I am very excited and honored to be a part of these upcoming literary events. I hope to see you!

Saturday, September 24

Sonoma County Book Festival

Santa Rosa, CA

11:30 a.m.

“Save the Drama for Your Mama: Contemporary YA Fiction” 

(including my pal Nina LaCour, author of the amazing Hold Still)

Saturday, October 1

Northwest Bookfest

Kirkland, WA

5:00 p.m.

“Drugs, Sex and Reading: Talking to Teens about Tough Issues”

Saturday, October 15

LitQuake Lit Crawl

San Francisco, CA

7:15 pm, Bruno’s (2389 Mission Street, San Francisco)

KQED Writer’s Block event: “Some Girls from the Block”

I was lucky to get to go to the International Reading Association conference in Orlando this week. Highlights included an excellent shopping expedition to the outlet mall, meeting lots of amazing teachers, and eating lots of room service. I also had my own little book signing at the Simon & Schuster booth:

(Sorry the picture’s a little out of focus, but at least my hair’s cute.)

The best part of all was the amazing three-hour panel featuring four of the most exciting voices in contemporary YA. To give you an idea, here’s the title of the panel: Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: Edgy YA Novels that Teens Like to Read but Make Adults Nervous. To say I was inspired would be an understatement. I was struck (as I am often struck by YA authors in general) how devoted they are to their readers, how much the lives of teens mean to them. You don’t hear this kind of stuff at an adult lit talk.

I won’t summarize the entire three hours for you, but I do want to share some of my observations and favorite quotes by the authors. DISCLAIMER: these are not direct quotes; they are my tiny hand’s attempts at scribbling what I heard as correctly as possible. So if I mangled some of their words, I am truly sorry.

Here are some highlights from the panel:

Lauren Myracle: author of many books including TTYL and the new Shine which sounds amazing)

Title: Speaking an Edgy Language that Teens Understand

• After defining ‘edgy’ as ‘new’ and ‘innovative’: “There’s nothing new about drugs and sex. Our material isn’t ‘edgy’—it’s just unsanitized.”
• On being told that she’s brave to write about difficult subject matter: “I’m not brave. Bravery is facing something you’re afraid of. Writing about this stuff doesn’t scare me. It’s our characters who are the brave ones.”
• “If I’m not trying to make a home for justice, then I’m not doing my job as a writer or a human.”

David Levithan: author of many books, including Boy Meets Boy, and co-author of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (with Rachel Cohn) and Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with John Green)

Title: Gay Love: Refusing to be Pushed Off the Edge

• First of all, he brought props—two Mickey  Mouse dolls (we were in Orlando after all), which he configured in compromising positions in honor of the original title of his talk, which was changed at the last minute: Gay Sex: Refusing to be Pushed Off the Edge
• “Hiding gay sex only emboldens the people who are afraid of it.”
• “’Edgy’ is the code word for ‘the truth.’”
• He made me cry. Like a baby. I think the people around me thought I was crazy. It happened while he was reading a sex scene between two boys from his book Wide Awake. It was so beautifully and tenderly written. The characters were so much in love and in such control of their bodies. They were safe, physically and emotionally. It was not just a perfect gay sex scene, it was a perfect sex scene, period. I kept thinking  of the kids who might find this book, might see this representation of what love can feel like, what sex with someone you love can feel like. I want kids to read this, queer and straight. I want this to be the kind of sex they hope for. I kept thinking about how this could be the light that gives a queer kid hope.

Gayle Forman: author of If I Stay and Where She Went

Title: Bloody Car Crashes, Out-of-Body Experiences, Steamy Sex Scenes, Angsty Rock Stars, Punk-Rock Parents, Heartbreak—It’s all catnip for teen readers. But is there anything in there for teachers?

• First of all, let me just say I plan to model myself after Mia’s “punk-rock parents” when I have a kid.
• On swearing in her books: “I write the characters as I hear them. Sometimes they curse. My mom cursed like a sailor, but then we’d go volunteer at a soup kitchen—so I never equated swearing with morality.”

Ellen Hopkins: author of Crank, Impulse, Perfect, Fallout and many more

Title: Pushing the Edge: Abuse, Drugs, Suicide and Other Difficult Issues

• Ellen is such a powerful voice in the fight against censorship. Her books have been challenged perhaps more than any other YA author. But she always perfectly articulates why she writes what she does. She explained how her book Crank puts a personal face on addiction, which is the most effective way for kids, or anyone really, to absorb info. Instead of just telling them what to do, it shows the choices and outcomes in a way readers can connect to emotionally.
• “As much as we want to scrub childhood clean, we can’t.”
• “Even the kids who aren’t going to do this stuff—they need to have empathy for the kids who do.”
• “Information won’t kill children; ignorance kills children.”

