Firstborn/Lorie Ann Grover: celebration!

Yesterday I tried to remember my YA book life before Readergirlz entered in, and then I realized—well, I hardly had any YA book life before that happened. Maybe there was a book or two, a blog follower and a smidge, but it was when Readergirlz somehow found me or I, them (I cannot remember the sequence), that I began to live more fully in YA Wonderland.

Lorie Ann Grover, one of the founders of Readergirlz, was there from the start. We shared a love for young readers and a faith that they can be reached, a fascination with dance, and optimism about books—optimism through the thick and the thin, the high and the low of this publishing business. We believed in the intelligence of younger readers—in stretching with them, in learning from them.

I'm very happy, then, to share word today of Lorie Ann Grover's newest book, Firstborn, which was released just this week by Blink. Inspired by an article Lorie Ann read on "the practice of systematic annihilation of baby girls in countries throughout the world," it has been described by early elated reviewers as both a fantasy and a dystopian read. It has a Kirkus star—and people are talking.

I am deeply appreciative of writers who can take me into entirely new worlds, and this is precisely what Firstborn does from its very first page—opens the door to a world we haven't seen before. There are packs bulging with mutton and herbs, a communal rain urn, a priest with black robes and attached wings that hisses to a couple "Your firstborn female is worthless!" For here, in this world, firstborn females are worthless, and the only way for Tiadone, a firstborn girl, to survive is for her parents to raise her as a boy—and hope that she denies, neglects, or somehow otherwise masks her feminine ways.

Her parents choose, for her, this masked survival.

It's a hard life out there, as Tiadone grows up. Here is how Lorie Ann describes her world:

The square overflows with people. Fourteen years after the conquest we R'tan villagers still give a wide berth to the ruling Madronians. Clad in roughspun trousers, ponchos, and layered dresses, R'tan sidestep the Madronians in their ornate robe, and we continue to avert our eyes from their kohl-dotted ones.

But it's not just this grittiness that tears at Tiadone's soul. It's her growing sense, as her male initiation rites grow near, that she is suppressing more of her self that any young woman should suppress. That there is something beautiful, indeed, about being female. That having to pretend she is a boy is denying her all that she is coming to love. What are her choices? What are the risks of being exposed? This is the story Lorie Ann, in her loving way, lovingly tells.

We are all rejoicing for you, Lorie Ann. We—Readergirlz Proper and Readergirlz Extended—send our blessings on the powerful new book you are launching into the world.

Read more...

Two dear people read Going Over, and make this gray day bright and —

we are very happy. We are more than happy.

First, from my long-time friend Lorie Ann Grover, whose own forthcoming YA book, a fantasy novel called Firstborn, just received a Kirkus star. Lorie Ann and I bonded through our love for young people and young people books by way of Readergirlz, where I was the inaugural writer in residence (and we had so much fun, we really did). We have remained friends ever since. Lorie Ann came to my city for ALA Midwinter and somehow—somehow—I missed her. It was astonishing today to read her words about this Berlin novel. Astonishing, and danceworthy, and no excuses next time: We must meet!

And then there is amazing Pam of Bookalicious, whom I have also never met, though we believe that we once brushed shoulders at a BEA event and managed not to realize whose shoulders we'd just brushed. Pam has been such an incredible advocate for my work. Her words—so potent—sit, among other places, on the jacket of the Small Damages paperback. Pam was one of the very first people (outside the Chronicle team) to read Going Over. She shared her copy with a gentleman on an airplane and told me the story while I was sitting in a very cold hotel room in a far-away town, while on assignment. Here are her words about the book. They are, well, Pam-alicious. And there is a giveaway.

Thank you, Lorie Ann. Thank you, Pam. Very much.

Read more...

A New Poem, Flying Chickadee, and the Courageous Creativity Zine

A few months ago, Lorie Ann Grover, a dear friend, talented writer, and founding partner in Readergirlz, introduced me, via email, to Shirin Subhani, the co-creator of Flying Chickadee and the quite original and lovely zine, Courageous Creativity.  Shirin was wondering if I might write a poem on courage for her next issue, and I, thinking about my son's graduation and the uncertain nature of life ahead, said yes.

