" seemed too good to be true: funny, well-crafted and focused on Native American youth.

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On his first day in the seventh grade, Sherman Alexie opened up his school-assigned math book and found his mother's maiden name written in it. "I was looking at a 30-year-old math book," he says - and that was the moment he knew that he needed to leave his home.

Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. His mother was one of the few people who could still speak the native language, but she didn't teach it to him. In his new memoir, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, he describes growing up surrounded by poverty, alcoholism and violence.

"I knew - because of my race, and my class, and rural geography ... all these forces that crush all sorts of American kids, crush their hopes and dreams - I knew I had no chance unless I left and went to a better school," he says.

The reservation school, Alexie explains, not only wasn't preparing him for college; it wasn't even preparing him to think about college. Eventually, he found his way to college and became an award-winning writer. He received the PEN/Faulkner Award for his short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and the National Book Award for Young People's Literature for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Alexie says he came of age as a writer during a "golden era" of Native American literature. He remembers a very active period of publishing for dozens of Native American writers all across the country. More recently though, he's seen a "fallow period."

"There was more going on in Native American literature in 1991 than there is now," he says. "I kept making the joke about being 'Indian du jour, and it's been a very long day.' "

He's hoping that, with the emergence of new writers, some of whom he's taught and mentored, the sun is setting on that very long day.

"I really hope that like 10 or 12 Native writers, fiction writers, non-fiction writers, really launch into the national consciousness ..." he says. "So I don't have to answer all the questions, so I don't have to get invited to all the conferences. Share the burden of being a public figure Indian! Come on, people! Hurry up, finish your books!"

Interview Highlights

On the legacy of a very difficult childhood
I've been sober now for 26 years, but I am bi-polar, I do have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. A recent study from Johns Hopkins studying reservations found that Indian children on reservations have the same rate of PTSD as combat veterans. So I imagine if they did that study in poor white communities or other poor minority communities they'd find the same sort of numbers.
On being bullied as a kid
When you grow up in a warrior culture, an extremely masculine culture, tears can be seen as a sign of weakness. ... Any surrender, any conceding of anything can also be seen as a sign of weakness. I've always been a rather androgynous, emotional person, so my emotional state, my androgyny - I was more androgynous as a youth than now - but I think all of that combined to make me a target.

It wasn't just the influence of tribal cultures, it was the assimilation into fundamentalist Christianity, which is even more warrior culture, even more honor culture, and even more suspicious of difference. So I was getting bombarded not only by the more fundamentalist aspects of my tribe, but the more fundamentalist aspects of our assimilation into Christianity. So that was going on all around us, and, in fact, in second grade we had this ex-nun teacher who put us into stress positions as torture.
On learning that his mother was conceived by rape
She told me that in my teen years as I was going to school off the reservation, as I was preparing for a life off the reservation, as I was preparing to become this person I am now. Looking back, I think it was my mother's highly dysfunctional way to tell me, to warn me, about what a man can be ... hoping that I would become a good man, a man who treated women with respect. A man who honored women and their power, and a man who would not become a criminal. I think it was her highly dysfunctional version of the sex talk.
On the book's title, taken from the Dusty Springfield song
My mom sang a lot and she was always singing the songs on the radio. ... Music filled my childhood, as it does with a whole bunch of folks. So I looked at my birth year and I thought, "What songs would my mother have been singing in my birth year?"

I looked through the songs and I hit on Dusty Springfield's song ["You Don't Have to Say You Love Me"], which of course I've heard, everybody's heard, everybody knows. Somebody called that the most heartbreaking love song of all time, and I don't disagree. ... I mean, sitting here right now I can't remember a specific instance of [my mother] saying "I love you." Nothing is coming to mind, and not from my father either.
On being influenced by white medical professionals as a child

I was imprinted by white college graduates, I was like a little duckling following these white doctors and nurses who were wondering, 'What's this strange feathered creature following me?'

I had brain surgery when I was a kid, and I spent most of my first seven years of my life off the reservation, in and out of hospitals, for speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, so it ended up being as a toddler that my primary peer group was white, adult doctors, nurses, social workers, therapists, nuns, priests at the Catholic hospitals, so you become who you're with.

So in those early formative years, I was primarily influenced by all these obsessive-compulsive workaholic white people who had gone to college. So I was imprinted by white college graduates, I was like a little duckling following these white doctors and nurses who were wondering, "What's this strange feathered creature following me?"

So at the time, I was being raised by my native family, of course, but I was being influenced by them, but I was also being influenced by white folks in a way that natives of my generation on my reservation did not receive then. I was being given so much kindness and care. I was being taken care of in a way by white folks that natives on my reservation of my generation were not.
On the moment he woke up after a recent brain surgery
It's been, I guess, 19 months since surgery, and whenever I even ponder that question, as I am pondering it now, I start to cry. Waking up after surgery is the greatest moment of my life. It made me realize despite all the trauma, despite all my past and current mental illnesses, despite any pain that I have, that my life as I've constructed, as it has been constructed around me and for me, is something amazing, and I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful to be an indigenous man married to an indigenous woman with indigenous children in 21st-century United States. I am happy to be here, despite everything. That feeling has made me a slightly different person.
Radio producers Lauren Krenzel and Thea Chaloner and Web producers Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey contributed to this story.

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Sherman Alexie Says He's Been 'Indian Du Jour' For A 'Very Long Day'

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Alexie is excited for a new generation of Native American writers to come on the scene, "so I don't have to answer all the questions," he says. His new memoir is You Don't Have to Say You Love Me.

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Autism Spectrum Disorders - HelpGuide.org

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An easy-to-understand guide to autism spectrum disorders, including common symptoms.

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Autism Spectrum Disorders

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third of the way through Mark Haddon's new novel, The Porpoise, a character succumbs to a failing heart. Haddon, who spent his boyhood reading science books rather than children's stories, has a particular nerdish fascination with how such things work, so the precise manner of this man's demise is described over a page and a half, starting with the calcified lumps of cholesterol that have narrowed his arteries, and ending at the moment when the wall between the heart's four chambers "is thin and ballooning and becoming weaker ... until, at last, the flesh tears and there are no longer four chambers, only one wrecked vessel of twitching flesh in which the blood pools and squelches".

Haddon himself has recently escaped a similar fate. In February - long after the novel was finished - he was pulled into hospital for a double heart bypass. Plus, he adds punctiliously, "the redirection of a left internal mammary artery on to my coronary artery". (He has now read two books about heart surgery, and jokes: "I could have a good crack at it myself.") Unlike his utterly dissipated character, Haddon, at 56, is a physically fit vegetarian, whose only symptom was something amiss on his regular runs. "I couldn't run up big hills, then small hills, without stopping. It wasn't that I was exhausted. I was exhausted for a minute, and I'd have to stop, but then I could go again." He mentioned it to his GP, who sent him for a scan. "They said: 'Get in here, quickly.' I could have been that man who just keels over by the frozen fish in Sainsbury's."

The recovery from such an operation is long and slow. One wouldn't know it from his energetic, incisive conversation, but he mentions a kind of "mental fog" as he gradually heals. "One of the hard things about this operation is that I can't write, I can't paint." Making art has always been as necessary to him as writing words; he has a visual, spatial imagination - he might redraw an Ordnance Survey map to learn the details of a novel's setting - and always knows the minutest details of the buildings in which he places his action.

The Porpoise is a departure for Haddon. His first novel written for adults, the wildly popular The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time(2003), was, in one sense at least, a suburban family drama, set between Swindon and north-west London, covering a timespan of a few days. His 2006 novel, A Spot of Bother, was a family drama set in Peterborough; The Red House (2012) was a family drama set in a holiday house on the Welsh-English border. In other senses, it is true, the books were very different from each other; but their settings and dramatis personae echoed, however distantly, Haddon's own identity as "a straight white middle-aged man who grew up in the stultifying monoculture of Northampton in the 1960s", as he puts it. (Haddon's father left school at 16, but later trained as an architect. He then "made quite a lot of money specifically designing abattoirs", so that Haddon was sent to boarding school before studying English at Oxford.)

Melbourne Theatre Company's adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. Photograph: Ralf Brinkhoff

The Porpoise, by contrast, is quite different, though it is also a family drama, among other things. It is set in the present, and in a not-quite-fixable past. And it races across the oceans: it is a book of thrilling, salt‑caked adventures that scintillate like sunlight on the surface of the sea. There are plagues and famines and sword fights with not-quite human adversaries. There are desperate escapes and terrible family separations and dramatic recognitions. It is a breathless, delightful, utterly absorbing read. It is, in fact, a reworking of Pericles, which is, by a weird coincidence, also an important reference in Ali Smith's new novel - or perhaps not so weird in these times of ours, given the play's particular material of loss and seaborne disaster and exile.

"Yes: I finally crossed the wire into the wild," says Haddon. "I've always wanted to write a big novel but found I couldn't." What changed, he said, was writing short stories, some of which are collected in The Pier Falls (2016). "With short stories you are allowed to take risks - you think, 'I'll set this one in space, why not? I might waste a month of my time but I'm not going to waste two years of my time.'" His agent remarked that he was writing short stories in which everything happened, and novels in which nothing happened. What if he found a way to put "events, real events" in a novel?

I always want to get to the weird zone - the place where magic can happen believably

At the same time he was considering how to write "about this sprawling, diverse - I almost said fissiparous - society. How do you write about the big subjects, particularly without cultural appropriation? How do you write about exile, about not belonging, about oppression, about the stuff that literature has always been about? If you are writing contemporary realism you have to encroach upon other people's experiences, and sometimes that feels OK - and sometimes it feels quite queasy and inappropriate. I needed to find another idiom, another space in which I could have the freedom to talk about the big themes."