At the end of the session, a librarian asked the panel what she can do when parents or community members demand that a book be banned or removed. Ellen’s answer gave me chills, made me shed a few more tears, and made me so incredibly proud to be doing what I’m doing:

“Send them the letters we get from readers that tell us how our books saved their lives. Literally saved their lives. It’s hard to argue with that.”

I’m reading Punkzilla again. I think it’s been less than a year since I read it last, but I can’t stay away. It’s that good. I’m studying it for inspiration for my current WIP, but I have to admit that I often forget I’m supposed to be “studying.” I’ll find myself totally lost inside it, then realize “Oh crap, I’m supposed to be paying attention to how Adam Rapp crafts the story, how he uses the epistolary form, the techniques he uses to create such a unique and memorable narrator, blah blah blah.” But it’s hard to focus on stuff like that when the book is just so damn good. I’m a softy for anything about misfits, stories that honor the lives of people society prefers to ignore. Here’s a boy who’s been written off by everyone as a lost cause, but the author believes he’s worthy of our love; he puts us inside him, and we get to feel all his intelligence and kindness and vulnerability, and it’s so frickin’ awesome it makes my heart burst. Sigh. Hopefully someday I can write something this good.

 

 

Seems like I’ve been reading a lot of books about boys lately. I recently finished The Highest Tide, by Jim Lynch, which I highly recommend, especially if you’re a lover of the sea. It takes place in the Puget Sound where I grew up, and I felt homesick the whole time I was reading it. I remember being a kid and wandering around on the rocky beach down the road from my house, looking under rocks for crabs and other hidden life, sticking my fingers in sea anemones to make them squirt. Rather than take an AP science class in high school like I was “supposed to,” I chose to take two semesters of Marine Biology, learning all the science behind the sea life I loved, learning all the Latin names for the creatures I grew up with. Whenever I come across a tide pool, I still turn into a huge nerd and start reciting the scientific names of invertebrates.

 

 

Before I took a detour with Punkzilla, I was working on The Lacuna, by Barabara Kingslover. God, I love her. Not YA, but she writes great kids. I love alternating between reading YA and adult fiction. It’s kind of like exercise, like lifting weights. YA uses certain muscles, the ones that focus primarily on the “I” of the teenager, where the world is as big as what the main character can sense, and it’s bright and intense and immediate. But then I’ll read an author like Kingslover, something in the 3rd person, something slower and layered, where the world spreads away from the main character and the path becomes windy and intricate, and it’s like a whole different set of muscles are being used. And as I read these different types of books, as I challenge myself to approach story from as many angles as possible, I can feel myself becoming a better writer. Because what is writing but stealing from authors who are better than you? This is perhaps the best thing I learned in my MFA program: steal wisely.

So I was tagged on that Facebook note that asks you to write down “15 albums in 15 minutes” with the following guidelines:

“These are the rules if you want to play: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen albums you’ve heard that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes….”

Yeah, like I have the time to do this.

Well, yes, apparently I do. And if you’re my Facebook friend, you know that I post crap on there ALL DAY LONG because I have addiction problems and I sit at a desk all day long and I get lonely and Facebook is almost like human contact.

But I think this is actually a pretty fun exercise. Especially when you have work you’re trying to avoid. You can tell a lot about a person from their taste in music. And as you will see, I am a total cliché: I grew up in Seattle and went to a small liberal arts college in Portland in the late ‘90’s.  I like pretty songs about feelings. Which brings up another question—when did “Emo” become a bad word?  Because I remember when it was still cool. Or at least I thought it was.

So here’s my list, in no particular order. The 15 Albums That Changed My Life, the ones I played over and over and over until I knew every word and chord change, the ones that created the soundtrack of the B-movie that was my life.

What’s on your list?

