YA New York

Okay, so everyone but everyone was at the New York Public Library’s Jefferson Market Branch last night. ALL the cool kids were there. Or almost all of them. Sarah Mlynowski had to give the event a miss because she was called away to Montreal on an emergency (Best wishes and big hugs to you, Sarah — we hope everything is or will be all right). We missed her, but we had fun anyway, because in addition to all the authors I told you about before, Ms. Rachel Vail was there.

I’ve got tons of pics, but of course you’ll have to look inside for them.

Well, okay, here’s a taste:

David Levithan, author of Boy Meets Boy and a bunch of other cool books, not to mention editorial director at Scholastic, hosted the night. By “hosted,” I mean he organized it, MC’d it, and serves as general social director of the New York YA community. A little secret about David: He is the man who has the power to lift the velvet rope and officially invite you to join YA Drinks Night. You can’t get this invitation until, I think, you have a contract. I harassed him a bit about it last night, and we ended up with an agreement that I am to have a finished manuscript on his desk on July 25. He doesn’t actually have to read it; I just have to get my ass in gear, and he was kind enough to understand that what I need is a deadline. With a real live editor. One day, dear Mr. Levithan, I will buy you a round at YA Drinks Night.

Ahem. Back to our story of Giant YA Author Night. A lot of folks were reading, and I noticed a lot of things about them as they did. The main thing is that they gave voice to their novels. You may wonder, “Why would I go listen to an author read from his or her book, when I can just read that book myself???” The answer is, you’ll understand the author and the book better after seeing and hearing them in person. It’s like the difference between an mp3 and a rock show, all right?

Our first author of the night was John Coy, whose new book Box Out focuses on a kid who makes it onto the varsity basketball team. When one very smart kid in the audience asked the writers what made them decide to write young adult fiction, John answered thusly: “There are not enough books for boys. I think we’re doing a really poor job with boys and reading.” John also said he tried to write a book he would have liked to read as a teenager. Side note: John’s reading made me want to read the book, which I don’t yet have. But I will get it, and I shall review it here, even if it is about my least favorite sport in the world.

Susane Colasanti read second, and let me tell you, she really knows how to make her books come alive when she reads aloud. She read from her latest book, Take Me There, and I just … never would have put the emphasis where she does in each phrase. It made me think, “Wow. I’ve been reading this character (Nicole) all wrong.” It made me think, “Now I’ve got to go back and read the book again, with Susane’s voice in mind.” It made me think, “Dude. Susane Colasanti is totally going to be on my collaborative novel team one of these days.” She is, as I mentioned in my earlier review, fantastic at writing from multiple perspectives, and she is fascinated by perspective in general. It’s a talent of hers, this perspective thing. Her novels are like collaborative efforts in themselves, I swear.

Next up was Ms. E. Lockhart herself, representing on behalf of the three lovely writers of How to Be Bad. (The others, in case you don’t already know, are Lauren Myracle and the aforementioned Sarah Mlynowski.) E. was super-cool, and she was asked a lot of questions about how the writing process worked with HTBB. She had this to say: “The writing process was very cheerful, and the revision process was … not.” Basically, Lauren set up a few rules at the beginning, the first of which was “Nothing sucks,” and the second of which was, “Write one chapter a week.” But then, when it came to editing, each author had to sign off on each and every chapter, and Super Editor Farrin Jacobs over at Harper Collins had her suggestions to make, too. E. almost made me fear my ambition to write a series of collaborative novels, but not enough to quell it entirely, especially considering that she, Lauren and Sarah are most definitely firm friends now.

Moving right along. Sarah Beth Durst read from her new book, Out of the Wild, and once again I realized I’d totally missed something. (A non-spoiler way of saying it: Our heroine Julie meets a boy, and at their first meeting he talks really fast. I mean really really fast. Which I didn’t realize until Sarah totally turned into a female version of that guy from the old Micro-Machines commercials.) Sarah also said that she doesn’t necessarily write for any particular age group — and this is important — but that her main character just happens to be twelve years old, because Sarah focuses on mother/daughter and father/daughter relationships in this series. Anyway, the reason I think it’s so important and fantabulous that Sarah said this is that she’s reminding us all, once again, that YA literature is really for everyone.

Above is a photo of Daphne Grab. It’s a sad photo, because it makes Daphne look like she’s wearing insane blue eye makeup. She’s not. It’s just that I used my red-eye correction tool, and the result was … this. Still, I decided fake blue eye makeup was probably better than scary red eyes. Daphne read from her book Alive and Well in Prague, New York, another book I have not read but now really really really want to. Remember that kid who asked why folks on the dais wrote YA? Daphne said that although she is thirty-seven, married, and a mom, “There is just this teen place in me that is very much alive.” I think that’s true of most of the best people in the world. Our inner teenagers live on, no matter how old we grow. Or at least, I hope that is the case. One day, I want to be eighty-seven and feisty and have a rebellious teenager inside me who makes me say and do wacky things that only eighty-seven-year-olds can get away with.

The last, but oh-so-not-least, author of the night was the esteemed Rachel Vail. Yes, Ms. Rachel Vail read from her latest novel, Lucky, and she revealed something that made me very, very happy. This particular book is told from the perspective of Phoebe Avery, the youngest of three Avery sisters. It’s a novel about suddenly facing financial hardship, and it’s particularly heart-breaking because our protagonist is in eighth grade and has never known anything about poverty or hardship. Anyway, Rachel’s next two books will be about Phoebe’s two older sisters, and the books will show their perspectives of the situations. I am very excited to see what Rachel’s got up her sleeve. I am also very excited that when I met Rachel (and her kids, who came to the reading!) she greeted me warmly instead of chopping off my head for standing her up that one time when I was supposed to interview her. Also, doesn’t she look like a young Gloria Steinem? She totally does.

That’s it, my friends, at least for this evening. But what a mammoth event it was, and what a very long post! Oh! And just so you know? There were other writers in the audience, writers you’d recognize, and overall it was like one big happy YA author clambake, except without any clams.

Much love,
brina

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 6:08 pm and is filed under Ephemera, Events, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.