Plus, he says, he wanted to do more with the endlessly capacious, flexible form that is the novel. "It was Sean O'Brien, I think, talking about poetry, who asked how you move from the here and now to what he called 'the weird zone'. I always want to get to the weird zone - the place where magic can happen believably. I'm not talking about children's books or science fiction or fantasy but that numinous thing, that sense that there is something more. And with a novel you can do crazy shit. If you can hold the reader's hand and make them feel safe you can take them anywhere." He adds: "I thought to myself: 'If I'm going to write another novel about a family, particularly one about another lower-middle-class family from Swindon, it's a bit like having the Millennium Falcon but only using it for going to Sainsbury's. I thought: 'I want to know what all these knobs and levers do.'"

Well, that's one way of looking at it, he says. "Writers often fall into the trap of sounding like we had the whole thing mapped and just sort of brought it to fruition." In more mechanistic terms: he had been invited by Hogarth Press some years ago to contribute to a series of novelisations of Shakespeare. The terms of the project hadn't felt quite right, but the notion kept niggling at him, and in time he landed on Pericles (which is in fact not entirely Shakespeare, in that the first nine scenes were probably by the victualler and pimp, George Wilkins). In the first scene of that play, the hero visits the court of Antioch looking to win the hand of the king's daughter. But the king has become obsessed with the princess, "and her to incest did provoke". This serves only to get the plot going: she has no name, and only two lines. But there was a gap in the story into which Haddon felt he could write. And also an injustice to correct: this was a story of rape, not "incest", as he says.

Haddon reached a mass readership with The Curious Incident, a kind of whodunnit (but also a novel of manners) narrated by a teenager called Christopher, who describes himself as having "behavioural difficulties". (These "difficulties" chime with Asperger's syndrome - though the phrase is never used in the novel.) It has sold 10m copies, and has been adapted into a thrilling drama by playwright Simon Stephens, which has toured internationally. What most readers perhaps did not realise was that Haddon, by the time it was published, had been writing for nearly 20 years - mostly children's books, many of which he also illustrated. There had also been a few acclaimed TV dramas. And no fewer than five novels for adults that he threw away. (He is a brutal discarder and destroyer and editor, "which is a polite way of saying I write dreadful first drafts, which of course no one will see".) I wonder: did The Curious Incident feel like a vindication of a long and hard apprenticeship, or a lottery win?

He laughs, and tells me about a vivid memory that he and his wife share (he is married to English don Dr Sos Eltis, who works on her laptop in the garden under the wisteria while Haddon and I talk inside). They were walking on Shotover, the hill near Oxford, just after his agent took on the book. He told her that if it sold 5,000 copies he would be delighted. "I know it's a lottery win, but I can see, looking back, that there were factors that helped make it so popular, though they were never part of my plan. One of the things that made it globally successful was that it is not tied into the English language. The way Christopher talks can be lifted up and placed in another language and it loses almost nothing - because Christopher is not interested in the texture of words, the arrangement of words."

That book has, of course, given Haddon the kind of financial independence that most literary novelists can only dream of. (This is translated into a comfortable though unostentatious household.) "I've talked to other artists who've had a real success. From the outside that seems very satisfying and fulfilling, but it gives you absolutely nothing to do when you wake up the next morning. You still have to create something to get you through to lunchtime, and the fact that you have done something before is sort of neither here nor there. In fact, for a lot of people it makes it harder," he says.

The Curious Incident is "there the whole time. It's like a gold-plated ball and chain". It could be a full-time job, being its author, and, he says, "when I took a vow not to do any more Curious-related events my head was suddenly filled with light and space again" - though it's difficult, putting it aside, because he doesn't want to offend readers who still write him very touching and personal letters.

On a certain level, the downside, he says, "is that I've not been in a position where I've had to write a book to pay the rent. Of course, the upside is also that I don't have to write a book to pay the rent. I need to find a compulsion to write." That compulsion needs to be strong: writing is hard, "like wading through quicksand, or struggling through a forest by night". But with The Porpoise, he found that need. "It felt necessary. In my own small world, it felt necessary."

The Porpoise is published by Chatto & Windus (£18.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p on all online orders over £15.

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Mark Haddon: 'Curious Incident was like a gold-plated ball and chain'

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third of the way through Mark Haddon's new novel, The Porpoise, a character succumbs to a failing heart.

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Laurie Halse Anderson | Mad Woman in the Forest

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Laurie Halse Anderson is the New York Times-bestselling author who writes for kids of all ages.

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Harper Lee, Author of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ Dies at 89 (Published 2016)

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Ms. Lee’s novel about racial injustice in a small Alabama town became one of the most beloved works of fiction ever written by an American.

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Photos of Alabama during the Great Depression

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Photos of Alabama during the Great Depression

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The Great Depression, which took place during the years 1929-1939, began shortly after the stock market crash of October 1929. In 1933, as many as 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half of the United States' banks had failed. During this horrible time in history, relief and reform measures were put into place by President Roosevelt. Unfortunately, the economy didn't fully turn around until after 1939, when World War II began.

Listed below are 20 interesting photos that were captured in Alabama during the Great Depression. These photos show what life was truly like back then.

What do you think of these photos? Feel free to share your thoughts below!

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20 Rare Photos Taken In Alabama During The Great Depression

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The Great Depression, which took place during the years 1929-1939, began shortly after the stock market crash of October 1929. In 1933, as many as 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half of the United States' banks had failed. During this horrible time in history, relief and reform measures were put into place by President Roosevelt.

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King's was a grammar school in the literal meaning of the term. The main focus of study was Latin grammar, the language of the church. While there were a few other subjects on offer, all were intended solely to prepare students for religious work, not creative thinking or academic engagement. There was music for religious services, astronomy and mathematics to set and interpret the church calendar, and law to prepare students for administrative roles in the church.

Similarly, when Eton was founded in the 15th century by Henry VI, it was a charity school intended to provide free education to seventy boys. As Sir Henry Lyte wrote in his history of the school published in 1877, Eton reflected a renewed interest in the dissemination of knowledge, and that "a movement in popular education had set in." He writes that the foundation of the school "is also important as marking a turning-point in the struggle between the regular and the secular clergy. During the middle ages the monasteries had been the principle seats of education in England, but their inefficiency had become notorious." Lyte didn't see it, perhaps, but it wasn't so much a question of quality than it was a changing view toward the goal of education. The monasteries produced religious leaders, though the founders of Eton wanted instead to supply the universities with "scholars from a great grammar-school." Ones that, in turn, would advance to positions of leadership within business and the military rather than the church.

That said, life at the school, by today's standards, can seem strikingly monastic. Students were roused at 5 a.m., chanted prayers while they dressed, and were at their lessons by 6 a.m. They had two meals every day except Friday, when they weren't fed at all. Lessons ended at 8 p.m. when all students went to bed.

When William Shakespeare attended King's New School in Stratford, the school was open to all boys. There was no tuition. The only requirement for admission was the ability to read and write. "Pupils sat on hard wooden benches from six in the morning to five or six in the evening," writes Bill Bryson, "with only two short pauses for refreshment, six days a week. ... For much of the year they can hardly have seen daylight." The school was, for the time, one of the best in the country. There Shakespeare learned Latin grammar and rhetoric ("one of the principle texts of the day," writes Bryson, "taught pupils 150 different was of saying 'Thank you for your letter' in Latin") and little else. "Whatever mathematics, history, or geography Shakespeare knew, he almost certainly didn't learn it at grammar school."

However daunting the experience may have been, the early boarding schools met the needs for which they were created, namely to educate boys into positions of religious leadership within a society that was organized, socially and politically, around religious life.

Illustration from A History of Eton College 1440-1875, by Sir Henry Churchill Maxwell Lyte. When the history was published in 1877, Eton had been operating as a boarding school for more than four centuries.

As society changed, so did the schools. At the time of the Reformation schools were removed from the authority of the church, marking an abrupt change in how education was conducted, and what it was intended to do. The Reformation coincided with (if not directly caused by) a decline in feudalism and a rise in nationalism, common law, and printed books.

Grammar schools soon reflected all of that, adopting new curricula and adjusting admissions in order to produce the human resources needed in post-Reformation England, one increasingly organized around the demands of a market economy. The result was the development in the sixteenth century of an educational curriculum based in humanism and a formulation of the liberal arts as we think of them today. The goal of education was to prepare free people for active roles in civic life. Debate, criminal law, logic and rhetoric were taught intensively for the first time. Math and geometry, once taught for the purposes of calendar making, were now taught also for the purposes of engineering and the maintenance of civic works. That kind of curriculum-liberal arts education grounded in classical languages and literature-persisted throughout Europe and North America well into the 20th century. While there has been a recent proliferation of alternative curricula, the foundation of education of North America still reflects those innovations undertaken in the 16th century. Often unwittingly, many of the alternative approaches do as well.

Eton, founded in the 15th century by Henry VI.

Imagining a better world

As Britain moved into the age of empire and industry, schools continued to evolve. By the 18th century-in response to Britain's geographic and economic growth-students were learning modern languages, political leadership, military theory, and commerce. When Thomas Hughes wrote Tom Brown's School Days in the 1830s, he used Rugby School as the setting, a school that his readers would have seen as strikingly modern. As he admitted at the time, Hughes created the characters of Tom and Dr. Arnold to illustrate how to live a good life and, by analogy, how to build a great nation. All the classic elements of the boarding school novel were there: students mentoring each other, a strong and empathetic teacher, sports and, inevitably, bullying and corporal punishment. With the help of friends and the advice of Dr. Arnold, Tom defeats the bully and becomes a mentor himself. He doesn't cheat on homework, he plays cricket, and life goes on.

What would have struck early readers aren't the things that strike us today. Corporal punishment, for example, would have seemed familiar, and not at all specific to boarding school. What also would have struck them were the educational reforms that Dr. Arnold brought to the school. What would have struck them were the educational reforms that Dr. Arnold brought to the school. Rugby wasn't the King's School, but something entirely different. Rugby was an example of a modern school addressing the needs of students in a modern world. Boys were encouraged to follow their desires, to think and act as individuals, and to choose their own path into religious, secular, or military life. That was big. Students, remarkably, were presented with options, choice, and an unprecedented range of individual autonomy.

