Cover Reveal! BODY TALK: 37 VOICES EXPLORE OUR RADICAL ANATOMY

April 6, 2020 |

I’m super excited to share the cover of my next anthology, Body Talk; 37 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy. The book hits shelves August 18.

The cover was designed by Laura Williams. The cover art is by Kelly Bastow, who also has a handful of pieces in the collection. I’m in love with it.

I’m keeping today’s post and cover reveal pretty short and sweet in part because I wrote about this book in more depth over on Book Riot today.

You can preorder anywhere you buy books. Keep your proof of purchase, as I have a preorder thank you to share shortly. If you preorder from my indie, Read Between The Lynes, save your proof of purchase, as I’ll be holding a special giveaway just for you closer to release date–you can put in the notes, too, if you’d like me to sign it for you.

It’s time to bare it all about bodies!

We all experience the world in a body, but we don’t usually take the time to explore what it really means to have and live within one. Just as every person has a unique personality, every person has a unique body, and every body tells its own story.

In Body Talk, thirty-seven writers, models, actors, musicians, and artists share essays, lists, comics, and illustrations—about everything from size and shape to scoliosis, from eating disorders to cancer, from sexuality and gender identity to the use of makeup as armor. Together, they contribute a broad variety of perspectives on what it’s like to live in their particular bodies—and how their bodies have helped to inform who they are and how they move through the world.

Come on in, turn the pages, and join the celebration of our diverse, miraculous, beautiful bodies!

Feminism for the Real World: Contributors, Round Two

November 12, 2015 |

So to catch up those who may have missed it, here’s round one of the contributors who are writing or drawing or otherwise contributing to Feminism for the Real World, my feminist anthology out with Algonquin Young Readers in Spring 2017. I’ve been reading and editing and working like wild to put their pieces together, and it’s been overwhelming in the best possible sense. Everyone brought their A game — actually, they brought their A+ game.

I mentioned that that wouldn’t be my only announcement for contributors to the collection. In addition to that outstanding lineup, I’m thrilled to note that Brandy Colbert will be contributing, and I’ll be reprinting my phenomenal interview about girls’ stories from earlier this year with Laurie Halse Anderson and Courtney Summers (slightly altered, of course).

There are also some more contributors. These pieces are a mix of brand new material and reprinted works.

I keep wanting to just write their names and let this land as it may, but I’m going to play a little game. Mostly because I’m so excited that even typing these names — people who will be contributing to my feminist anthology for young adult readers — makes me shake with anticipation and total disbelief and gratitude and every other possible feeling. Here are some photos and other goods that represent the people who will be participating/who have their words included. Maybe you can guess who they are before I list ’em and maybe it’s so obvious you don’t even need to guess. These are in absolutely no order.

READY?

4. + 5.

Did I make this too obvious? I don’t even care.

I’m absolutely thrilled, honored, and humbled to share that I’ll be publishing original and/or reprinting works by politician Wendy Davis, singer-songwriter Matt Nathanson, an interview with actress Laverne Cox (as conducted by Tricia Romano for DAME Magazine), dancer Michaela and musician Mia DePrince, writer Roxane Gay, and actress Mindy Kaling.

On top of the writers involved in this, these contributors are cherries on top of a very, very sweet ice cream sundae of feminism.

You can’t preorder the anthology yet, but you can absolutely add it to your Goodreads shelf. I’m in the midst of completing the first draft to send to my wonderful editors, so I should be able to share more when the new year rolls around.

Exciting News & A Pep Talk To Readers

October 27, 2015 |

In between tackling some challenging social media related shenanigans, I’ve been working really hard lately on my anthology, as well as some other writing for work and non-work reasons. It’s been fabulous, all of this writing, as has been the incredible honor I’ve had to edit essays for Feminism for the Real World. I’m going to have a very exciting announcement soon with the second part of my contributors (!!) but in the time before that, I have my own exciting announcement which is this: I am now represented by literary agent of wonder, Tina Wexler at ICM.