Within the last few days, this new issue of the magazine has launched, and it is, as I hope you'll see by going to this site, big in both heart and execution. Important stories are here, and so is hope.

Introducing, then, Courageous Creativity, and a poem about a certain boy, called "The Graduate." With thanks to Lorie Ann and Shirin. 

Read more...

The You Are My Only Treasure Hunt Continues

Readers of this blog know that a You Are My Only treasure hunt is under way.  The hunt goes something like this:  I've written five guest posts about the making of this book.  Those posts have now begun to pop up in the blogosphere.  Your job (should you choose to accept it) is to find those five entries and then post them collectively on your own blog.  Send the link to me, in a comment box on my blog, and your name will be entered into a drawing. 

Two winners will be selected. Each will win these two things: A signed copy of You Are My Only AND a critique (by yours truly) of the first 2,000 words of a work-in-progress. As many of you know, I teach memoir at the University of Pennsylvania and served as the inaugural readergirlz author in residence. I have written in multiple genres and critique adult fiction for major U.S. newspapers. Your manuscript can, I am hinting, be in any genre, save for a screenplay, about which I have absolutely zero expertise.

To make this contest a little easier, I am reprinting here the first paragraphs of the two entries that are now floating out there in the virtual world.

The first, titled "The (furious) metamorphosis of Sophie," is hosted on a blog that has the clever subtitle "Looking better in black since 1234."  It appeared on September 9th, and it begins like this:

Several years ago I began to write a novel for adults that had a certain Sophie as its focus.  She was in her late thirties and her boyfriend, Vin, had recently left her.  She was alone, a writer, and trying to piece together the unresolved oddments of her past.  Strange things were being left on Sophie’s doorstep—signs, masks, even a pot of soup—and the only thing that Sophie knew for sure that she was being lured to an abandoned asylum on the other side of the woods by people she wasn’t certain she could trust.

The second, titled "Opening the door to Cloris and Helen," appears today, September 21, and is hosted by a blogger whom we all consider to be our friend.  It begins like this:

I’ll be honest.  Cloris and Helen are two characters who have been living with me for more than a decade.  That’s right.  I carried these two dear souls, these more-than-best-friends ladies, through a variety of novels I’d been writing.  They were bird-obsessed in one book (not so strange, since all of my books have at least one character who is obsessed with birds).  They were digging a huge hole beneath their house in another.  In an early version of the book that became You Are My Only, it was Cloris who had been committed to the asylum.

  Two posts up and three to go.  I'll be keeping you apprised as the hunt continues.

Finally, today, I would like to thank the ever-dear Lorie Ann Grover for her beautiful words about You Are My Only.  I had the privilege of working with Lorie Ann and all the Readergirlz not long ago, as the author in residence.  Happy times.  Thank you, Lorie Ann.

Read more...

A Jury of Her Peers: what a girl should want

For the 11th question of her What a Girl Wants series, Colleen Mondor asked a number of us one of her typically challenging questions: What does it mean to be a 21st century feminist, and on the literary front, what books/authors would you recommend to today's teens who want to take girl power to the next level?

Lorie Ann Grover, Laurel Snyder, Loree Griffin Burns, Margo Raab, and Zetta Elliott all came through with reliably interesting responses. I was caught up in a series of corporate projects and could not respond in time.

Today, however, I'd like to put my two cents in by recommending Elaine Showalter's A Jury of Her Peers: Celebrating American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx to readers of any age, gender, or race who wish to understand and celebrate just how hard women have had to work to put their voices on the page—and how women's voices have and will continue to shape us.

Anne Bradstreet, one of this nation's first women writers, entered print, in Showalter's words, "shielded by the authorization, legitimization, and testimony of men." In other words, Showalter continues, "John Woodbridge, her brother-in-law, stood guarantee that Bradstreet herself had written the poems, that she had not initiated their publication, and that she had neglected no housekeeping chore in their making."

No vanity allowed, in other words, and no leaving those dishes in the sink.