Of course, there was also a dark side. While Hughes worked to show what boarding school could be, Dickens, as in Nicholas Nickleby, intended to show what it really was, exposing the faults that he found there. While writing the novel Dickens toured boarding schools, an experience that informed the fictional Dotheboys Hall, the boarding school for unwanted children that Nicholas attends. As cruel and abusive as the schoolmaster there may be, it seems that Dickens didn't have to do much when creating the character-Mr. Squeers, even down to the wording of his business card, is a faithful portrait of William Shaw, a schoolmaster that Dickens had met. Not long after that meeting, Shaw was sued for blinding one of his students through physical abuse, malnourishment and neglect. Notes from the court case describe Shaw's school, and the similarity between it and Dotheboys is striking.

The backbone of empire

Both Hughes and Dickens were writing at a time of intense change, both in England and the world. Indeed, it was change, specifically, that they were writing about. There was a significant rise in literacy, literature, and scientific inquiry. Schools were becoming more secular. There was a growing sense of how an individual might participate within society, and a greater awareness of the power of independent thinking.

During 1800s boarding schools cemented an association with the British ruling class, trading the religious focus for a military one. Sons of officers and administrators of the Empire attended boarding school while their parents fulfilled political and military postings overseas. The focus of education was diplomacy for the upper classes, and military life for those of lesser stature. Rudyard Kipling was an example of the former. He attended United Services College while his parents were stationed in India, an experience he wrote about in the novel Stalky & Co. Like Kipling himself, Stalky was educated to become part of the imperial machine. And he does. At the end of the book, fresh from that education, he is shown leading troops in India.

In life, as in fiction, boarding schools were part of the backbone of the empire, educating its military officers, senior clerics, lawyers, and administrators. They used the means that were popular for the time. Ben MacIntyre writes that Durnford School "epitomized the strange British faith in bad food, plenty of Latin and beatings from an early age." At the school "there was no fresh fruit, no toilets with doors, no restraint on bullying, and no possibility of escape. Today such an institution would be illegal; in 1925 it was considered 'character-forming.'"

School practices reflected a popular belief in social Darwinism-survival of the fittest-and that academic, moral, and physical strength were gained through challenge and adversity. Strict discipline, discomfort, even bullying was considered a necessary experience in the progress of moral and physical development. Royals experienced these things, too, not just students who came from poor families or who attended sub-standard schools. Thankfully, over the course of the 20th century, all of that would change.

Boarding in Canada

"What people teach their young is often what they think is most important. And so what people teach their children ... in school gives us a very good sense of what the values of society are. What is it that you would like your children to learn? What is it that you'd like the next generation to learn?"

-Margaret MacMillan

The oldest boarding school in Canada, King's Collegiate School (now King's-Edgehill School), in Windsor, Ontario, was founded by United Empire Loyalists in 1788. It was given royal assent by King George III the following year, the first instance that honour was bestowed outside Britain. Beginning with just 12 boys in a private home near Windsor, Nova Scotia, the school quickly set an educational standard for the region and, later, the country. It continues to hold a place in the national consciousness today. Because of the age and importance of the buildings, King's College is a National Historic Site, a designation it has held since 1923.

King's was created at moment of heightened political anxiety in the wake of the American Revolution. While there were schools in New York and New England, there were none in the British colonies that remained after American independence. The initial goal of the school was to prevent young men from traveling abroad to receive an education, men that would be needed to stay to administer and defend the colonies. While the school remained small, its alumni took prominent roles in military, legal, religious, and political life (including two fathers of Confederation).

King's set the tone for other boarding schools that would be created in the British Empire outside of the UK. They were established so that the children of British ex-patriots could receive an authentically British education, as well as to retain and augment the human resources required to maintain the colonies. Schools throughout the commonwealth were organized in the same manner as their British counterparts-there were houses and headmasters, forms and terms-and reflected the values of Victorian England. The educational environment was much as we might imagine: high brow, strict, and reflective of all the class distinctions of the age. Leadership was an important topic, in part because it was of prime interest to many of the political leaders who sent their children to board. Further, the benefits were unequivocal-merely having gone to boarding school, regardless of any academic achievement there, was often considered a reasonable prerequisite to positions of leadership in business and political life.

Many of the best-known Canadian schools were founded in the late 19th century: Pickering College, 1842; Bishop Strachan School, 1867; Stanstead College, 1872; Ashbury College, 1891; St. Andrew's College, 1899. Life there, at least in the early days, was spartan and challenging in ways that no boarding school is today. At Upper Canada College, Frederick Hutt, a student in the 1830s, wrote to his brother, "I hope you will send plenty of nuts and cakes as I can hardly subsist on what we get."

Ted Rogers, founder of Rogers Communication, went to board when he was seven. Having had a nanny at home, he recalled that "I went from having somebody brushing my teeth for me to being caned if my teeth weren't clean enough. There's nothing wrong with that, but it was a bit of a shock." He later described the school as his "a surrogate father" in the absence of his own father, who had passed away prior to his enrolment.

There was a strong association with the military, something that was still very prominent when Rogers arrived. The Cadet Corps of Upper Canada College was begun in 1869, and through its 127-year history it remained an integral part of school life. Students took part in regular drills and exercises, including those with active rounds. Boys were expected be prepared for deployment at any time, as occasionally they were. During the Fenian Raids of 1866 UCC students were mobilized to guard military buildings and the port in Toronto.

The cadet program was an expression of the spirit of volunteerism and the Victorian militia movement, and it maintained an ongoing association with the national military. Between 1875 and 1937 UCC produced six commanding officers of The Queen's Own Rifles. During WWI, 1,089 volunteered for military service, and 176 gave their lives. In 1919, membership in the corps became compulsory for all students. None of this was unique to a particular to UCC school, with boarding schools and many public schools following suit. Many cadet corps remained active into the 1960s and 70s.

In time, however, the cadet programs began to feel less relevant, more relics of an earlier time. Which indeed they were, especially when real rifles were replaced with wooden ones, or when real training evolved into a kind of pantomime of military training, and when the relationship with the military became less explicit. At UCC the corps was formally retired in 1987, one of last of its kind in Canada. (Two schools, St. Andrews College and Bishop's College School have active cadet corps, though for the most part the programs have evolved, becoming more akin to outdoor education programs than military.)

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A Brief History of Boarding School: UK and Canada

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King's was a grammar school in the literal meaning of the term. The main focus of study was Latin grammar, the language of the church. While there were a few other subjects on offer, all were intended solely to prepare students for religious work, not creative thinking or academic engagement.

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Interview w/ Mackenzi Lee | The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

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Interview w/ Mackenzi Lee | The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

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A short history of LGBT rights in the UK

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A short history of LGBT rights in the UK

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A short history of LGBT rights in the UK

This article traces the journey of the LGBT community from 1533 to today, looking at the battles for equality that were fought and legislative changes made.

The Buggery Act of 1533, passed by Parliament during the reign of Henry VIII, is the first time in law that male homosexuality was targeted for persecution in the UK. Completely outlawing sodomy in Britain - and by extension what would become the entire British Empire - convictions were punishable by death.

The Buggery Act 1533

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Convictions under the Buggery Act 1533 were punishable by death.

It was not until 1861 with the passing of the Offences Against the Person Act, that the death penalty was abolished for acts of sodomy - instead being made punishable by a minimum of 10 years imprisonment.

The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 however, went a step further once again, making any male homosexual act illegal - whether or not a witness was present - meaning that even acts committed in private could be prosecuted. Often a letter expressing terms of affection between two men was all that was required to bring a prosecution. The legislation was so ambiguously worded that it became known as the 'Blackmailer's Charter', and in 1895, Oscar Wilde fell victim.

The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885

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The Criminal Law Amendment Act was used to send Oscar Wilde to prison in 1895.

Female homosexuality was never explicitly targeted by any legislation. Although discussed for the first time in Parliament in 1921 with a view to introducing discriminatory legislation (to become the Criminal Law Amendment Bill 1921), this ultimately failed when both the House of Commons and House of Lords rejected it due to the fear a law would draw attention and encourage women to explore homosexuality. It was also assumed that lesbianism occurred in an extremely small pocket of the female population.

In the post-war period, transgender identities started to become visible. In 1946 Michael Dillon published Self: A Study in Endocrinology. The book, which in contemporary terms could be described as an autobiography of the first transgender man to undergo phalloplasty surgery, recounted Dillon's journey from Laura to Michael, and the surgeries undertaken by pioneering surgeon Sir Harold Gillies. Dillon wrote: 'Where the mind cannot be made to fit the body, the body should be made to fit, approximately at any rate, to the mind.'

In May 1951 Roberta Cowell, a former World War II Spitfire pilot, became the first transgender woman to undergo vaginoplasty surgery in the UK. Cowell continued her career as a racing driver and published her autobiography in 1954.

Meanwhile, a significant rise in arrests and prosecutions of homosexual men were made after World War II. Many were from high rank and held positions within government and national institutions, such as Alan Turing, the cryptographer whose work played a decisive role in the breaking of the Enigma code. This increase in prosecutions called into question the legal system in place for dealing with homosexual acts.

The Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, better known as theWolfenden Report, was published in 1957, three years after the committee first met in September 1954. It was commissioned in response to evidence that homosexuality could not legitimately be regarded as a disease and aimed to bring about change in the current law by making recommendations to the Government. Central to the report findings was that the state should focus on protecting the public, rather than scrutinising people's private lives.

Wolfenden Report, 1957

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The Wolfenden Report recommended that 'homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should be no longer a criminal offence'.

It took 10 years for the Government to implement the Wolfenden Report's recommendations in the Sexual Offences Act 1967. Backed by the Church of England and the House of Lords, the Sexual Offences Act partially legalised same-sex acts in the UK between men over the age of 21 conducted in private. Scotland and Northern Ireland followed suit over a decade later, in 1980 and 1981 respectively. The Sexual Offences Act represented a stepping stone towards equality, but there was still a long way to go.