I cannot express my excitement for how well Tina and I clicked from our first email to our phone calls. I have let her in on all of my secrets and it’s really neat to have someone who not only gets it, but who is excited about helping me find a home for the projects I’ve got in my pocket. I even shared some (gasp!) YA fiction I’ve toyed with, a project I have toyed with and put away because of more pressing work, and she was receptive and excited by it.

A little back story: I’ve done this entirely backwards, upside down, and in my own way on my own terms. Most writers begin with an idea, then they write the manuscript, then they query agents, then they work with the agent who sends their work off to editors who might be interested. I jumped around. I wrote and sold a book to VOYA entirely on my own, and I did the same with Feminism for the Real World with Algonquin Young Readers. One of my editors there suggested I think about agents while going through some of the paperwork aspect of the project, and her suggestion really made me sit back and think about what I wanted for a career out of writing — and it was and is clear to me there’s more than this in me. Suddenly, I had five million ideas and wanted to find an agent who’d be open to trying these things, as unconventional as they may be.

There’s little to nothing out there for writers who aren’t going into straight fiction or even narrative non-fiction in terms of what they should be doing to find an agent. So I asked around — I asked writers I knew who loved their agents why they loved them, what made them stand out, and whether they knew anyone else who might be open to talking. I had it in my head to just talk, and I had fantastic conversations with two great agents. After talking, I knew this was something I not only wanted to do, but that I needed to do.

I have been taking an online course about dreaming for the last four weeks. I did it for me and me alone, and it’s been about an hour a day I get to spend thinking about possibilities and ideas and making my life more creatively adventurous and fulfilling. I might write about the course in more detail when it’s done, but a few of the big takeaways from it so far have been really impacting my thinking. I can’t just sit on ideas. I have to let myself pursue them as I have them or at least write them down to pursue when I’m ready. In a lot of ways, this was “divine timing.” And this was a leap and a risk I was more than ready to take.

I’m thrilled to keep writing, to keep building this unconventional and exciting and fun and fulfilling career. Last weekend marked four years since I walked out of a job that left me depressed and miserable and feeling awful day in and day out. I had no plans when I left, just that for my own sake, I needed to get out.

Four years back, I couldn’t have envisioned how much that decision radically changed my life in the best possible ways.

If you’re reading this, take that leap. You and your life are worth it. There will be super crummy times. There will be things that truly test the limits of all aspects of your life and your relationships.

But you only get to do this whole thing once, so take the chances as you can.

“Yes” is just as important as “no.”

Announcing: Part One of FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD Contributions

August 17, 2015 |

via the Creative Commons

Remember the time I sold an anthology of feminist essays to Algonquin Young Readers? It’s been a few months since I’ve talked about it here on STACKED, and that’s for good reason: I’ve been working on collecting the most dynamic, exciting, wide-ranging voices to contribute.

One of the goals of this collection is to have a solid group of essays, as well as art and comics. One of the other goals was to also reach out to “big name” and celebrities to get their voices into the collection, too. I won’t lie and say that part was easy, but I will say that has been one of the most enjoyable, eye-opening, and educational elements of putting together this collection. I have learned about negotiating on rights, among other things. Because some of these negotiations aren’t complete yet, I don’t feel comfortable sharing, but needless to say, I’m very excited by the “big” names who will be included in the collection.

But I’m not going to be a complete meanie in this post. I DO have a roster of contributors who have signed, sealed, and delivered contracts to me for inclusion in Feminism For The Real World. Curious who they might be?

I’m excited to share, in alphabetical order, the authors and artists who will be included in the anthology. Their pieces range in topic, in voice, in structure, and in approach, and the ones I have seen so far have blown me away. I cannot wait to see the whole of this come together, and more, I cannot wait for this collection to get into the hands of teenagers — especially teenage girls — in spring 2017.