1. Elliott Smith—Elliott Smith

2. Either/Or—Elliott Smith

3. This is Pinback—Pinback

4. Dry—PJ Harvey

5. Rid of Me—PJ Harvey

6. Like I Said—Ani Difranco

7. Hips and Makers—Kristin Hirsch

8. I Know About You—Ida

9. Call the Doctor—Sleater-Kinney

10. This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About—Modest Mouse

11. Dirty—Sonic Youth

12. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea—Neutral Milk Hotel

13. Exile in Guyville—Liz Phair

14. There’s Nothing Wrong with Love—Built to Spill

15. Manos—The Spinanes

My Top 10 Favorite YA Books (So Far…)

I’ll admit it. I was one of those people who was judgmental about the YA genre at first, even though I later realized it’s what I wanted to write all along.  All I knew were the silly stories for tween girls that were around when I grew up, the ones whose plot lines consisted of the following: crushes on boys, insecurities about pimples, dates with boys, insecurities about weight, hearts getting broken by boys, insecurities about hair, and, um…babysitting? I didn’t read these books.  I tried a couple of times, but I just couldn’t do it.  The only books about young people that really meant anything to me were Go Ask Alice and Girl, Interrupted.  Stories of a runaway drug addict and a girl in a mental institution—fun stuff, right?  I guess you can say my taste for gritty, realistic teen fiction was decided early on, before the genre really existed.

When I was sending Beautiful around trying to land an agent, I was shocked when one finally informed me I write YA. How dare he lump me in the category of those silly books I grew up with? Sure, my characters were teenagers, but they weren’t exactly babysitting and cheerleading and crushing on the quarterback.  And, like, I wanted to write literature.

I have to admit my ego was slightly crushed. My definition of “writer” was based on fancy conversations in my MFA classes where people used words like “meta” and “juxtapostition” all the time and wrote experimental poetry I could barely pretend to understand.  I didn’t even know what “Young Adult Author” meant.  So I decided to do some research.

I scoured the internet for information about YA, bought the books I saw mentioned over and over again.  And then—well, all I can say is WOW. I was floored.  It was like someone had just opened the door into an entirely new world, a world I had been longing for, a world that immediately felt like home. I had been walking around with these tortured teen characters in my head for years, and I had no idea there were more like them.  These were the books I desperately needed when I was a teen. These were the books I wanted to write since I was thirteen years old.

The following ten books (in no particular order) speak to me in a way few adult books have. I am proud to be in company of these brave, brilliant authors. And hell yes, these books are literature. But most importantly, they tell the truth.

Speak—by Laurie Halse Anderson: I think this might have been the first YA I picked up. And thank God! So began my devotion for Ms. Anderson. An achingly honest portrayal of what a girl must do to emotionally protect herself, and begin to heal, from the memory of sexual trauma.

Wintergirls—by Laurie Halse Anderson: Haunting is the best word to describe this book.  It’s about a girl’s struggle with anorexia, but it’s so much more. I’ve said before elsewhere, but I’ll say it again: If anyone doubts the literary merit of YA, they must read this book. Some of the more beautiful prose I’ve ever read.

Luna—by Julie Anne Peters: The story of a girl whose brother is transgendered.  At its essence, I think this story is about how incredibly brave people can be in their journey to find and love themselves.  And thank God such an amazing book exists for kids going through similar things.

Punkzilla—by Adam Rapp: According to Goodreads: “a searing novel-in-letters about a street kid on a highstakes trek across America.”  One of the most memorable voices I’ve ever read.

Looking for Alaska—by John Green: You’ve read this, right? Don’t tell me you haven’t read this. That’s just completely unacceptable. All I’m going to say is I have never cried so hard on public transportation as when I was reading this book. Just thinking about it is making me teary. This man can sure tell a story. Someone should combine John Green’s DNA with Laurie Halse Anderson’s and make a The World’s Greatest YA Author EVER. Anyone out there know anything about genetics?

The Perks of Being a Wallflower—by Stephen Chbosky:  I hate trying to summarize books because a description of the plot could never encompass the feelings I had while reading it. I guess I’d say this one’s about a sensitive outcast’s journey toward finding himself. I just loved this kid. Plus, this book was banned all over the place, so that gives it major cool points, right?

Girl–by Blake Nelson: I kind of hate this description from Goodreads, but it’s pretty accurate: “A Catcher in the Rye for the “Grunge” generation, this instant classic will speak to anyone who has ever had to choose between the suffocation of conformity and the perils of rebellion.” And if it took place in Seattle rather than Portland, it could kinda be my teen years. Ah, vintage dresses with fishnets and big boots, how I miss you.

King Dork—by Frank Portman: Quite possibly the funniest book I have ever read. In contrast to Looking for Alaska, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed this hard on public transportation. The main character is one of the weirdest, most loveable characters I’ve ever read.