In 1966 The Beaumont Society was set up to provide information and education to the general public, medical and legal professions on 'transvestism' and encourage research aimed at a fuller understanding. The organisation is now the UK's largest and longest running support group for transgender people and their families.

In the wake of the Stonewall Riots in New York in June 1969 over the treatment of the LGBT community by the police the UK Gay Liberation Front was founded (GLF) in 1970. The GLF fought for the rights of LGBT people, urging them to question the mainstream institutions in UK society which led to their oppression. The GLF protested in solidarity with other oppressed groups and organised the very first Pride march in 1972 which is now an annual event.

Gay Liberation Front Manifesto

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The 1971 Gay Liberation Front Manifesto proclaimed that 'Homosexuals, who have been oppressed by physical violence and by ideological and psychological attacks at every level of social interaction, are at last becoming angry.'

When the GLF disbanded in late 1973 the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE), based in Manchester, led the fight for equality by legal reform. Age of consent equality however, did not come until 2001 in England, Scotland and Wales, and 2009 in Northern Ireland.

The fight for sexual equality however, was far from over. Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, introduced by the Conservative Government under Margaret Thatcher, banned local authorities from 'promoting homosexuality' or 'pretended family relationships', and prohibited councils from funding educational materials and projects perceived to 'promote homosexuality'. The legislation prevented the discussion of LGBT issues and stopped pupils getting the support they needed. Section 28 was repealed in 2003, and Prime Minister David Cameron apologised for the legislation in 2009.

In 2004 the Civil Partnership Act 2004 allowed same-sex couples to legally enter into binding partnerships, similar to marriage. The subsequent Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act 2013 then went further, allowing same-sex couples in England and Wales to marry; Scotland followed suit with the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2014. Northern Ireland enactment the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019, making same-sex marriage legal on 13 January 2020.

The Gender Recognition Act 2004, which came into effect on 4 April 2005, gave trans people full legal recognition of their gender, allowing them to acquire a new birth certificate - although gender options are limited to 'male' or 'female'. Between July and October 2018 the UK Government consulted the public on reforming the Act. As of 1 September 2020 no report from the consultation has been published.

The Equality Act 2010 gave LGBT employees protections from discrimination, harassment and victimisation at work. The legislation brought together existing legislation and added protections for trans workers, solidifying rights granted by the Gender Recognition Act.

The LGBT community continues to fight for equality and social acceptance.

is a Sound Archive and Humanities Reference Specialist at the British Library. Steven co-curated Steven Dryden Gay UK: Love, Law and Liberty (2017, British Library) and led a series of student workshops and public lectures at the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University, USA (2018).

Steven's primary research interest is in the use of language by heritage institutions. His recent work has focused on the cataloguing of gender and sexual minorities in archive and museum catalogues. Steven develops content for the British Library LGBTQ Histories website and has spoken widely across Europe and the UK.

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A Short History of LGBT Rights in the UK | The British Library

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This article traces the journey of the LGBT community from 1533 to today, looking at the battles for equality that were fought and legislative changes made.

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The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue (Montague Sibl…

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Read 19.8k reviews from the world’s largest community for readers. Henry “Monty” Montague was born and bred to be a gentleman, but he was never one to be t…

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"On the Come Up" author Angie Thomas is "living a dream"

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n book publishing, it seems, they still do fairytales. Really not very long ago, Angie Thomas was a secretary to a bishop at a megachurch in Jackson, Mississippi. At nights - and during quiet periods in the day, she furtively admits - she worked on a young adult novel inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. She had previously written a children's book, but hadn't had any interest from agents. "Yeah, I had more than 150 rejections for that one," says Thomas matter-of-factly. Thomas's break came when she cold-contacted a literary agent who was doing a Twitter Q&A. The story speeds up now: the novel became The Hate U Give (), a YA sensation about a 16-year-old girl called Starr who witnesses her friend Khalil being shot by the police and turns to activism. THUG, published in early 2017, went straight into the bestseller chart in the US and stayed there for a year. It was a hit here too, and named overall winner of the 2018 Waterstones children's book prize. It has now sold more than 2m copies globally. Last year, a film adaptation was released, which has been a critical and commercial success.

"Oh, it's definitely surreal," says the 31-year-old Thomas, on the phone from Jackson. "I still can't believe it. It does feel like a dream I'm going to wake up from." Her agent now is one of the 150-plus who turned down her first book. "So I hold that over his head," she says, and giggles.

Now Thomas is back with a follow-up, On the Come Up. Like THUG, it is set in Garden Heights, a fictional inner-city neighbourhood that is deprived and predominantly black. But while her debut was more issue-led, On the Come Up is perhaps more personal to Thomas. The book's protagonist, 16-year-old Bri, is obsessed with hip-hop - as Thomas herself is - and wants to make it as a rapper. When Bri's mother loses her job (as a secretary at a church, as it happens), and the family is faced with running out of food and then eviction, Bri has to fast-track her ambitions.

"When I started the book, I thought about what was the most traumatic thing in my life," says Thomas. "And fortunately for me, it wasn't losing a friend like Starr did, but unfortunately it was that experience of my mom losing her job and my family going into that crisis mode." Thomas was a teenager at the time, being home-schooled because she was experiencing mental health problems brought on by bullying. Her mother, who had been a teacher, oversaw Angie's education and looked after her own sick mother. "Yeah, it was a challenge," Thomas goes on. "We were living off the benefits my grandmother received and, even with that, there were days when we didn't know if we'd have enough food. So this book was definitely from my own experience."

Starr and Bri are both strong, independent characters, but they are also very different. "I compare Bri and Starr to Biggie and Tupac," laughs Thomas. "Without the beef! Tupac was very community-orientated, and that's how Starr is. But Bri, similar to Biggie, she's about making it, she's about seeing her dreams come to life. She's about trying to save her family, and there's nothing wrong with that. So that's where they're different, but they're similar in the fact that they are both powerful young women who know they have voices, and they both understand how they can use those voices to affect an entire generation."

Author Angie Thomas. Photograph: Imani Khayyam/The Observer

Thomas, meanwhile, has become a role model in her own right. The campaign We Need Diverse Books was started after a US study showed that, of the 3,200 children's books published in 2013, only 93 featured black people as the main character. The problem was further highlighted when American schoolgirl Marley Dias attempted to find 1,000 books where the protagonist was a black girl and failed. "When a 12-year-old kid calls you out, you need to change," says Thomas. "And I can see it slowly changing. There's been a shift within the past few months where more than half of the books on the New York Times bestseller list for young adults were by authors of colour featuring main characters of colour, and that's huge."

Thomas certainly knows what it's like to look at the publishing industry and find its walls impenetrable. "Rejection is always hard, and a lot of rejection is really hard," she says. "But what helped me was the community of unpublished authors out there on the internet, so you can connect and you can weep and mourn together. And I always had to remind myself that it only takes one yes to change everything. That's what I tell aspiring writers now. I know writers who had 500 rejections, and more than that - but you just have to keep going and hope that you do get that one yes."

Questions from famous fans

Frank Cottrell-Boyce
Screenwriter and novelist
A story for you - I took THUG with me on a long journey. Was saving the last chapter as a treat. The woman opposite me - as old as me, no way a young adult! - kept eyeing my copy, so I offered it to her while I got on with my work. When we arrived, she looked pleadingly at me. I said: "OK, you can keep it. I'll get another copy." She looked so relieved. She literally could not bring herself to put it down. I think one reason it has appealed to so many people is that despite its darkness, it's a very positive book, full of understanding. We don't do religion in the UK, but I wondered if your faith had played a part in that?
Angie Thomas First of all, that is a beautiful story. It always amazes me when I hear not just of people who connected with the book but people who are willing to share their own copy, because as a reader, I think I'd be too selfish. So thank you for being better than me! But yes, my faith is a huge part of who I am in every single thing that I do. It literally defines me. I tell people: "I love Jesus, but I cuss; thankfully he still loves me." And often, as a Christian, I find myself around people who are like, "Well, why would you want to address something like racism?" But the fact is, especially here in America, Sunday is the most segregated day of the week. And I think it's important for someone like me to speak up on this and to take a stand and hopefully to shed some light on the darkness.

On the Come Up and THUG take place in the same fictional neighbourhood of Garden Heights. Did you always intend on telling new stories from the same universe, and is it something you will do again?
I knew going in that I wanted to do another story in Garden Heights, at least one more, because it was important for me to show that even in a neighbourhood like that, you could have two young ladies whose lives are completely different, whose personalities are completely different. Black girls are already stereotyped so much and put into boxes so much, I never wanted anyone to assume that every single young lady in Garden Heights is like Starr or even like [her half-sister] Kenya. So now we have someone like Bri who is different from both of them. She's her own person. She has her own personality. She has her own struggle.

Someone recently asked me, did I think that Starr and Bri would get along? I think they would have their little clashes every now and then, but they would get along because both of them care deeply about others, and about their families and their community, and they can find common ground on that. It's just they have different approaches to address the things that affect them.

Nikesh Shukla
Author of most recently, The One Who Wrote Destiny, and co-editor of forthcoming The Good Immigrant USA

Give us your top five rappers and why (I think we can assume Tupac is No 1)...
I should have known he'd ask that question! But Lauryn Hill is one for sure. We don't give Lauryn Hill enough props or respect, not just as a woman in hip-hop but just as a talented individual in hip-hop. She's one of the best rappers of all time, and not enough people say that. Biggie for sure. As a Tupac fan, I'm sure people will be like, "How can you say that?" But you have to give respect where it's due: Biggie had the most amazing use of wordplay and his flow was iconic. Then I have to say Kendrick Lamar. He's new and everything, but I have to throw him in because he continues to be himself in an industry that often promotes being someone you're not. And my fifth one, it's either Jay-Z or André 3000, but I'm going to go with André 3000. As a southerner, Outkast was the group for me, and it was always amazing to see some rappers from the south who not only rapped well but they brought a lot of respect to us as a region when it comes to hip-hop. Usually with hip-hop it was always east coast versus west coast and the south was forgotten, but Outkast, they gave us a voice.
Author of My Name Is Leon and the editor of forthcoming Common People: An Anthology of Working Class Writers
Kit de Waal

Where do you see literature, particularly fiction, fitting in to acts of resistance?
If nothing else, fiction has empowered a lot of people in the act of resistance. The Hate U Give, I know, has birthed several young activists and I'm so happy with that, I'm so proud these young people have decided to speak up and speak out on things that concern them. There was one young lady in Texas, it started out with her deciding she was going to speak up for the book when it was challenged by the school district. And that led to her becoming an activist in her own right in other areas. So I think books can empower.

