As long as I can remember, I wrote letters. I still have an ongoing stamp to envelope relationship with a bud I met in Australia in the 80s. Sending postcards also became a thing for me, too. As a reader and writer, I love tight, intimate, highly personal narratives where the characters aren’t on paper but in your head. I’ve been a social worker for more than thirty years, so emotional vulnerability is my jam. I gravitate towards quick, easily digestible lengths of many epistolary forms, whether written in a diary, letter, journal, email, text, video, or combinations. The protagonist in my latest novel, Letters From Johnny, writes to legendary Toronto Maple Leafs Captain - Dave Keon - to work out his feelings.
I am loathed to say, I had to put this book down at first. The writing was there, but it was a confusing mash-up of–I don’t even know how to describe it: post-apocalyptic, post-gender, romance-spy thriller, time-warping science fantasy? Usually too convoluted for me. But that writing…it was so poetic and eloquent that I gave it another go and was rewarded for it. Told from dual perspectives, two spies out to destroy one another in rotating dimensions, taunt, tease then fall in love with one another by leaving the most undiscoverable letters, letters so deep in wanting and loneliness that their pain becomes ours. This quick, but rich read ends as a tour de force and a hallmark of team writing.
WINNER OF The Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novella, the Reddit Stabby Award for Best Novella AND The British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novella
SHORTLISTED FOR 2020 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award The Ray Bradbury Prize Kitschies Red Tentacle Award Kitschies Inky Tentacle Brave New Words Award
'A fireworks display from two very talented storytellers' Madeline Miller, author of Circe
Co-written by two award-winning writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It…
This is a stellar example of YA pushing boundaries with a simple twist to epistolary devices. The protagonist Brynn, seeks answers and a place to vent through letters to Rachel Maddow. While this starts off as an assignment, the book’s hilarity is immediate, and her vulnerability and voice are quickly established. At times raw and edgy (trigger warnings of family violence and homophobia), Kisner morphs this coming of age story into several directions, not the least of which are a treatise on political representation, class, and diversity. Queer and teens with disabilities will find ample representation and prominence.
Brynn Harper's life has one steadying force - Rachel Maddow. She watches her daily, and after writing to Rachel for a school project, Brynn drafts emails to Rachel but never sends them. Brynn tells Rachel about breaking up with her first girlfriend, about her brother Nick's death, her passive mother and even worse stepfather, about how she's stuck in remedial courses at school and is considering dropping out.
Then Brynn is confronted with a moral dilemma. One student representative will have a voice among administration in the selection of a school superintendent. Brynn's nemesis John believes only honors students are…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan. The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced, it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run the…
This racial identity awakening book reminds me of The Hate U Give.
Justyce McAllister is going places as a rare student who is Black in a very white thinking and acting milieu. He is victimized by police brutality and racism and slowly roused to the wider, more complex world around him. He tries to channel Dr. Martin Luther King by writing to him.
The book’s strength is in how Nic Stone captures the voice of Justyce and his cohort. Stone nails teen angst, confusion, and anger while simultaneously stirring readers, especially those on the pathway to ‘wokeness’.
'Absolutely incredible, honest, gut-wrenching! A must-read!' Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give ' Painfully timely and deeply moving, this is the novel the next generation should be reading' Jodi Picoult 'Justyce's story is earnest, funny, achingly human, and unshakably hopeful. I am forever changed.' Becky Albertalli, author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda 'Raw and gripping' Jason Reynolds, author of Long Way Down 'A powerful, wrenching, and compulsively readable story that lays bare the history, and the present, of racism in America' John Green, author of The Fault in our Stars
--------------- Raw, captivating, and undeniably real,…
This is the only title I’ve selected that was written pre-social media. I say this because this is one of the forerunners of a highly intimate, tell-all, the hell with any personal boundaries kind of story that is almost essential among consumers of mass, social media. Charlie, our passive, wallflower hero writes to an unknown recipient. He reveals a precarious balance of trying to live and run from his life, a familiar anthem of teendom, which includes first dates, family dramas, drugs, friends, and mental health. A lot has happened since and because of Wallflower, but this is a good marker of when YA epistolary made a significant turn.
A modern cult classic, a major motion picture and a timeless bestseller, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a deeply affecting coming-of-age story.
Charlie is not the biggest geek in high school, but he's by no means popular.
Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie is attempting to navigate through the uncharted territory of high school. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and music - when all one requires to feel infinite is that…
You’ve probably seen this much-loved film adaptation of an astronaut Mark Watney stranded on Mars. What you don’t get in the film is the protagonist chronicling each and every move and thought into a series of videos. These show off his ingenuity and resourcefulness as he tries to make air, food, survive dust storms, and a whole whack of life-threatening stuff. Watney is a wall of American can-do and armor, a humble hero. He doesn’t emotionally bleed out helplessness and abandonment like the other epistolary titles mentioned, but it’s a highly entertaining page-turner.
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.
Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.
After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.
Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old human error are…
Eleven-year-old Johnny tries to make sense of a murder, an absent father, and the FLQ Crisis through heart and humor-filled letters to hockey legend Dave Keon.
Dripping with nostalgia and awash with humor, Letters From Johnny is set in 1970’s Toronto through the eyes of mischievous Johnny Wong, a lonely boy who tries to stickhandle a neighborhood of immigrants and draft dodgers. Johnny’s world unravels after a murder, a betrayal, and the unexpected emergence of a family member, all this as he tries to make sense of the FLQ crisis. His only solaces are letters to a pen pal, then to Dave Keon, captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
An Heir of Realms tells the tale of two young heroines—a dragon rider and a portal jumper—who fight dragon-like parasites to save their realms from extinction.
Rhoswen is training as a Realm Rider to work with dragons and burn away the Narxon swarming into her realm. Rhoswen’s dream is to…
