This Week in YA — Issue #74
Welcome to the Voyage newsletter!
It’s another new week and another installment of this newsletter for you this week, my fellow YA enthusiasts. First off, in case you missed it, the submission deadline for the Voyage Anthology Contest (Novel Excerpt and Creative Nonfiction) has been extended to June 8 due to scheduled maintenance on Submittable. Please do submit if you haven’t yet had the chance! And read on for all kinds of summertime news, including plenty of links for a Pride-filled reading list.
News and Resources
To start Pride Month off right, Have Some LGBTQ+ Books for This Year by Riley Jensen over on Teen Librarian Toolbox.
Gabriele on Queerbookdom also recently shared 2023 June Queer Releases.
Another piece I really loved is Trans Stories Are So Much More Than Transition, Transphobia and Tragedy by Charlie on Teen Vogue.
For an overview of even more books releasing this month, Jen at Pop! Goes the Reader has Hot off the Press June 2023: YA Only.
You can find a bit more insight into what really went on at New Leaf in Call For Change: Current and Former New Leaf Literary & Media Authors Speak Out on Writer Beware.
As always, Kelly at Book Riot has the latest on book banning with Here’s How Moms for Liberty Is Lying About Books.
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 author Jackie Khalilieh, whose debut YA, Something More, is out today! I was looking forward to read this as soon as I saw “for fans of Jenny Han and Samira Ahmed.” (Yes and yes!) As an added bonus, Jackie has two other YA books in the pipeline next, so get her on your TBR now so you can say you knew her when.
5 Questions Interview with Jackie Khalilieh, YA and adult author
ABOUT SOMETHING MORE
A contemporary teen romance novel featuring a Palestinian-Canadian girl trying to hide her autism diagnosis while navigating her first year of high school, for fans of Jenny Han and Samira Ahmed.
Fifteen-year-old Jessie, a quirky loner obsessed with the nineties, is diagnosed as autistic just weeks before starting high school. Determined to make a fresh start and keep her diagnosis a secret, Jessie creates a list of goals that range from acquiring two distinct eyebrows to getting a magical first kiss and landing a spot in the school play. Within the halls of Holy Trinity High, she finds a world where things are no longer black and white and quickly learns that living in color is much more fun. But Jessie gets more than she bargained for when two very different boys steal her heart, forcing her to go off-script.
ABOUT JACKIE KHALILIEH
Jackie Khalilieh is a Palestinian-Canadian writer with a love of nineties pop culture, Dad jokes, and warm and fuzzy romance. Like many autistic females, she received her diagnosis as an adult. She is passionate about positive representation within her writing. She currently resides just outside Toronto, Canada with her husband and two daughters, complaining nightly about having to cook dinner. Something More is her debut YA novel.
1. Who: Who are your instabuy, go-to YA authors? And which new talent have you discovered recently?
Insta-buy YA authors would definitely be: Lynn Painter, Aaron H. Aceves, Racquel Marie, Olivia Abtahi, Farah Heron. But to be honest, if the premise sounds up my alley, I’m all in!
New talent: Alena Bruzas wrote a stunning YA contemporary called Ever Since. I’m super excited to read many 2023 releases from fellow YA debuts such as The Love Match by Priyanka Taslim, Always the Almost by Edward Underhill and Claire Forrest’s Where You See Yourself.
2. What: What was the most joyful moment in preparing to bring Something More into the world?
The most joyous moment was also the scariest: when ARCs of Something More became available to early readers and reviewers. Being tagged in positive reviews is always such a nice experience or receiving DMs from readers who want to share how much it meant for them to see themselves on the pages of my book as either an autistic person or Palestinian/Arab. Even readers who don’t identify with Jessie, but still loved the story, definitely warmed my terrified heart.
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 a lot of YA authors have heard that the market is saturated, sales are down and editors are acquiring less because they don’t know how to make certain books stand out. I think this takes away from some of the positive changes. We have more diverse rep than we’ve ever had and from where I’m sitting, we have readers who are engaged and excited to read and buy books. That being said, I hope we continue to publish more diverse books and make room for more quiet books. Something More, while a contemporary romance is also very much a coming-of-age story. I think publishing is very focused on how to hook readers by pushing the higher concept novels, but I’m starting to see a shift in readers who want to read quieter books with deeper character explorations and intense love stories.
4. When: Looking ahead to next year (or beyond), what exciting things are next on the horizon for you?
I recently announced my next two YA books. One is a YA romcom called You Started It (2025). It’s the book I wrote towards the end of the pandemic. I lived vicariously through my characters who got to explore Toronto and do all the things I couldn’t. The other is a YA romance called Everything Comes Back to You (2026). This is a more intense, quiet love story and to be honest, I’m obsessed with it. I love every book I’ve written, for different reasons. But I’m really proud of the writing in this one and for also pushing some boundaries and speaking on things that I don’t think are spoken of enough.
Something More releases on June 6 and I have some fun events lined up for that which can be found on my website under events. Otherwise, I’ll be working hard on revising my next two books and trying to enjoy summer while having my little book out in the world!
5. Why: Why YA? What drew you to writing this book for this age group?
When I was a teenager, my dream was to be the next John Hughes. Long story short, I gave up that dream for more realistic career choices. Longer story short: none of those careers fulfilled me. The teen years are such an emotional rollercoaster. Every day is high stakes. Every moment is the most important moment of your life. All the firsts. The intensity of first loves. And writing about those firsts is like getting to experience it again for the first time and in a roundabout way, my dream of John Hughes is being fulfilled, in my own 2023 bookish way.
Writing Inspiration from Kip
I know I’ve mentioned before how much I love doing the interviews for these newsletters, but it’s so true. I’ve come to realize that it’s not only because it gives us all the chance to get to know the author and their work better, but because some of the responses really resonate with me personally. In this week’s interview with Jackie, I felt like high-fiving her about fulfilling John Hughes dreams by writing YA novels. While those old John Hughes movies certainly have their problematic moments, they were innovative in putting the focus on teenagers at the time.
To spare you from googling, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off were some of his best-known films for teens, and they all highlight themes we still see in YA novels today: misfit teens getting to know each other (and themselves), teens from different backgrounds falling in love, and rebellious teens sneaking off behind the backs of adult authority figures. I definitely love reading books with these themes about teens today, especially because books today are written by authors of all different backgrounds and feature protagonists across the board too. Love the way nostalgia can create something even better!
Thank you for joining me on this voyage!