Rudine Sims Bishop [the author and educator] says that books are either mirrors, windows or sliding-glass doors, and that's important in the act of resistance. You need that mirror to see yourself, to know what you can be and know what you are. And then you need that window to see into someone else's life so you can understand what's happening around you in the world that you may not notice at first glance. And you need the sliding-glass door so that you can step into someone else's life and walk in with some empathy and use that empathy to make yourself heard. So yeah, I think books play a huge role in resistance. They play a huge role in opening people's eyes and they're a form of activism in their own right, in the fact that they do empower people and show others the lives of people who may not be like themselves.
Award-winning British YA author of Orangeboy
Patrice Lawrence

I have always known that there are black Americans, because US popular culture - from TV comedies and detective series to pop and hip-hop - have a prominent place in UK culture. Unfortunately, black British people rarely feature in the UK's cultural exports to the US. How do black Americans perceive their UK counterparts, and how can us UK lot boost our profile in the States?
First of all, I love Patrice. And it's interesting, because when I first came to the UK for my book tour in 2017, I told some of the kids back here in Mississippi that I was going, and they were like, "Wait, are there black people over there?" And I'm like, "Gosh! Black people are everywhere!" But the thing is, so often we don't know, we're not told about black people beyond America and Africa. And Americans in general, we tend to be very self-absorbed and don't hear about other communities beyond our own. So it's definitely something that we fail to do.

And, as for black British people to be more visible here in the States, I wish I had the answer. I would say one big thing I hope would happen though is that black British people would become more visible there in the UK. Cos I was talking to some black kids while I was there and they told me that they studied black history of America more than they've studied black history of the UK. And there is black history in the UK. So I think that should be changed, if nothing else.
Poet whose most recent collection is Don't Call Us Dead: Poems
Danez Smith

Is there such a thing as loving your characters for you? If so, how does a love for your characters, or the people they represent, inform how you put them through difficult situations?
I feel like the way I answer that is probably either going to make me seem cruel or heartless. I love Khalil in The Hate U Give and it was heartbreaking for me to do what I do to him. So when he lost his life the way that he did, it breaks my heart just as much as it breaks my readers' hearts. But the intention was that, even though it breaks their heart, maybe then they start thinking about the real-life Khalils, with that same love and empathy and sympathy. So it's definitely intentional for me to love my characters, even when I put them through stuff.

Jason Reynolds

Angie, one of the things writers, specifically writers of colour, often grapple with is the vaporous idea of authenticity, especially when it comes to voice. So, how do you balance writing a voice that feels culturally true without slipping into the clownishly trite?
For me, it's always about balance: being authentic without being over the top. Like slang: do I use slang every now and then? Absolutely. Will I overwhelm my reader with it and overwhelm my dialogue with it? No, absolutely not, because slang terms become outdated quickly, and also that's not how these kids speak. They are not overusing it. So for me, an authentic voice is all about listening to the people around me, listening to the world and listening to language patterns and seeing how people actually talk. And when I write my dialogue I usually say it out loud so I can see if it sounds OK. I find a lot of historic novels that portray the way black people spoke back in the day, they did it over-the-top and they had us sounding very ignorant. And why? Because they had no respect for us as people. So as a writer, my goal is to always have respect for whoever it is that I'm writing about or writing for.

Juno Dawson

You spent a lot of time on Twitter fielding questions about the casting of the film adaptation of The Hate U Give. Is social media, on balance, a blessing or a curse?
Ha! A little of both. It's a blessing because I get to connect with readers and I get to hear stories that I probably didn't hear before. I get to see pictures of kids in the hallways taken by their teachers and they're reading my book on their way to class, or I get to hear from parents who say, "This is the first book my kid has read in forever - thank you." Or I get to hear from the kids themselves who say, "Oh my God, I love this book." But then on the flipside you get the demands that sometimes readers make: "Why did you let them do this?" Or "Don't let them do this." I had to get to the point of recognising that I can't please everyone and I'm OK with that. My job is to simply write the book, tell the stories. The rest is beyond my control.

Amandla Stenberg as Starr in the film adaptation of The Hate U Give. Photograph: Erika Doss

Questions from readers

Did you have a eureka moment where you knew definitively that writing was what you wanted to do? What is your writing process?
Alomohbitters
My eureka moment came while I was writing soap-opera fan fiction! There was this soap opera here in the States called Passions and it was one of the most vacuous to ever exist; they had a witch on there and all these things. But the characters on that show were so rich and there was so much to be explored with them that, as a teenager, I decided to write fan fiction for them and put it up online. So my eureka moment came when I had readers say: "Wow, you're really good at this" or: "Girl, I rushed home when I saw that you had put up another chapter, I had to come home and read it." That really pushed me and I was like: "Wow, well, maybe this is something I can do with my own characters. Maybe I can create these worlds myself, that belong to me."

As for my process, I always try at least to write an outline chart. I don't always stick with the chart 100%, but it's at least a road map and if I make a couple of detours here and there that's OK. I took this from JK Rowling, actually. She did one for the fifth Harry Potter book and put it online: at the top of the chart, she had every character or subplot listed and then on the side she would have the different chapter numbers and that's how she could keep up with what was happening in every single chapter. So that's what I do for my books now. I do a chart. If it works for her, and she's sold all those books, maybe it can work for me!

NWA or Wu-Tang?
Paul Taylor, Dorset
Ohhhh, that's hard for me to answer that. Cos on the one hand, with NWA, they changed hip-hop as you know it - you've got an entire genre of hip-hop and, really, a coast in hip‑hop culture because of NWA. They helped bring west coast hip-hop to popularity. They gave us gangsta rap, but then on the other hand... they gave us gangsta rap. They gave us music that at times demeaned women, they gave us music that at times was destructive for the community when people took it the wrong way or used it a certain way. So it's hard for me to say NWA. I do appreciate anything that they did, but I have to go with Wu-Tang.

Do you see yourself as a political writer or a writer who happens to be political? How do you think Trump's presidency is changing America and what mark do you think it will leave, especially on literature, when he goes?
Gaverne Bennett, London
These days, it's hard to say because politics is such a huge part of my life anyway. But I would say that I'm a writer who is concerned about politics. I would never just say that I only write about social justice issues, because I won't. It's funny, because I tell people: "Mississippi is known for two things: writing and racism." And I happen to be a writer who writes about racism.

For the second part, if nothing else right now, Trump has stained America. He has taken us out of a leadership position in the world. Nobody will listen to us now as a leader or as a beacon of hope for anything because of him and because of his actions and because of the decisions he makes. But I will say, I'm more hopeful now than I was before, because I'm seeing more people who are concerned about politics. We're going to come away from this knowing that we have the ability to change things and that ultimately our government answers to us. So I hope that by the end, when he's out of office, that the world will know that we Americans, the majority of us, don't stand for what he stands for. So definitely, please don't give up on us.

Learning to read and write is "freedom" only if one can find a publisher with contacts for publicity. Eudora Welty, whose writings I adore, got hers through the New Deal programmes. How did you find yours?
Shrimpandgrits
Wow, that's awesome that he or she loves Eudora. My college that I attended is actually across the street from her house, so I would see that every single day. But, for me, my publishing journey actually started with Twitter, of all things. When I was writing The Hate U Give, I was honestly not sure if it was something that would even be published, because if you said Black Lives Matter to 30 different people you may get 30 different responses. But also because publishing, young-adult publishing was so white, I wasn't used to seeing books about black girls and I definitely wasn't seeing books about black girls in situations like this.

So a literary agency held a question-and-answer session on Twitter and I went on and I asked a question. I'm paraphrasing but basically I asked: "Is a book that addresses an issue like this even something that can be published?" And a literary agent by the name of Brooks Sherman responded: "I don't think any topic is off limits for young adult readership. It's just a matter of how you address it." And I was like: "Well, I hope I address it well." And he said: "I'd actually like to read it if that's OK." So I sent it to him and a few months later he signed me as a client. A few months after that, he submitted it to publishers and 13 US publishers fought for the rights to the book. So Twitter is good for something; if nothing else, it found me an agent.

Do you think the world should focus so much on the cultural problems of the US, when really it's just 3% of the population?
GreenlandGyr falcon
No, I don't think that they should. That's a great point. We should not be the centre of attention all the time. I see why [we are], because we are such a powerhouse, but we need to be aware of other countries and what's happening there. It doesn't make sense that you guys have to be subjected to our news maybe sometimes more than your own. So I am so sorry on behalf of America. I am so sorry that our stuff takes up so much air space. I am so sorry that we take up so many headlines.

What advice would you give to your younger self?
Molly Reed, aged 15, Barnes, London
I would tell my younger self to be yourself no matter where you are. In a few years, you're going to be entering university and you are going to ask questions if you're being your authentic self because you're often made to feel you're either too much or not enough. But I promise you, you are enough. You're enough for everywhere you go, for whatever you do. Always know that. And then I would tell my younger self, my 15-year-old self specifically, if you want to write, write for yourself. Whatever it is that you want to do, do it for yourself. Don't do it for the accolades, do it because it's something you love. And then I would tell my 15-year-old self: it's going to be OK. There are days where you wonder if that's true, how you're going to survive all of this stuff. You wonder, will you make it? You just have to hang in there, you have to keep going and if you keep going, I promise you there will be light in the darkness. You can do it!

Aww, you made me tear up!

