Books, Chocolate, Sundries.

1. A little backstory… I got the idea for this essay after I went to a small publishing conference for independent bookstores and local authors hosted at BookPeople here in Austin, TX. While hanging out with the staff afterward, we somehow got on the subject of shoplifted books. Steve, the owner, told me that the [...]

Tags: Interviews, Jeff Sharlet, Jeffrey Eugenides, John Palfrey, NYTBR, Paul Auster, Sherman Alexie, stolen books

I interviewed Sherman Alexie recently, when he was speaking nearby in College Station, Texas,* and the interview is up now on failbetter.com. If you ever have a chance to hear Sherman speak, definitely, definitely go. Sometimes meeting writers whose work you deeply admire isn’t such a good idea (I have one short story based on [...]

Tags: Sherman Alexie, YA lit

“I hate YA novels; they bore me,” says Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic.* Flanagan loves her Bill O’Reillyesque hyperbole, whether she’s writing about teens doling out blow jobs like factory girls, irritating women angsting over how to treat “the help”, or hating Hillary. When I read Flanagan’s work I always get the sense that she’s [...]

Tags: Caitlin Flanagan, Laurie Halse Anderson, Markus Zusak, Meg Rosoff, Peter Cameron, Robert Cormier, Sherman Alexie, YA lit

I first met Laurel at Bread Loaf several years ago, when she’d won a waiter scholarship there. I saw her again a few years after that at the AWP conference. It was three months after her first son was born, and she looked FANTASTIC. Seriously–she looked so gorgeous and put-together and well-spoken, I thought, wow, [...]

Tags: Alice Munro, Amaud Johnson, AWP, Dan Zanes, Judy Blume, Laurel Snyder, Matt de la Pena, Neil Gaiman, Sherman Alexie, YA lit

That was a lot of fun being on the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC this morning! The segment is online here. One commenter asked me to recommend YA titles that would give an adult a sense of the richness of the genre. Here are a few of my favorite YA titles that I think have [...]

Tags: Brian Lehrer, Jenny Downham, Meg Rosoff, Peter Cameron, Shaun Tan, Sherman Alexie, Zibby ONeal

My essay is in the New York Times Book Review! I’m really excited about this essay. I had a great time doing all the interviews—I interviewed over 25 authors, librarians, publishers, editors, and booksellers about the current state of YA literature, and the fine line between YA and adult lit, and I learned so much [...]

Tags: James Patterson, New York Times Book Review, Sherman Alexie, YA lit