Showalter's book—which yields insight into the stories of Phillis Wheatley, Julia Ward Howe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Dorothy Parker, Zora Neale Hurston, Pearl Buck, Shirley Jackson, Harper Lee, Sylvia Plath, S.E. Hinton, Grace Paley, Joan Didion, Lorrie Moore, Jayne Anne Phillips, Sandra Cixneros, Amy Tan, Louis Erdrich, Jhumpa Lahiri, Gish Jen, and so many others—is itself a piece of history, for it is, unbelievably, the first literary history of American women writers.

Showalter suggests that the development of women's writing might be classified into four phases: feminine, feminist, female, and free. Anyone who wants to know just how we got to free (and to ponder, with the evidence, whether or not we're really there) should be reading this book.

Read more...

What readergirlz sound like when readergirlz are talking

We readergirlz girlz tore up the keyboards last night talking everything from writerly schedules (thank you, Little Willow, for offering to make me breakfast); TV shows ("So You Think You Can Dance" rocks supreme); the joint appearance by Erin McIntosh and Melissa Walker in the newest six-word memoir book (oh, baby); certain showcase dance number videos that will never be aired (thank you, Mercy, for keeping our secret our secret); the emergence of Priya as a readergirlz street girl; favorite bands (yes, mine is still and will always be Bruce Springsteen); landscape as character (thank you, Nicole, for the question); favorite editors, past and present; how I stink at the samba (just ask Jean Paulovich); whether I will every write fantasy (thank you, Maya and Hipwriter Mama for your faith in my abilities); whether I've watched "Glee" (I'm so sorry, Lorie Anne); and why Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River was perhaps the most challenging and most rewarding book that I've yet published, though 2010 and beyond is filled with books and potential books that were probably even harder. All along Dia Calhoun and Holly Cupala were tossing out not just literary questions but riotously funny—and unexpected—images.

Which is all to say that if you haven't participated in a readergirlz chat, you really ought to. They happen twice a month or so. They will keep you at the edge of your fingertips.

Read more...

Hold me Tight by Lorie Ann Grover/Beth Kephart Review

There is never enough time for me to be the person I want to be. I am shamed, often, by all I cannot find the hours to do. But this week, at last, I turned to books written by friends—to packages sent, to packages ordered. I turned to the poems of the extraordinarily talented Kate Northrop (Things Are Disappearing Here). To the short stories of Alyson Hagy (Ghosts of Wyoming). To Rahna Reiko Rizzuto's novel-in-progress. And, last night and this morning, to Lorie Ann Grover's young adult novel-in-poems, Hold me Tight.

Lorie Ann is a readergirlz founder, a homeschooling mother, a former dancer. She is also, let me be clear, a bonafide poet who, with Hold me Tight, captures the bewildering eight weeks in the life of a young girl whose father has left, whose mother is pregnant, and whose classmate has been snatched by a vengeful kidnapper. It doesn't make sense, and yet this is life as Estele Leann knows it, life as she must learn to live it.

A novel-in-poems might sound like a daunting proposition; Hold me Tight is anything but. I can't, in fact, imagine telling this story in any other fashion, with any other tools. More words would have been excess and somehow less true. Fewer would have denied us the long dwell in the cracked-open heart of a child. In line after line, Lorie Ann masterfully reveals a child grappling to understand, and to forgive.

I'm going to shatter
into a million slivers,
and none of my pieces
will end up
touching each other.

She reveals as well a child who is already finding her way:

I gather a few bits
and tape myself
back into Dad's arms.
This is what I have
to show he loved me once.
This was me
before I hated him.
This was then.

Sometimes the people who put others on the stage (as Lorie Ann has put so many on the stage) aren't given enough room beneath the spotlight. Today, on my blog, it's Lorie Ann Grover's turn to leap and to touch down, graced.

Read more...

On Becoming the readergirlz Author in Residence

Would you consider, author and readergirlz co-founder Lorie Ann Grover wrote to me last May, being our readergirlz Author in Residence from September through December? Writing a monthly blog about the writing life? Participating in readergirlz chats? Attending a live online party?

