This Week in YA — Issue #61
Welcome to the Voyage newsletter!
It’s another new week and another installment of this newsletter for you this week, my fellow YA enthusiasts. We know our Patreon didn’t work out for you, but we want you to keep enjoying TWIYA and all the amazing resources we have to offer. We will be switching to a paid subscription on Substack come April 2023. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter and check out the weeks you missed here.
The past week has been a pretty wild ride for weather across much of the United States, but hopefully that meant some time inside curled up with a good book for many of you. I’m reading a lot of nonfiction research books these days, but I finally had the chance to start Amber McBride’s latest YA verse novel this week too, and it’s absolutely wonderful. Highly recommend!
News and Resources
First off, short story and poetry submissions are now open for the next Voyage Anthology, so get those submissions ready!
I discovered a new-to-me blog (Misty Realms, run by Kashvi) that lists 100+ Diverse Books out in 2023, so definitely check it out.
It’s March, which always means it’s time for Bologna, where many matches are made for books to be translated into other languages, and this year, The Bologna Children's Book Fair Turns 60.
The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators announced the Golden Kite Winners 2023, including books in the YA category.
If you’re looking to diversify your reading, K.W. at Book Riot shared a great list of YA Books with Fat Protagonists. I’ve read and loved several of these picks!
Finally, I’d be remiss in my duties if I left off the fact that it’s now Women’s History Month! The staff at the Chicago Public Library is celebrating with Tell Her Story: Books for Women’s History Month 2023 for Teens.
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 artist and author Deb JJ Lee, whose YA graphic memoir, In Limbo, is out today! That’s right, graphic memoir—one of my favorite kinds! I also love stories about teens navigating between two cultures and two countries, so I really can’t wait to read this one. Luckily the wait is over!
5 Questions Interview with Deb JJ Lee, YA author
ABOUT IN LIMBO
A debut YA graphic memoir about a Korean-American girl's coming-of-age story—and a coming home story—set between a New Jersey suburb and Seoul, South Korea.
Ever since Deborah (Jung-Jin) Lee emigrated from South Kora to the United States, she's felt her otherness.
For a while, her English wasn’t perfect. Her teachers can’t pronounce her Korean name. Her face and her eyes—especially her eyes—feel wrong.
In high school, everything gets harder. Friendships change and end, she falls behind in classes, and fights with her mom escalate. Caught in limbo, with nowhere safe to go, Deb finds her mental health plummeting, resulting in a suicide attempt.
But Deb is resilient and slowly heals with the help of art and self-care, guiding her to a deeper understanding of her heritage and herself.
This stunning debut graphic memoir features page after page of gorgeous, evocative art, perfect for Tillie Walden fans. It's a cross section of the Korean-American diaspora and mental health, a moving and powerful read in the vein of Hey, Kiddo and The Best We Could Do.
ABOUT DEB JJ LEE
Deb JJ Lee is a Korean American artist currently living in Brooklyn, NY. They have appeared in the New Yorker, Washington Post, NPR, Google, Radiolab, PBS, and more. Books they have illustrated include The Invisible Boy by Alyssa Hollingsworth (Roaring Brook Press, 2020) and The Other Side of Tomorrow by Tina Cho (HarperCollins, 2024). They enjoy reality tv, sparkling water, and pretending to be an extrovert.
1. Who: Who are your instabuy, go-to YA authors? And which new talent have you discovered recently?
Inio Asano: I don’t know if he counts as a YA author; his manga gets extremely dark and hopeless very quickly but I have to include him here because Goodnight Punpun really influenced the way that In Limbo came out. I especially love the way he draws humans in his work; each character is so exaggerated and distinguishable from each other that shows, in my opinion, how he feels about the face of humanity.
Molly Mendoza: Molly’s writing started out very strong with Skip, and has only gotten better with each of their following works, up to their latest work, Stray. They are also one of those artists who can only draw in the specific way that they do. Their work is lush, unexpected, and immediately recognizable.
Jillian Tamaki: I can’t believe I only recently read Supermutant Magic Academy, because I fell in love with it almost immediately. And such as their illustration style, their writing is also very poignant, fluid, and very purposeful.
Mariko Tamaki: Skim (illustrated by Jillian Tamaki) has got to be one of my favorite comics. There is so much nuance in her writing and she really knows how to get into the headspace of her protagonists. Her characters feel so real, it’s scary.
