This Week in YA — Issue #55
Welcome to the Voyage newsletter!
It’s another new week and another installment of this newsletter for you this week, my fellow YA enthusiasts. Just one more week until the American Library Association’s Youth Media Awards, aka the Oscars of kidlit, so I’m already making my personal predictions of what YA books might win big honors. So many favorites from 2022! But 2023 is also shaping up to be a great year for YA books too, so we’ve got some highlights of both in the links below.
News and Resources
In case you missed the news, I was thrilled to see superstar Meg Medina Named Ambassador for Young People’s Lit.
Some of the 2022 awards have already been announced, including the 72nd National Jewish Book Award Winners. Love those YA picks!
In other award news, MWA Announces 2023 Edgar Award Nominations.
The Printz award is definitely one of the biggest YA awards—and will be announced at the ALAYMA awards on 1/30. Over on School Library Journal, Jonathan recently shared History, Horror, and More Top Contenders.
Turning our attention back to new books this year, Saul at BookStacked has The most anticipated YA books of 2023.
For a bit of practical fun, Laura at Book Riot has some great ways to Pretend Your House Is a Library: A Strategy for Actually Reading the Books You Own.
The 5 Questions Interview Series
Each week, this newsletter will include interviews with industry professionals sharing insight about the who, what, where, when, why in YA today.
Today we’ve got an interview with Simon James Green, award-winning YA and children’s author of several critically-acclaimed books. His latest YA, Heartbreak Boys, just released in the US last month (it released first in the UK in 2020), and I highly recommend adding it to your TBR list!
5 Questions Interview with Simon James Green, YA and children’s author
ABOUT HEARTBREAK BOYS
A road trip rom-com about heartbreak, social media hijinks, and learning to be happy with who you are, perfect for fans of Heartstopper, Becky Albertalli, and Phil Stamper.
When their ex-boyfriends get together and start Instagramming a disgustingly perfect summer of love, Jack and Nate decide to concoct a mutual Insta-worthy summer adventure of their own to prove they’re just fine and everything’s great.
Of course, it’s hard to have an epic summer road trip when they’re stuck in a van with Nate's mid-life crisis-bound parents and his annoying younger sister. And it’s been years since Jack and Nate have said more than a few sentences to each other. But their followers don’t have to know any of that.
How hard could faking the high life be? Posting as @TheHeartBreakBoys, the duo stumbles into one hilarious situation after another—and each discover that maybe the cure for heartbreak has been the boy riding next to him all along.
ABOUT SIMON JAMES GREEN
Simon James Green is an author and screenwriter. His middle-grade books include Sleepover Takeover and Life of Riley: Beginner’s Luck, which was shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award and featured in BookTrust’s Great Books Guide 2021. He has also written two picture books—Llama Glamarama and Fabulous Frankie—both illustrated by Garry Parsons. His young adult novels include Noah Can’t Even (long listed for the Branford Boase and picked by WHSmith as one of the most important LGBT books of the last 50 years); Noah Could Never; Alex in Wonderland (nominated for the Carnegie medal and selected as one of the top 20 LGBT books of 2019 by Attitude); Heartbreak Boys, You’re the One That I Want (shortlisted for the YA Book Prize, Diverse Book Award, and winner of the Bristol Teen Book Award), and Gay Club! (nominated for the YOTO Carnegie Medal 2023).
1. Who: Who are your instabuy, go-to YA authors? And which new talent have you discovered recently?
Oh, there are so many! I love anything by Julian Winters, Lev Rosen, Dean Atta, William Hussey, Phil Stamper, Ciara Smyth, Adiba Jaigirdar, Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, Becky Albertalli, and Leah Johnson. I adore YA with wit and a bit of bite, by which I mean, authors who have something to really say about the world. In terms of new talent: Benjamin Dean has written several middle-grade titles, but his first YA, The King is Dead, is an absolute joy of a thriller and well worth your time!
2. What: What was the most joyful moment in preparing to bring Heartbreak Boys into the world?
Heartbreak Boys was originally published in the UK right in the middle of the first Covid lockdown. It was a total nightmare and the book really got lost, like a lot did around that time. This US release gives it a second chance, and that’s such a wonderful thing, because I adored writing Jack and Nate’s story, and I’d love more people to discover it. The other joy of this story is that it’s a road trip comedy—which happens to be my favourite genre of movie, ever! I had a lot of fun playing around with that!
3. Where: Where is the state of YA right now, from where you sit? Where do you hope to see it go next?
I feel like there’s been an explosion of terrific YA recently – really top-notch, groundbreaking, exciting writing. And loads of brilliant LGBTQ+ YA with increasingly diverse rep too. My hope is that continues, and that we don’t see publishers become more cautious as a result of recent book ban nonsense and right-wing pushback. It’s vital we stand up against these bullies who want young people to live in fear and ignorance as a means of maintaining their power and control.
4. When: Looking ahead to next year (or beyond), what exciting things are next on the horizon for you?
Scholastic are publishing Gay Club! in the US in June (it came out in the UK last year), my next YA novel, Boy Like Me, comes out in the UK in March, and my third muddle-grade title, Finn Jones Was Here comes out in May. Like a lot of authors, I also have a number of projects that I infuriatingly can’t talk about right now!
5. Why: Why YA? What draws you to writing for this age group?
I’ve always loved coming-of-age stories. I think your teenage years are such an exciting time of life to write about—so much is happening for the first time, as you try to work out who you are and what you stand for. LGBTQ+ YA holds a special appeal for me—there were no books featuring gay characters when I was at school (at the time, we had a law called section 28 in the UK which banned such content) so writing these books always feel like redressing the balance a bit.
Writing Inspiration from Kip
I love reading books that come to us in the US from another country. So much of the YA publishing industry in particular feels very US-centric, but reading stories by authors from other countries really makes it clear that there is a lot going on in the rest of the world too! I love literature in translation, but even works in English set elsewhere can give us a completely different perspective.
But of course there’s also a huge variety of perspectives here in the US as well. The various backgrounds of authors and the vast spectrum of experiences we can find in YA today make me really hopeful for those authors and their titles as we head into the thick of the awards season. I have my fingers crossed for so many titles and authors for awards, but even if some of them don’t win, I know many readers have discovered them and agree about how fantastic it is to see this kind of representation—something many of us didn’t see growing up.
I know book banners are still threatening to take this sort of experience away from readers, so we certainly need to continue to support these authors and their stories so we can all continue to enjoy them in the future.
Thank you for joining me on this voyage!