On the Come Up (Walker Books, £7.99) by Angie Thomas is out 7 February. To order a copy for £7.03 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

Angie Thomas: On the Come Up is at the Southbank Centre, London, Tuesday 12 March, 7pm. Tickets (£15) from southbankcentre.co.uk

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Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give: 'Books play a huge part in resistance'

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The author's young adult novel became a publishing sensation and an acclaimed film. Here, she answers questions from readers and famous fans on activism, social media and coping with rejection

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For rights inquiries, please contact Brooks Sherman of Janklow & Nesbit at bsherman@janklow.com

Short Bio (68 words):

Angie Thomas was born, raised, and still lives in Jackson, Mississippi. A former teen rapper, she holds a BFA in creative writing from Belhaven University. Her award-winning, acclaimed debut novel, The Hate U Give, is a #1 New York Times bestseller and major motion picture from Fox 2000, starring Amandla Stenberg and directed by George Tillman, Jr. Her second novel, On the Come Up, is on sale now.

Long Bio (125 words):

Angie Thomas was born, raised, and still resides in Jackson, Mississippi as indicated by her accent. She is a former teen rapper whose greatest accomplishment was an article about her in Right-On Magazine with a picture included. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from Belhaven University and an unofficial degree in Hip Hop. She can also still rap if needed. She is an inaugural winner of the Walter Dean Myers Grant 2015, awarded by We Need Diverse Books. Her award-winning, acclaimed debut novel, The Hate U Give, is a #1 New York Times bestseller and major motion picture from Fox 2000, starring Amandla Stenberg and directed by George Tillman, Jr. Her second novel, On the Come Up, is on sale now.

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For rights inquiries, please contact Brooks Sherman of Janklow & Nesbit at bsherman@janklow.com Short Bio (68 words): Angie Thomas was born, raised, and still lives in Jackson, Mississippi. A former teen rapper, she holds a BFA in creative writing from Belhaven University.

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THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER - Interview with Stephen Chbosky (Writer/Director)

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Information about Jandy Nelson Childhood

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Information about Jandy Nelson Childhood

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As a Child

I was born in New York, lived outside of the city until I was ten. From that time, I remember these positively bursting purple peonies outside the house that were larger than I was. Always. No matter how big I got, they got bigger. I remember my mother's mad manic love for Madeline and how reading anything else was a subversive act on my part, especially my favourite Harold and the Purple Crayon. I remember worshipping my big noisy brothers, sitting alone in sunny fields, going to Manhattan every weekend to see my dad. It was in this house that my oldest brother, who was and is quite a mad scientist, had pyramids in the basement, just like Uncle Big in Sky. My grandmother also lived in this town, and she, like Gram in my novel, painted lots of green people and lined her walls with them. It's because of her I became a superstitious nut. She taught me to knock wood, throw salt, talk to the dead-discretely, so as to pass as a sane member of society-and the fail-proof method for finding four-leaf clovers in any patch.

I moved to California with my mother when I was twelve and the whole world tipped over. We lived on a canyon and could see a piece of the ocean from our house. We were at the end of the continent, teetering on faulty ground. Light poured out of the sky. I couldn't believe any of it. It was love at first sight and I've remained true to California since. I had incredible English teachers in high school, read fanatically, made lasagnes in a deli window like Lennie in Sky, and somehow decided then I wanted to be a poet, a most practical decision. I think my parents thought I'd grow out of it, but alas.

As an Adult

I went to Cornell University in upstate NY where I studied creative writing and comparative literature, then studied French literature and literary theory in Paris for a year through the Sorbonne, then off to graduate school in poetry at Brown University, and then years and years later, I went to graduate school again, in writing for children and young adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. I love being in school as well as teaching. I'm concocting a plan to go back again, to study art history this time.

I live in San Francisco where I've been a literary agent for thirteen years representing amazing authors writing for adults, but had no idea what was going on in the world of children's literature until I went back to graduate school. I'd never written a word of fiction before that either, only poetry. But in school, I read a ton of YA verse novels and other YA and middle grade novels as well. I was blown away by the vibrancy of voices like Laurie Halse Anderson's, Francesca Lia Block's, Sharon Creech's, by the experimentation going on with form, by the overall urgency of the storytelling. I decided I would try to write a YA novel. I had an idea for a story and an image that wouldn't let me go. The image was of this grief-stricken girl scattering her poems all over a town, the germ for The Sky Is Everywhere. I wanted to write about the intricacies and complexities of grief, and I also wanted to write a first love story-so, a novel in which joy and sorrow cohabitate in very close quarters.

As an Artist

I wrote The Sky Is Everywhere like a banshee, wrote a mess of a first draft in five months, then ten more drafts in the next two years, before sending it out to agents. I was a shut-in, completely lost in the story, obsessed with bringing it to life. What's so odd is that despite the subject matter, writing Sky was the happiest time of my life. I was falling in love with writing fiction so that in itself was a joy. But more importantly, I feel like I discovered over and again by writing the book the same thing Lennie discovered within the book, that grief and love are conjoined and you can't have one without the other, and that somehow love is eternal. I think that's very hopeful and it filled me with hope as I was writing it and discovering it with Lennie.

Things you didn't know about Jandy Nelson

I am the most frightened person on the airplane, without a doubt-that's me there, head between my legs in the crash position, while everyone else is enjoying their lunch.

My favourite book is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez but Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and The Waves are close seconds.

I like very clunky high-heel shoes as well as clunky jewellery. I also suddenly realize I like the word clunky.

I go to many movies in a row-just me and a huge tub of popcorn in the dark. I also really like to look at paintings and swoon. For hours. And out windows.

I love giraffes. Seriously, think they're such a wonder. And rivers, and rainstorms. And super hot weather. Hate spiders--insects profoundly freak me out.

I have a useless superpower-I can catch anything as it's falling, even if I'm looking the other way: wine glasses by their stems, etc. It makes dinner parties very exciting.

I love to be madly, passionately, ridiculously, out-of-my-mind, out-of-my-tree in love. (Though you might have surmised this from reading my novel.)

I believe every day is a miracle.

This quote by John Keats is a favourite: "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of the imagination."

I am just crazy about finger-foods, wish for every meal, a guy would show up with a cocktail tray full of scrumptious appetizers, and actually while we're at it: flutes of champagne!

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I was born in New York, lived outside of the city until I was ten. From that time, I remember these positively bursting purple peonies outside the house that were larger than I was. Always. No matter how big I got, they got bigger.

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Author Jandy Nelson is a crossover artist. Much like a musician who appeals to more than one audience, she started writing books for the Young Adult (YA) crowd - only to discover a huge adult fan base. Both her debut, "The Sky Is Everywhere," and her second best-seller, "I'll Give You the Sun," landed this San Francisco writer on numerous prestigious "best books of the year" lists.
You spent several years as a literary agent. Did you feel like you always had a book in you?
Strangely, not fiction. At 40 years old, I'd never written a word of fiction, only ever poetry, and I pretty much got tricked into writing my first novel "The Sky Is Everywhere" because I thought I was writing a YA verse novel. I just didn't see myself as a fiction writer. But I fell head over heels in love with having this fictional world perpetually occurring alongside the real world. Suddenly, there were all these extra lives squeezed into my one life. It felt like magic.
As a child or teen, which book had the strongest impact on you?
I was a voracious reader as a kid, but kind of an equal opportunity one. There really wasn't young adult literature back then in the Stone Age, except for the work of Judy Blume, S.E. Hinton and J.D. Salinger, all of whom I loved, but I was also obsessed with D.H. Lawrence's novels for some reason, no idea why, maybe all the smoldering passions. I remember stealing pulpy, forbidden books off my mother's shelves like Sydney Sheldon's "The Other Side of Midnight" as well as reading and rereading "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" by Tom Robbins and Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet," which I kept under my pillow for a while. I think reading itself had the strongest impact, the escape of it, but also the treasure hunting for bits and pieces of myself in the words.
Your novels have found crossover appeal with adult readers. Your thoughts on why?
It's glorious and terrifying and maddening and mortifying and exhilarating living in the head of a teenager. Life feels so calamitous/joyful/crazy/tragic/alive at that age when you're experiencing everything - love, loss, sex, death, friendship, betrayal - for the first time. Makes for a kinetic, urgent and wildly emotional reading (and writing) experience.
How do readers react to your characters?
I get some really incredible letters from both teens and adults about the characters. The funniest ones are from kids, usually on the younger side, who want to know in detail what the characters have been doing since the book ended, as if this were knowable, like they're asking after my relatives, not imaginary beings.
How can parents get their teenagers to put down the cellphones and other gadgets and READ?
Me! Please take my phone away! For starters, I suspect it's on us YA authors to write amazing, un-put-downable stories. And perhaps parents can lead by example? Get away from their own screens and have family reading hours or family book clubs or go to the library or bookstore or to see favorite authors with their kids.
We hear you grew up in a superstitious family. Do you have any superstitions regarding your writing routine?
Well, I wrote "I'll Give You the Sun" in a pitch-black room with earplugs in and a sound machine blasting. Years in the dark, like a loon. But maybe that was more weird ritual than superstition. My mother does send me a lot of ribbons for luck that I must (according to her) tape to my computer, which makes it embarrassing to work in a café. Oh, and I have a writing blanket, which is also quite embarrassing now that I've put it in writing. It's very fluffy, more like a pet.
How does the Bay Area inform your work, your ideas?
It informs my work possibly more than anything. The imagined town of Clover, where "The Sky Is Everywhere" takes place, has dramatic Northern California elements: roaring rivers, skyscraping redwoods, thick old-growth forests. That landscape is in the DNA of the Walker family. And it's the same in "I'll Give You the Sun" with the cliffs and surf and redwoods in the imagined town of Lost Cove, where it rains biblically and the fog's so thick at times, everything disappears. In both books, the Northern California landscape is almost a spiritual force in the lives of the characters.
What's next?
I've been working on a multigenerational novel about a Northern California family living in the same hot, dusty, half-magical vineyard town for more than a hundred years.

