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Angie Thomas
Angie Thomas
“My job as a writer is to write the stories that make adults uncomfortable, because that’s what the kids need.”
“My job as a writer is to write the stories that make adults uncomfortable, because that’s what the kids need.”
Angie Thomas was born on September 20, 1988, in Jackson, Mississippi. She has a BFA in creative writing from Belhaven University and was the first recipient of the Walter Dean Myers Grant in 2015, which was conferred by We Need Diverse Books. Thomas is the author of two novels, most famously of The Hate U Give, which was a New York Times #1 bestseller within a week of its debut and won the William C. Morris and Coretta Scott King Honor Awards. As is widely known, the novel was also adapted into the 2018 film starring Amandla Stenberg. Thomas’s second novel, featured on this blog, is On the Come Up. It was recently announced that Kay Oyegun, producer of This Is Us, has been recruited to write the screenplay for the novel. Thomas is currently working on her third novel, Concrete Rose, a prequel to The Hate U Give. In a funny and fortunate turn of events, it just so happens that in March 2019, On the Come Up and The Hate U Give vied for first place on the New York Times bestseller list. Ms. Thomas still resides in Jackson.
Benjamin Alire SáENZ
Benjamin Alire SáENZ
“Language doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to all of us.”
“Language doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to all of us.”
Benjamin Alire Saenz was born on August 6, 1954, in Old Picacho, New Mexico. Saenz is a poet, novelist, and scholar, and has authored works for children, young adults, and adults. His first book of poems, Calendar of Dust, won an American Book Award in 1992. His first YA title was Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood (2004). He followed that work with four others: He Forgot to Say Goodbye (2008), Last Night I Sang to the Monster (2009), Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (2012), and The Inexplicable Logic of My Life (2017). All of these novels have received some of the highest honors conferred on YA authors. The novel featured on this blog, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, was a Printz Honor Book, the Stonewall Award winner, the Pura Belpre Award winner, the Lambda Literary Award winner, and a finalist for the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award (reference). Mr. Saenz teaches Creative Writing at the University of Texas in El Paso.
Image credit: Larry D. Moore CC BY-SA 4.0
Nic Stone
Nic Stone
“High school is such an important time for human beings to just kind of step into their power and figure out that they have agency and they can change the world.”
“High school is such an important time for human beings to just kind of step into their power and figure out that they have agency and they can change the world.”
Nic Stone was born on July 10, 1985, in Atlanta, Georgia. She attended Spelman College, where she earned a degree in psychology, and traveled to Israel in 2008. It was there where she was first inspired to become a writer. Her first novel, Dear Martin, completed in 2012, was published in 2017 and became a finalist for the William C. Morris Award. It reached #4 on the New York Times bestseller list, fulfilling one of Stone's lifelong dreams. Her other YA titles include Odd One Out (2018), Jackpot (2019), Dear Justyce (2020) and Shuri: A Black Panther Novel (2020). Ms. Stone says that she didn’t originally think she could write the kind of fiction she wanted to write because “I didn't see anyone who looked like me writing the type of stuff I wanted to write (super popular YA fiction). But I decided to give it a shot anyway. (Life lesson: If you don't see you, go BE you.)” (reference)
Image credit: Rhododendrites CC BY-SA 4.0
Jacqueline Woodson
Jacqueline Woodson
"I also wanted to write about Time—about how fleeting it is, how important it is to love who you want and be who you want in the moment so that you don’t look back and think 'I should have…' or 'I could have…'"
"I also wanted to write about Time—about how fleeting it is, how important it is to love who you want and be who you want in the moment so that you don’t look back and think 'I should have…' or 'I could have…'"
Jacqueline Woodson was born in Columbus, Ohio on February 12, 1963. She began writing at an early age and was recognized even as a child for her ability. She studied writing at The New School in New York, which is where she was discovered, during a reading of Last Summer with Maizon, by editor Bebe Willoughby at Delacorte, which published Woodson’s first six books. Woodson has been the recipient of over 15 awards and accolades throughout her writing career, including ALA Best Book for Young Adults in 1998, 2000, 2003, 2004, and 2005, and the 2006 Newberry Honor for After Tupac and D Foster. In that same year she also won the ALA’s Margaret A. Edwards Award, which “recognizes an author and ‘a specific body of his or her work, for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature." (reference) She is a 2020 MacArthur Fellows Program Grant Award winner. Her YA novel Miracle’s Boys (2000) won the Coretta Scott King Award. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her partner and their two children.
Image credit: Fuzheado CC BY-SA 4.0
John Green
John Green
Born on August 24, 1977, in Indianapolis, Indiana, John Green is the author of several popular books for young adults, including Looking for Alaska (2005), An Abundance of Katherines (2006), Paper Towns (2009), Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with David Levithan, 2010), The Fault in Our Stars (2012), and Turtles All the Way Down (2017). His novels have been recipients of numerous awards and have attained many “bests” lists, including the Michael Printz Award for Looking for Alaska (2006) and the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Paper Towns (2009). In addition to being a YA author, Green is something of a public figure, gaining renown for his YouTube projects, VlogBrothers, Crash Course, Project for Awesome, and Mental Floss, and for his podcasts, Dear Hank and John and The Anthropocene Reviewed. Perhaps because of his widespread popularity, a few literary phenomena have been named after him: “GreenLit,” which describes novels that feature wit, drinking, flouting of authority, and unrequited love, and “The Green Effect,” which references how, when John Green mentions a novel on social media, it helps increase awareness--and sales--of the book (reference). His essay collection The Anthropocene Reviewed will be out soon. He lives in Indianapolis.
Image credit: Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 3.0
adam rapp
adam rapp
"I like to write about teenagers because it's such an uncertain and dramatic time."
"I like to write about teenagers because it's such an uncertain and dramatic time."
Award-winning novelist, playwright, poet, and screenwriter Adam Rapp was born on June 15, 1968, in Chicago, Illinois, but he grew up in Joliet. He attended college at Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa, and completed a playwriting fellowship at Julliard in New York, where he worked in publishing, writing fiction and plays by night. Rapp is the author of nine novels for young adults: Missing the Piano (1994), The Buffalo Tree (1997), The Copper Elephant (1999), Little Chicago (2002), 33 Snowfish (2003), Under the Wolf, Under the Dog (2004), Punkzilla (2009), The Children and the Wolves (2012), and Fum (2018). The ALA named Missing the Piano one of its 1995 Best Books for Young Adults and Best Books for Reluctant Readers, while Under the Wolf, Under the Dog received both the 2006 Schneider Family Teen Award and a Los Angeles Times Book Award nomination. Punkzilla was a 2010 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book. Rapp currently lives in New York City.
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