I did not have to think twice. This is readergirlz—perhaps the most esteemed site for young adult readers in the world. It's the brain child of Justina Chen Headley, Dia Calhoun, Holly Cupala, Melissa Walker, and Lorie Ann herself, with no small support from the postergirlz, Little Willow (who makes it all happen technically), Jackie, Miss Erin, ShelfElf, and HipWriterMama. There's real content on this site—deep plunges into the world of good books—and I've been honored to come to know these creators and doers over the past many months.

So here I am—the first official readergirlz author in residence. I'll have vlogs for you about writing themes—as well as writing contests. Please do stay tuned.

Read more...

The Nonfiction Question

For the fifth question in Chasing Ray's fascinating series, What a Girl Wants, Colleen Mondor asked the panel to reflect on those subjects that "should be addressed in YA nonfiction that teen girls would want to read about and just as important — should read about." Colleen never asks easy questions, but this one proved to be tougher than the rest.

My answer, as you'll see, if you travel over to the site, relates to place and culture—to the need (in my estimation) for books that transport YA readers to places they've not yet been and puts them there not in textbook fashion but in a way that opens doors to compassionate, empathetic, engaged living. I was thinking about Juarez, among other places, when I developed my response, and so my photo choice of the day.

But it's not really my answer that concerns me here. It's what Lorie Ann Grover, Zetta Elliott, Laurel Snyder, Jenny Davidson, Sara Ryan, Mayra Lazara Dole, and Colleen herself have to say that I hope will interest you.

Read more...

And Then I Cried

There was hardly a soul in the restaurant last night by the time my husband and I made our way to it. The streets were thick with ice and the snow that had been falling all day long kept rising back up with the wind and snapping. I had my blackberry with me because I always do, because it is my one connection across hundreds of miles to my son; I want to be near if he wants to talk. And so there we were, and there was the blackberry, and there was cold outside and a certain emptiness in my heart—a sadness stemming from news encountered earlier in the day.

Toward the end of the meal (appetizers, only), that little red blackberry light went off, and I checked to see to whom it might belong. It was Little Willow, of all people, a forerunner blogger of forerunner bloggers, who was out there doing smart book talk in advance of most of the world.

Guess who has a book recommended in this month's issue of readergirlz? she wrote. You do! You do! The postergirlz picked UNDERCOVER as a recommended read, along with our main March pick, THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX by Mary E. Pearson.

I try hard not to cry at things that are not life and death related, but no amount of resolve stopped my tears with this. Because who are those readergirlz? They are Lorie Ann Grover, dancer, writer, illustrator, thinker. They are Justina Chen Headley, former executive and now author of such supremely successful and lovely, intelligent books as NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL, her latest, which earned three starred reviews and is getting incredible responses across the blogosophere. They are Melissa Walker, and we all know Melissa—beloved author of the VIOLET series and fashionista, who reports on her Manhattan travels so that the rest of us can be voyeurs. They are Dia Calhoun, the acclaimed authoress, and Holly Cupala, whose first novel is due out in 2010. And in essential supporting roles there are those like Miss Little Willow herself, HipWriterMama (a blogger I admired for so long from afar, a writer, and interviewer extraordinaire), and the delightfully popular Miss Erin, rising actress and poet and friend (and daughter of sometimes actress, rising photographer, and always friend Sherry!).

They are, in other words, women I have long respected. Women who are out there making a difference with their voices and their opinions.

UNDERCOVER stands as a March pick among books that I'd be proud to be associated with on any day of any week: MEMOIRS OF A TEENAGE AMNESIAC, FRANKENSTEIN, GRACELING, NOT QUITE WHAT I WAS PLANNING: SIX-WORD MEMOIRS BY WRITERS FAMOUS AND OBSCURE, and WALDEN.

I don't know about you, but sometimes electronic hugs, as first delivered upon my heart by Anna Lefler, are not enough.

Still:

(((thank you)))

Read more...

Goodness

This morning I am grateful to the finches that still come, despite the snow, and to Lorie Ann Grover—a mother, a writer, an illustrator, a former dancer, a co-founder of ReaderGirlz, that YA site that transcends all others—who read HOUSE OF DANCE and had kind words to say.

Goodness abounds.

Read more...