HER FIVE BOOK PICKS

"There There" by Tommy Orange: (It) blew me away with its prismatic, lyrical storytelling and extraordinary characterization. Just a stunner. So alive.

"We Are Okay" by Nina LaCour: A gorgeous, heart-stirring reverie of a YA novel. There's an intimacy to Nina LaCour's writing that I adore, like she's telling you a novel-length secret.

"Less" by Andrew Sean Greer: I listened to the audio and laughed so hard at times in my car I forgot to go at green lights and ended up finishing it at the supermarket, sobbing down the aisle. It's joyful, poignant and just hilarious.

"I Have Lost My Way" by Gayle Forman: My favorite of Forman's YA novels. A song sung in a round by three distinct characters, who save themselves by saving each other.

"The Friend" by Sigrid Nunez: A brilliant moving rumination on writing, grief and love that pushes the boundaries of what a novel is and surprisingly, centers around an utterly charming, enormous Great Dane.

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YA author Jandy Nelson talks books, passion and cellphones

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Author Jandy Nelson is a crossover artist. Much like a musician who appeals to more than one audience, she started writing books for the Young Adult (YA) crowd - only to discover a huge adult fan base.

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"A blazing, prismatic explosion of color. Ingenious . . . To read it is a coming-of-age experience in itself."

"A WILD, BEAUTIFUL, and profoundly MOVING novel. Jandy Nelson's writing is so ELECTRIC, so ALIVE, her pages practically GLOW IN THE DARK."

-Ransom Riggs, New York Times bestselling author of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and Hollow City

"Jandy Nelson is a RARE, EXPLOSIVE talent. Her prose is VIVID, BREATHTAKING, and DRENCHED IN PASSION, and her stories remind me why WORDS CAN CHANGE THE WORLD."

-Tahereh Mafi, New York Times bestselling author of the Shatter Me series

"An extraordinary book! I've never read anything like it. Lyrical- unique- passionate- magical- tragic- hopeful - Nelson's characters will fly off the page and into your heart."

-Nancy Garden, author of Annie on My Mind

" Magnificent."

-Nova Ren Suma, Author of Imaginary Girls and 17 & Gone

Winner of the 2015 Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature

A 2015 Stonewall Honor Book

Winner of Bank Street's 2015 Josette Frank Book Award

Winner of the NCIBA and the NCBA and the James Cook Award

Winner of Australia's Silver Inky Award

Shortlisted for the UK's Waterstone's Children's Book Prize

YALSA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults

Rainbow List Top Ten 2015

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

A Time Magazine Top Ten YA of the Year (#3)

An NPR Great Reads of the Year

Apple iBooks' Best Teen Fiction of the Year

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year

A Booklist Editor's Choice Book of the Year

An Amazon Best Book of the Year

A Boston Globe Best YA Book of the Year

Five starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, School Library Journal, BCCB, LMC, and a perfect score of 10 from Voya

A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year

A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year

A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year

A Bustle.com Best YA of the Year (#2)

Winner of the 2014 Bookbrowse Award for Best Young Adult Novel

A kobo Best Book of the Year

#1 on Autumn 2014 Indie Next List

Optioned by Warner Brothers with Denise Di Novi and Allison Greenspan to produce

Debuted on New York Times Best Seller List at #8

Tayshas Reading List: Top Ten of the Year

Entertainment Weekly One of Five YA Novels to Watch Out For

Already licensed in 33 countries

One of Apple iBooks Ten Best Novels of September

One of Amazon's Big Fall Books and Best Books of September (the Spotlight Pick of the month)

One of the The Hollywood Reporter's Fall's 10 Buzziest Books

Goodreads top six Best Books of the Month

Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award

Junior Library Guild Selection

Buy I'll Give You the Sun

"A BRILLIANT, PIERCING story."

"Unusually RICH with both INSIGHT and BREATHLESS ROMANCE."

★"This is a PASSIONATE, VULNERABLE, wonderfully complete and IRRESISTIBLE book."

"Those who think young-adult books can't be as LITERARY, RICH, and MATURE as their adult counterparts will be disabused of that notion after reading The Sky Is Everywhere."

"An ADDICTIVE, ROMANTIC, HEARTBREAKING and WISE tale."

-Gayle Forman, New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay.

"An intimate story about coping with loss, Nelson's first novel is tender, romantic, and loaded with passion."

YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults

Numerous Best of the Year Lists including Horn Book Fanfare, Bank Street, Bulletin, ABC New Voices, NPR, Chicago Public Library

Optioned by Warner Brothers with Allison Greenspan and Denise Di Novi to produce.

Starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Voya, BCCB

Indie Next List Top Ten

A Publisher's Weekly Flying Start

Winner of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Award for best teen literature

Published in over 27 countries

Junior Library Guild Selection

Buy The Sky is Everywhere

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"A blazing, prismatic explosion of color. Ingenious . . . To read it is a coming-of-age experience in itself." "A WILD, BEAUTIFUL, and profoundly MOVING novel. Jandy Nelson's writing is so ELECTRIC, so ALIVE, her pages practically GLOW IN THE DARK."

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This article, in stark contrast to the later Tiger Beat-era features, highlights Parker's intelligence and insight rather than his looks and charm, and provides a fascinating look back at the early 1970's.

This is the first time I've read anything about Parker facing the possibility of being drafted to fight in Vietnam. And I don't think a TB writer ever used the word "promiscuous" in an article!

Starring Parker Stevenson

A Separate Peace: 1942 & 1972

Author John Knowles and stars Parker Stevenson and John Heyl talk about then and now

A Separate Peace - John Knowles' modern classic - is as meaningful to today's generation as it was to its own generation. Why? To explore the continuing relevance of the book Ingenue invited the 47-year-old author to take part in a roundtable discussion on the differences between growing up in 1942 and growing up in 1972. Also participating in the discussion are the two 19-year-old stars of the film - John Heyl (Finny), a freshman at Bowdoin College in Maine, and Parker Stevenson (Gene), a sophomore at Princeton. Following is a record of their rap session.

INGENUE: Well, how do you think a sixteen-year-old at Exeter today would look at the sixteen-year-olds of the book?

JOHN: They'd see them as conservative, probably term them uneducated, because they would have so little to offer. A 1942 sixteen-year-old wouldn't have done anything, what could he say?

INGENUE: In the forties, everybody who went to Exeter went directly on to college, didn't they? Mostly Ivy League colleges, too. What's the situation now?

JOHN: In my class, there were twenty-five of us who didn't have any plans for the year after graduation.

KNOWLES: That's a big improvement. You see, young people in my generation were sort of in lockstep, and it wasn't just the forties, either. In the thirties and in the fifties it was the same. No one ever dropped out unless he got sick or got kicked out or. . . Once in a blue moon some student would go to Wyoming for the winter to take care of horses, and we'd think, "What kind of breakdown did he have?"

JOHN: Very. It's more than accepted, it's almost as if people think there's something the matter with you if you go straight on to college. Almost.

Ingenue: In terms of dress, while you were at Exeter, John, and you at Brooks, Parker, were there dress codes that you had to conform to?

Parker: They are certainly on the way out. Toward the very end of my stay at Brooks they started experimenting with relaxing the code and eliminating the coat and tie.

John: That's one thing that will never happen at Exeter. They're really steeped in the tradition of the coat and tie.

Parker: At least you're allowed to wear blue jeans at Exeter! We weren't even allowed to wear blue jeans at Brooks.

Ingenue: What do you think a young person who reads or sees A Separate Peace today can gain from it?

John: As far as I'm concerned, Finny and Gene were in love - not physically but emotionally - and the book shows that there's nothing wrong with that.

Parker: And yet, look what happened to Finny. I think the thing people get out of the book is identification with the process of growing up. It's rather comforting to see that other people do go through this, you know.

John: An incident like Finny's fall from the tree, or something with that emotional impact, must happen to most youth before they really grow up.

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This article, in stark contrast to the later Tiger Beat-era features, highlights Parker's intelligence and insight rather than his looks and charm, and provides a fascinating look back at the early 1970's. This is the first time I've read anything about Parker facing the possibility of being drafted to fight in Vietnam.

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The Classroom | Empowering Students in Their College Journey

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For many modern students and teachers, the clearest vision of a 1940s prep school comes from John Knowles' 1959 novel "A Separate Peace," which is set at a preparatory school in New England during World War 2. Understanding the context of Knowles' novel requires understanding the unique role that prep schools played in American culture of the 1940s.

Preparatory Schools Explained

A "prep school," or preparatory school, is a secondary school in which students live in dorm rooms with their peers rather than returning home at the end of the day --- a "boarding school," as opposed to a "day school." The schooling is intended to prepare students for college by giving them a well-rounded education; in the 1940s, prep schools also promoted physical fitness and well-being as being central to adolescent development.

1940s Preparatory School Elitism

Today, boarding schools are viewed as relatively egalitarian, but for many years they were widely seen as elitist clubs that created a "old boy network" of privileged youth disconnected from the society at large. This view was still prevalent in the 1940s, and didn't really change until toward the end of the decade --- prep school administrators, seeing the national unity brought about by the Second World War, purposefully tried to shun the image of their institutions as closed circles for a privileged elite.

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Prep School Curriculum

Prep schools in the 1940s did little to discourage people from seeing themselves as upper crust and snobbish. Government programs in the 1930s, intended to combat the Great Depression, introduced widespread vocational education --- secondary school became a way to train youth for jobs in engineering and industry. Preparatory schools took a different view, offering classes in philosophy and Latin when many high schools were choosing to prioritize practical skills.

World War 2 and Preparatory Schools

Unlike the view presented in John Knowles' "A Separate Peace," most students at preparatory schools in the 1940s weren't able to escape the reality of World War 2. The schools stressed physical fitness, readying young men to enlist as soon as they graduated. Along with day schools, preparatory boarding schools participated widely in the high school "Victory Corps," which required youths to engage in war-oriented extracurricular activities.

