Every January, the Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the American Library Association, releases the Best Fiction for Young Adults list. This list includes novels, short story collections, and novels in verse that were published in the past 16 months. These titles, according to YALSA, “are recommended reading for ages 12 to 18.”
As librarian and blogger Kelly Jensen explained to me, “I think the BFYA is useful for librarians who don’t know YA lit well, who may be the only librarians in their library or system, or who have been tossed into teen librarianship without the background that would help them in building a collection. I think people use BFYA as a collection building tool, which has a lot of merit to it.”
Thus, because the BFYA lists are used for collection development — and because the adjective “best” indicates that these titles are of high quality — being included on a BFYA list can help both sales and book buzz. (Full disclosure: My novel Huntress, published by Little, Brown, was on the 2012 BFYA list.) Indeed, the ALA’s various lists and awards can be extremely significant in terms of a YA book’s overall success — and thus, the author’s literary career.
Read MoreThere's something about YA that speaks in particular ways to adult readers, that has to do with the way YA books enable them to re-envision or re-experience the options of adolescence.
Read More
When I was creating the character of Amber Gray, I wanted to play with the idea of the bad girl … but with a twist.
What do you think of when you hear the term “bad girl”? For me, the type of character who comes to mind is a sexy, slightly trashy girl with dark hair and lots of eye makeup who smokes and drinks and uses her sexuality to potentially mislead boys. The “bad girl” can be called a slut; she sometimes breaks the law without caring; she has a wobbly moral compass at best.
Read MoreI’ve come to believe that if you’re not scared at least a little by what you’re writing, it’s probably not important enough to write.
Read More