This Week in YA — Issue #59
Welcome to the Voyage newsletter!
It’s another new week and another installment of this newsletter for you this week, my fellow YA enthusiasts. As we creep toward the end of February, there’s no shortage of news in the publishing world—including the outcome of the HarperCollins union’s strike. We’ve also got some updated resources and a new interview with a YA author. Read on for all the details!
News and Resources
First off, a celebration is in order with the news that the HC Union Ratifies New Contract. So happy that these valuable employees are finally going to be getting what they deserve!
Valentine’s Day might be over for this year, but Maya recently shared Why Romance Is Important for Young Adult Readers on Catapult, and I completely agree.
I try not to miss a chance to talk up great poetry, but I somehow forgot to share Sylvia Vardell’s Sneak Peek List of Poetry for Young People 2023 until now. Plenty of YA in verse to add to your TBR list!
Melanin in YA has the 2023 Book Release Schedule with plenty of titles by Black authors publishing this year.
Lauren’s guest post about Showing Teens It’s Okay to be Angry on Teen Librarian Toolbox is sure to resonate with a lot of YA fans.
Finally, if you’re getting ready to query, the Manuscript Wishlist has a newly updated website. Check it out!
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 YA author Lakita Wilson, whose latest YA novel, Last Chance Dance, is out today! I’ve never heard of a concept like this one, and let me tell you, you’re going to want to add it to your TBR stat!
5 Questions Interview with Lakita Wilson, YA and children’s author
ABOUT LAST CHANCE DANCE
An utterly charming YA romance perfect for fans of Elise Bryant and Leah Johnson. Leila is devastated when her high school boyfriend breaks up with her right before graduation, but when she gets paired with four unrequited crushes in the lead-up to her school’s annual Last Chance Dance, she might just fall in love with someone new.
Leila is crushed when Dev, her boyfriend of four years, breaks up with her right before graduation. Just when she’s thinking she wasted her entire high school experience on a dead-end relationship, her best friend Bree reminds her that Last Chance Dance is just around the corner.
A high school tradition, the Last Chance Dance gives all the students one last opportunity to find love before they graduate. All Leila has to do is submit three unrequited crushes to the dance committee and if any of her crushes list her too, they’ll get matched. Presto: new relationship, just like that. To her utter amazement, Leila is matched with all three of her choices—and with someone she never expected, Tre Hillman, her chemistry partner and low-key nemesis.
Though at times skeptical, Leila embarks on her Last Chance Dance mission—trying out her matches and going on dates. If Dev wasn’t her true love—then maybe someone else is. She knows it’s definitely not Tre, even though he seems more and more determined to convince her he’s right for her.
But as graduation and the dance approaches, and each date seems to change her mind (and her heart)—Leila must figure out what—and who—she really wants. It’s her last chance, right?
ABOUT LAKITA WILSON
Lakita Wilson is the author of several novels and non-fiction projects for children and young adults, including What Is Black Lives Matter?, a part of the New York Times Bestselling HQ Now series; Be Real, Macy Weaver, a coming of age middle grade friendship story; and a few other secret projects she isn’t allowed to tell you about yet.
Lakita was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Prince George’s County, Maryland. A 2017 recipient of SCBWI’s Emerging Voices Award, Lakita received her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is currently on faculty at Prince George’s Community College in the Education Department. Lakita lives in Prince George’s County, Maryland with her two children and Shih-Tzu.
1. Who: Who are your instabuy, go-to YA authors? And which new talent have you discovered recently?
Angie Thomas is the ultimate go-to for me. Concrete Rose is my favorite of all her books. Elise Bryant is my romance go-to. I like all Kekla Magoon’s books, but her non-fiction projects are my favorite. Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian is one of my all-time faves. And Krystal Marquis has my historical fiction heart. I loved her debut novel, The Davenports, and am super glad that it’s going to be a series.
2. What: What was the most joyful moment in preparing to bring Last Chance Dance into the world?
The most joyful moment for me was when I finally figured out what I wanted to say in this novel. For the longest time, I wanted to insert an “issue” storyline into this novel. But honestly, for many teens, a first break-up is a major issue. Very few people will fall in love with someone in their teen years and remain with them the rest of our lives. For the rest of us, we have to learn to let go and begin again many times throughout our life. Once I discovered that showing the process of starting over didn’t have to be a somber event, everything fell into place.
3. Where: Where is the state of YA right now, from where you sit? Where do you hope to see it go next?
I think there are so many options for Black teens in YA right now, in every major genre and age group, and that was not a thing when I was a teen myself. While I love that the shelves are becoming more diverse, I would love to see more marketing and publicity for these titles so that teens know these books are out there.
I was fortunate to have a great publicity, marketing and digital marketing team working tirelessly for Last Chance Dance. But there are countless Black, POC, and queer titles out there that don’t get this support, and as a book community, we must find a way to spread this support around.
4. When: Looking ahead to next year (or beyond), what exciting things are next on the horizon for you?
I am super excited about my second middle grade novel releasing October 24, 2023. It’s about a girl who begins losing her hair. She discovers she’s snagged a juicy role in a school production and is diagnosed with alopecia in the same week. When Jada Pinkett Smith began saying she had alopecia, many people didn’t quite understand the condition. But, I knew exactly what it meant, because I had begun losing my hair around the same time. My best friend was diagnosed with alopecia universalis in high school. I’m hoping this novel helps bring awareness to alopecia and give children with alopecia a character to fall in love with.
On the YA front, I am super pumped to begin drafting my follow up YA novel, another contemporary novel centering friendships.
5. Why: Why YA? What draws you to writing for this age group?
Young Adult is such an interesting age range to write about, because it’s the time in our lives where our life path has the most possibilities, even when things feel bleak. Teens are in the stage of their development where they are discovering their identity and have a greater sense of autonomy in their life choices. While I love this for them, I’m also acknowledging that this process can be hard to navigate. Writing about this complicated process and creating teen characters that come out on the other side is what feels most rewarding to me.
Writing Inspiration from Kip
I really enjoyed all of Lakita’s responses in the interview, but I have to say how very much I loved her response to the last question. I agree that we do need to acknowledge how bleak—and how hard—the teen years can feel in today’s world. So much is going on and all the emotions kind of balloon! So it’s great to see that Lakita’s book deals both with that despair and with the hope that can blossom out of it.
Because my favorite genre (both to write and read) is historical, the situation for the characters in those novels is typically pretty difficult—often with very little hope or just a shimmer of hope at the end—so I’m personally more about the despair side of things. But teens today definitely need hope!
There’s certainly more to life even when things are difficult, especially for readers today looking for brightness in the stories they choose to invest in. It can be hard to walk that line and realistically portray both sides of the teen years—the good and the bad—so I think that’s why Last Chance Dance sounds so appealing to me, and I’m sure it will to today’s teen audience as well.
Thank you for joining me on this voyage!