Lauren Groff on Work and Love
This week’s story, “ Between the Shadow and the Soul ,” is about a fifty-year-old woman named Eliza who has
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Photo of me and Rebecca Ross. Photo credit: Keara Rodriguez To be completely candid, I never intended to be a middle grade author. I originally queried my agent with an adult science fiction manuscript, and saw myself as a writer of exclusively YA and adult sci-fi romance. But about a year into my career as an agented author, an invitation came from a new imprint at Disney Hyperion called Freedom Fire, which was dedicated to stories about Black joy, Black resilience, and Black storytelling. They asked my agent if I had any middle grade pieces that might fit their taste. As luck would have it, I did: a short story I’d originally envisioned as YA, about a Black girl in suburban Atlanta who would compete to be crowned the queen of her local renaissance faire’s summer camp. I’d been trying to figure out what to do with the piece, when the Freedom Fire call made me realize that aging it down might be an option. Retooling that story for a middle grade audience was like blowing oxygen on a dying ember. A fresh spark caught on the story, and I saw it with new eyes. The telltale curiosity and whimsy of pre-teen adolescence was exactly the lens I needed to bring this story to life, a story about a girl who was grappling with the difference between her family’s desire to protect her and her own desires. A girl who was wondering exactly who she’d turn out to be, in the end. Photo of me and Rebecca Ross. Photo credit: Keara Rodriguez This past year, as I was putting the finishing touches on my YA dystopian romance debut, The Dividing Sky , I was also balancing deadlines for that story, my upcoming middle grade debut Kaya Morgan’s Crowning Achievement . Almost like clockwork, the second I’d wrap a bow on something for one manuscript, a time-sensitive request from my other editor pinged in my inbox. Though switching back and forth between projects comes with its own set of challenges, the primary emotion I felt each time I’d switch was […]
Click here to view original page at Why I Love Writing Middle Grade, As a YA Debut Author, a guest post by Jill Tew
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This week’s story, “ Between the Shadow and the Soul ,” is about a fifty-year-old woman named Eliza who has
The British realist director Mike Leigh loves the term “character actor,” which he uses often and with zeal. To him,