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For many modern students and teachers, the clearest vision of a 1940s prep school comes from John Knowles' 1959 novel "A Separate Peace," which is set at a preparatory school in New England during World War 2. Understanding the context of Knowles' novel requires understanding the unique role that prep schools played in American culture of the 1940s.

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

John Knowles, (born Sept. 16, 1926, Fairmont, W.Va., U.S.-died Nov. 29, 2001, near Fort Lauderdale, Fla.), American author, who was best known for his first published novel, A Separate Peace (1959; filmed 1972). Most of his works are psychological examinations of characters caught in conflict between the wild and the pragmatic sides of their personalities.

In 1945 Knowles graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H., and briefly served in the military before attending Yale University (B.A., 1949). He contributed articles to various publications during the 1950s before becoming a full-time writer. During the 1960s Knowles was a writer in residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Princeton University, and in the 1990s he taught creative writing at Florida Atlantic University.

In 1959 Knowles won acclaim with the publication of A Separate Peace, which chronicles the competitive friendship of two students at a New England preparatory school during World War II. An enduring classic, it became part of the syllabus of high-school English classes throughout the United States. Its sequel, Peace Breaks Out (1981), features student rivalry in the same setting but viewed from the perspective of a troubled young teacher who has recently returned from World War II.

Knowles's other novels include Indian Summer (1966), in which Harold "Cleet" Kinsolving discovers that he prefers the freedom of his simple life in the Midwest to a high-paying job in his New England hometown. The Paragon (1971) centres on Louis Colfax, a student at Yale plagued by a sense of inner emptiness. In A Vein of Riches (1978), Knowles portrayed the Catherwood family-coal barons who exploit the labour of West Virginia miners in the early 20th century. His later novels include A Stolen Past (1983) and The Private Life of Axie Reed (1986). He also wrote Double Vision (1964), a travelogue, and Phineas (1968), a collection of short stories.

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John Knowles, American author, who was best known for his first published novel, A Separate Peace (1959; filmed 1972). Most of his works are psychological examinations of characters caught in conflict between the wild and the pragmatic sides of their personalities. In 1945 Knowles graduated from

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Robert Cormier, classic author of books discusses his thought with interviewer Tim Podell

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Robert Cormier (pronounced kor-MEER) lived all his life in Leominster, Massachusetts, a small town in the north-central part of the state, where he grew up as part of a close, warm community of French Canadian immigrants and lived with his wife, Connie, also from Leominster, and where they raised their three daughters and one son-all adults now. They never saw a reason to leave. "There are lots of untold stories right here on Main Street," Cormier once said.

A newspaper reporter and columnist for 30 years (working for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette and the Fitchburg Sentinel), Cormier was often inspired by news stories. What makes his works unique is his ability to make evil behavior understandable, though, of course, still evil. "I'm very much interested in intimidation," he told an interviewer from School Library Journal. "And the way people manipulate other people. And the obvious abuse of authority." All of these themes are evident in his young adult classic and best-known book, The Chocolate War. A 15-year-old fan of Cormier's told him, "You always write from inside the person."

Cormier traveled the world, from Australia (where he felt particularly thrilled by putting his hand in the Indian Ocean) and New Zealand to most of the countries in Europe, speaking at schools, colleges, and universities, and to teacher and librarian associations. He visited nearly every state in the nation. While Cormier loved to travel, he said many times that he also loved returning to his home in Leominster.

Cormier was a practicing Catholic and attended parochial school, where in seventh grade, one of his teachers discovered his ability to write. But Cormier had always wanted to be a writer: "I can't remember a time when I wasn't trying to get something down on paper." His first poems were published in the Leominster Daily Enterprise, and his first professional publication occurred while he was a freshman at Fitchburg State College. His professor, Florence Conlon, sent his short story, without his knowledge, to The Sign, a national Catholic magazine. The story, titled "The Little Things That Count," sold for $75.

Cormier's first work as a writer was at radio station WTAG in Worcester, MA, where he wrote scripts and commercials from 1946 to 1948. In 1948, he began his award-winning career as a newspaperman with the Worcester Telegram, first in its Leominster office and later in its Fitchburg office. He wrote a weekly human-interest column, "A Story from the Country," for that newspaper.

In 1955, Cormier joined the staff of the Fitchburg Sentinel, which later became the Fitchburg-Leominster Sentinel and Enterprise, as the city hall and political reporter. He later served as wire and associate editor and wrote a popular twice-weekly column under the pseudonym John Fitch IV. The column received the national K.R. Thomason Award in 1974 as the best human-interest column written that year. That same year, he was honored by the New England Associated Press Association for having written the best news story under pressure of deadline. He left newspaper work in 1978 to devote all his time to writing.

Robert Cormier's first novel, Now and at the Hour, was published in 1960. Inspired by his father's death, the novel drew critical acclaim and was featured by Time magazine for five weeks on its "Recommended Reading" list. It was followed in 1963 by A Little Raw on Monday Mornings and in 1965 by Take Me Where the Good Times Are, also critically acclaimed. The author was hailed by the Newark Advocate as being "in the first rank of American Catholic novelists."

In 1974, Cormier published The Chocolate War, the novel that is still a bestseller. Instantly acclaimed, it was also the object of censorship attempts because of its uncompromising realism. In a front-page review in a special children's issue of The New York Times Book Review, it was described as "masterfully structured and rich in theme," and it went on to win countless awards and honors, was taught in schools and colleges throughout the world, and was translated into more than a dozen languages. I Am the Cheese followed in 1977 and After the First Death in 1979.

These three books established Cormier as a master of the young adult novel. In 1991, the Young Adult Services Division of the American Library Association presented him with the Margaret A. Edwards Award, citing the trio of books as "brilliantly crafted and troubling novels that have achieved the status of classics in young adult literature."

In 1982, Cormier was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English and its Adolescent Literature Assembly (ALAN) for his "significant contribution to the field of adolescent literature" and for his "innovative creativity."

On November 2, 2000, Robert Cormier passed away after a battle with lung cancer.

AWARDS AND HONORS

Margaret A. Edwards Award, which honors an author, as well as a specific body of his or her work, for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature.

BIOGRAPHY

Enjoy Robert Cormier: Daring to Disturb the Universe
by Patty Campbell

INTERVIEWS

" An Interview with Robert Cormier," The Horn Book, by Anita Silvey

" Dead Bodies in Suburbia," The Guardian, by Lyn Gardner

" In Their Own Words: an Interview with Robert Cormier," The English Journal, by Paul Janeczko

ARTICLES

"I Am the Cheese: a Nightmarish Nail Biter," National Public Radio, by Ben Marcus

REMEMBRANCES

" Robert Cormier Remembered," Publishers Weekly, by Marilyn E. Marlow, Craig Virden, Karen Wojtyla, Susan P. Bloom, Michael Cadnum, George Nicholson, and Michael Cart

" Robert Cormier," Random House

" Ice Picks in the Brain: The Rag and Bone Shop by Robert Cormier," The Quivering Pen, by David Abrams

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Robert Cormier (pronounced kor-MEER) lived all his life in Leominster, Massachusetts, a small town in the north-central part of the state, where he grew up as part of a close, warm community of French Canadian immigrants and lived with his wife, Connie, also from Leominster, and where they raised their three daughters and one son-all adults now.

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"Some boys just know they're gay," writer Benjamin Alire Saenz tells NPR's Michel Martin. "I don't know how that happens. And I think other boys don't know, and then they start discovering that. And that's the book."

Saenz's young-adult novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe was a big winner at this year's American Library Association awards for children's literature.

Despite their grand names, Aristotle - who calls himself Ari - and Dante are teen loners who are trying to find their place in the world. "I think when you're 15, you kind of are a philosopher, you are a thinker," Saenz explains. "And I wanted to give their names some weight."

Interview Highlights
On coming out
The story follows Ari's journey to the realization that he is in love with his friend, "and he's so afraid of that," Saenz says. "He's so afraid of loving him. And Dante isn't." Saenz hopes that "a lot of Latino young men find this book ... I don't think it's easy to come out at any age, during any era."

Writing this story was therapeutic, Saenz says. "I think I needed to write this book because I had such difficulties coming to terms with my own sexuality," he says. Saenz's coming out happened much later in life, when he was 54. "I was abused as a boy, and the thought of being with a man was not very appealing, to say the least."

But one of his friends saw this book as a way for Saenz to come to terms with this identity, he says. "After she read it, she said, 'Ben, you gave yourself a gift.' "
On fighting stereotypes with stories
Like Saenz, Aristotle and Dante are both Mexican-American. He points out that he started to write the book at the height of what he felt was "anti-Mexican rhetoric" happening across the country. "I was really enraged by many things ... and I think hopefully we're coming out of what was a horrible, racist time," he says.

It was important to him to challenge the idea that Mexican-Americans are recent immigrants. "We have a long history in this country, and we're not all workers with our hands. There are a lot of professional Mexican-Americans, and it's just not presented in literature," he explains, "and I wanted very much to do that."
On the response to the book
Saenz has written a number of books but says he's overwhelmed by the reaction that this novel has received. "I've never had a book with this kind of response, not ever."

The reaction surprised him, especially because at one point, Saenz nearly abandoned the project.

"I'm like Ari; sometimes I'm afraid and I have to stop being afraid," he says. "I've spent so much of my life being afraid."

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"Some boys just know they're gay," writer Benjamin Alire Saenz tells NPR's Michel Martin. "I don't know how that happens. And I think other boys don't know, and then they start discovering that. And that's the book." Saenz's young-adult novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe was a big winner at this year's American Library Association awards for children's literature.

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Meet the 2018 Read Brave author, Benjamin Alire Sáenz!

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" The Last Cigarette on Earth invites the reader to occupy spaces of contradiction, falling between love and hate, tenderness and violence, pain and pleasure."

- Harvard Review Online

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" The Last Cigarette on Earth invites the reader to occupy spaces of contradiction, falling between love and hate, tenderness and violence, pain and pleasure." - Harvard Review Online