Cracked Up to Be—by Courtney Summers:  I guess you could say it’s about a “perfect” girl’s fall from the top and the horrible secret that causes it, but the most amazing thing about this book is how realistic the characters are, how complicated, and how brave Courtney is for making the MC so incredibly unlikeable at times. The way she crafts the story so that the reader learns to like the MC as she learns to like and accept herself—just genius.

Hunger Games—by Suzanne Collins:  Which one of these books is not like the others? Not really though. Dystopian adventure and gritty realism aren’t really that different when you think about it.  The edgy fiction I love explores the psychology of troubled characters, while good dystopian fiction explores the psychology of troubled societies.  Plus this series is also just plain entertaining adventure. Who says an emo girl doesn’t just want to be entertained sometimes?

So I guess my taste is pretty obvious. You won’t find many happy families or well-adjusted characters in these books (and don’t even get me started on vampires and werewolves). I know I’ve barely scratched the surface of all the wonderful YA there is to read. So I’m curious—judging from this list and the kind of stuff I like, what books do you think I need to read next?

I’m sitting here in my little thatched-roof bungalow in Belize, looking out the window at the rain and mysteriously named jungle plants, waiting for my husband to wake up.  The locals are saying the rainy season started early this year, the result of global warming and an angry Mother Earth.  I’m starting to get paranoid about the world ending in 2012.  I’ve been hanging out in the center of the ancient Mayan civilization after all, and they’re the ones who started the rumor.  All signs point to a day of reckoning.

Our tour guides proudly tell us they are the descendants of the Maya.  They have led us over pyramids and through caves, taught us the medicinal uses of this tree and that shrub, taught us how to bark like Howler Monkeys.  They have introduced us to the skeleton of a woman exactly my age, a human sacrifice hundreds of years old, brought half a mile into the earth through a maze of stalagmites and stalactites, over rocks and through narrow crevices.  She must have waded through the same underground river, felt the same cold limestone walls as she navigated through the dark.  Or were her hands tied behind her back? Did she speak as she was led to her death? Did she beg to be set free? Or did she believe it was an honor to be a gift to the gods?

[Read more…] about Hello from the middle of a rainstorm in Belize

Yesterday I decided it’d be funny to post my old poetry (at the suggestion of Twitter buddy @emilytastic). So I went home and rummaged through old boxes containing dozens of dusty notebooks and binders full of yellowed pages.  The plan was to read through them and select the juiciest pieces for your amusement.

I now realize that was a terrible idea.

What I discovered was that not only was I a horrible writer as a teenager, I was also totally full of shit.  I was convinced that I was the deepest and smartest and most wounded teenager the world had ever seen, and I was so incredibly unique that no one could possibly understand me.  These were apparently some of my favorite words, as proven by their repeated use: oppression, ignorance, darkness, conformity, paradox, apathy, and hypocrisy. And oh, did I mention the constant use adverbs and alliteration? Oh. My. God.

These poems (if you can even call them that) paint the picture of an incredibly lonely, angry, and probably mentally unstable young lady with delusions of grandeur and a really hard time keeping metaphors consistent.  She was also sexually frustrated, into Wicca, fond of death imagery and the phrases “silent scream” and “deafening silence,” and apparently convinced she was the reincarnation of Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath.   I can almost hear her voice reciting the poems in front of her freshman year Creative Writing Club, 100% earnest and with one of those awful Beatnik poetry voices. You have no idea how much I am cringing right now.

I considered going back on my promise to share these with you. When one is mortified with embarrassment, it is often difficult to see the humor in a situation.  But then I got a glimpse of myself at sixteen, a beautiful girl but always trying to cover it up, dressed in a charming combination of hippie, goth, indie rocker, and riot grrrl styles, trying so hard to act like a free spirit but oh so incredibly serious and uptight. And scared. God, I was scared of everything. But I tried so hard to act like a tough girl.  I watched movies and read books I didn’t understand and pretended I liked them because I wanted so badly to impress people.  I wrote this poetry and pretended I understood myself and you and society and the government and religion and The Truth. I can see this girl walking barefoot, drinking coffee, writing manifestos, hating the “phonies,” worshiping the The Northwest and everything Indie, believing with all her heart that all of her thoughts and all of her feelings were truly original. There she is–this scowling, unshaven, thrift shop clothed girl who thinks she knows everything, reciting her poetry as if her life depends on it, screaming “LISTEN TO ME!” at the top of her lungs.

Did I mention the deafening silence?