Rosemary Valero-O’Connell: Rosemary’s work has been on my Pinterest for the past several years, so I feel extremely lucky to call her a good friend ever since I moved back to the East coast. Her illustrations and her writing are so lush, even if you see them in separate homes. But combine the two and you get something truly magical. No one does it like her.
Tillie Walden: Ever since my agent Ed introduced me to Tillie’s work when I began working on the initial pitch for In Limbo, I’ve consumed every book she made. She has such a gift for using quiet in her work, which I’ve taken great inspiration from for my own.
Kenny Wroten: A peer introduced me to Kenny’s work way back when I was finding my footing in the illustration industry. I have no idea how they come up with their ideas, for they are truly bizarre and oh, so delightful and unexpected. I could look at their illustrations as well for hours and not figure out how to draw like them.
As for newer talent, I am really eager to see how the likes of A Liang Chan, Laura Gao, Hannah Vardit, and Wendy Xu continue to evolve!
2. What: What was the most joyful moment in preparing to bring In Limbo into the world?
The most joyful moments have to be between finishing up the final page and getting the hard copies in the mail. The former was in January 2022–I was in a stressful place at the time. Omicron was at its peak, I was grieving the end of a few friendships, half my apartment’s power was out, and I got scammed out of $10k. But the day after I finished the book, I went for a long run from Brooklyn to Battery City and back, and afterwards Rosemary Valero-O’Connell and I ate pancakes and drank mimosas at mine!
The second joyful moment happened more recently, only a few weeks before typing this, where I received my author copies of In Limbo in the mail. After living as a bunch of digital files since 2018, seeing it in my hands as a fully-materialized work was an experience. Each copy was much thicker than I imagined—which I suppose you get from working on one page a day for a couple years. And better yet, it was real.
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 I land in the Asian-American-diaspora section of the YA world, which has been growing over the last few years along with sections of that of other marginalized groups. Although this is progress, stories by non-cis, non-white, non-straight authors are surely still far from claiming our rightful place in the industry. From personal experience, we are running in the circle of “well we already have one YA [identity] author, why do we need another?” This disappointing way of thinking pits authors and artists against each other and worse, doesn’t make the world a better place. If readers enjoyed a book about a Korean kid living in a white neighborhood with a dissatisfactory home life, then they are likely to read another about the same topic. More of us *is* better for the world.
4. When: Looking ahead to next year (or beyond), what exciting things are next on the horizon for you?
Aside from the book tour, I’ll be headed to Almost Perfect, an art residency in Tokyo! I’ve never been to any Asian country aside from South Korea, so I’m thrilled to be going in Spring 2024 during cherry blossom season. And by then I will be done with my next graphic novel, Other Side of Tomorrow, written by Tina Cho, coming out Fall 2024 with HarperAlley, and in the thick of illustrating Monster Seek, a picture book about gender identity by Rainie Oet with Astra Books.
On a personal note, I am trying to buy an apartment in Brooklyn this year, so crossing my fingers that I find the right one that I can actually afford!
5. Why: Why YA? What draws you to writing for this age group?
For lack of a better word, there is more room in YA for melodrama. And in a way I feel like I’m still living with a YA mindset, as you do when you spend the last five years thinking about your young-adult years.
Angst thrives in the teen audience as well; they’re finding themselves and are itching to see what else lives beyond their scope of their hometown and engage in what the world, in all its beauty and ugliness, has to offer. And with that comes barrels of sadness and existentialism—topics that tend to resonate with adults, as well. Us former teenagers may be still processing their childhood trauma and use YA books as a form of therapy.
Writing Inspiration from Kip
I hope you all enjoyed this interview with Deb as much as I did. I especially appreciate their must-buy recommendations. I’ve only read Tille Walden and Laura Gao from this list, so plenty of others to check out!
Besides always looking for new books to add to my TBR, I’ve been pretty busy recently with a shiny new idea—so much so that it’s far beyond an idea now. I’m well on my way with a clear set of characters, an outline, and many pages drafted. For me personally, once I’ve got an outline and fifty pages drafted, I generally feel like a project is really real and not just an idea anymore. But I’m still very much in love with this particular project, which is also great news.
I know there tend to be two camps of people: those who love drafting and those who love revising. And while I like revising too—there’s definitely something about perfecting a string of words on the page—I’m definitely one of those people who adores drafting. I love mapping it out and just filling in the pages with story. Is it perfect? Heck, no. But there’s plenty of time to shine it up down the road.
Thank you for joining me on this voyage!