I’ve linked to the websites or work of the contributors, so you can check out what they’ve been working on and what it was about their work, their voices, and their perspectives that made me want to include them:

Illustrators and Artists

It’s an honor to work with this roster of writers and artists. I’ve admired so much of their work and their insights, that being told “yes! I’m interested!” to contributing to my collection was nothing short of flattering.

This is my dream project, and I’ve learned so much so far, both from the contributors and my editors. I cannot wait to talk more about this as the project proceeds, but one thing that stands out to me is something I talked a bit about earlier this summer: the course I took in college as my capstone, where the final project was developing an anthology, has played a tremendous role in my thinking about this particular collection. But more — and maybe more importantly — it made me rethink some of the things I learned or analyzed in that particular class. Like in librarianship, you learn about ideals and perfect case scenarios in the classroom. You ask a lot of “why did they fail to do this or this or this?” in regards to imperfection in creation.

But the truth is, when you’re in the thick of things, when you’re actually on the ground making and doing, there are so many confounding factors that muddy the process. Nothing will ever be perfect; it can’t be. Instead, you make it the best thing you can make it, and you take pride in that. The process of asking myself questions, of asking questions of those who know better or who have more experience, has been enlightening and humbling.

I’m very proud of this so far, and I’m only going to be more thrilled as further pieces click into place. I cannot wait to see it all come together.

It Happens: Available Today

August 15, 2014 |

My book, It Happens: A Guide to Contemporary Realistic Fiction for the YA Reader, is available today.

You can purchase it through VOYA (with a $10 discount to subscribers), Book Depository (which means free delivery world wide), Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and various indie bookstores.

This week, Jen Robinson reviewed it over at her blog, and what she had to say started my week off on a good note. This is my favorite part:

[W]here It Happens really shines is in Part 2. In this section, Kelly provides fifteen book “annotations” for each of ten separate topics, thus profiling 150 books in detail. Her selections are all relatively current titles (from the past 10 years), and do not include the obvious, huge print run titles, which people already know about.

Each annotation includes a cover image, a brief summary of the book, a link to the book’s trailer, if available, and a list of “Appeal Factors” (e.g. “female main character”, “moving”, “deafness”, etc.). The appeal factors are very useful (and an index of the factors is available at the end of the book). Kelly goes beyond the genres to get into real specifics, like books set in particular locations, books with people of color or non-traditional families, books about filmmaking or fishing, etc.

Below that, Kelly also includes a brief section on “Read Alikes” for each book. These Read Alikes were what impressed me the most about It Happens. Rather than just including a list of similar books, Kelly discusses just what it is about this book that might appeal to readers who liked some other title. And then she’ll also discuss other books that might make a good follow-on read, and WHY. These references, these connections between the books, really showcase Kelly’s deep knowledge of the field.

That was my goal.

In addition to that really thoughtful review, I’m excited to also share an interview I did with Little Willow about the book. I’ve been reading her blog forever — even before Stacked began — so when she approached me, I was more than flattered. She asked me some really great questions, including this:

When you read a book summary, what are the magic words? What immediately makes you think, “I’ve got to read this book!”?

Dark, gritty, and edgy are three words I love. They don’t have to be in relation to realistic fiction. I’ll read most genres, especially when those words are involved.

Other things that grab me: dancing, a midwest setting outside of Chicago, anything feminist or that sounds like it’s going to focus on navigating girlhood.

The words “magical realism” can catch my eye, but I approach those a little more cautiously/critically.

You can read the entire interview here, where I talk about my top 10 favorite books, the “Jessica Darling” series, about my untraditional college education, the time I almost died giving a presentation, and more.

And if you want to win a copy of It Happens, the amazingly kind and generous Courtney Summers is giving away two (!) copies this weekend. You just have to follow the super simple instructions on Twitter.

Thank you to everyone who helped make this book happen and to those who have supported it along the way. Thank you to blog readers who made it clear there was an interest and a need for a resource dedicated to contemporary realistic YA fiction.

I’m going to enjoy an ice cream cone to celebrate today.