I think I’ll just call this a study in humility.  Yes, I am a published author and I wrote a book I am very proud of. But before all that, I wrote this:

[Read more…] about Quite possibly the worst emo poetry you have ever read

Some of you probably caught the #gimmeacall hashtag on Twitter yesterday and today, where folks tweeted messages of advice to their former high school selves (in honor of the release of Sarah Mlynowski’s new novel Gimme a Call). A few of my favorites:

• “Dear high-school self: don’t worry, you’ll put those bitches in a book one day” (@abbymcdonald)
• “Dear 15-year-old self, those comics you feel guilty for spending your barmitzvah money on each week will save your life one day” (@neilhimself aka Neil Gaiman)
• “Dear HS Self: You have a page on wiki now. The guy who chased you w/a knife cause he thought you were gay doesn’t” (@adamselzer)

This (in addition to a bizarre dream I had starring my 7th and 8th grade boyfriends) made me start thinking about my teen years, about all of the things I wish I could tell the younger me that might have prevented a whole lot of pain and embarrassment.  However, if it weren’t for that pain and embarrassment, I probably wouldn’t be writing to you now.  Why on earth would I want to write teen novels if I had no personal need to revisit that traumatic period of my life?  There are far more lucrative things to do with my time.  If it weren’t for the pain, I probably wouldn’t be a writer at all.

It’s a strange thing to think about–how much experience forms a person’s identity, how so much of who were are is really just a matter of chance.  What if I hadn’t moved when I was twelve?  What if I stayed in my safe, small town until I graduated from high school?  What if I had never had those particular friends and boyfriends? What if I had gone to a different college? I could be someone totally different today, someone unrecognizable.  I could have had a safe, uneventful life. I could have made “smart” choices.  But honestly, what fun would that be? If it weren’t for all those less-than-smart choices, I wouldn’t have had so many opportunities to learn, to be challenged, to grow and build character.

I can say that now because I’m a safe distance away.  I’ve lived through it, learned my painful lessons, and built myself a hard-earned happily-ever-after.  If my teen self read this drivel, she would probably want to punch me in the nose. God, how I hated those patronizing adults who kept saying “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” or “You’ll look back on these years and laugh.”  Well, I’m not laughing. I look back on those years and they still make me shudder. The difference is I can now see that all those painful moments were not actually the end of the world, and they would in fact come in handy later.  And what better revenge on the past is there than taking it and making it yours? I have taken those years, transformed them and turned them into fuel, made them into something useful and beautiful.

Blah blah blah. There are still a lot of things I would have liked to get through my thick teenage skull.

For instance:

• That friend who says she can give you a tattoo in the park with a sewing needle? Don’t listen to her.
• Go with your first instinct and skip prom. It totally sucked.
• Don’t let that creepy hippie guy hug you. There’s a reason he’s always hanging around teenage girls.
• This whole boyfriend thing? There’s a reason “friend” is in the title. You’re supposed to like them.
• Just consider going to a different college than the one you had your mind set on since freshman year.  Seriously, it won’t kill you to change your mind.
• STAY AWAY FROM THE GREEN-HAIRED GIRL!
• Hide your journal somewhere your mom can’t find it.
• You could try being a little nicer to people who aren’t like you. That rich skinny girl who’s always smiling and tan even in winter–she’s actually not the devil.
• You may not get caught for stealing that car, but you will pay karmically. Oh yes you will.
• There’s a girl in seventh grade who will save your life with her friendship.  Don’t let her drift away.  Your heart will break for the rest of your life if you lose her.
• Trust your instincts about people. If they scare you, they’re probably not the right people to hang out with.
• You don’t have to be so lonely. There are people like you. You just have to open your eyes a little wider to see them.
• Don’t spit. It’s really ugly.
• Your body is yours alone. It is your choice what happens to it.
• Your parents love you. Ask them for help.
• Those best friends of yours in high school? They still are. They were in your wedding party, including the boys.

What about you? Do you have anything you wish you could say to your younger self?

by the magnificent Justin Frahm

This is me.  With my pet Unicornbird.  We are flying and I am happy.

love,
Amy

PS: You know what would be really cool?  If you guys sent me pictures of you holding a copy of Beautiful in random places.  Then I could post the picture on here and you’d be famous to like the two and a half people who read this blog.  I’m totally copying what Frank Portman does on his blog, but I’m sure he knows that imitation is the best form of flattery.  Shoot, I owe him a photo of me holding Andromeda Klein.  When did he ask me for that? Like months ago.  Oops.

By the way, you should read that book.  Because it’s rad.

Oh, and send you photos to me at amy_lynn_reed@yahoo.com