Back in October, I wrote a detailed post on how the national wave of book banning has targeted my books. For a couple of months afterward, I posted updates on instagram, but since December I haven't had the chance to do any more updates ... until now. I've been keeping a list, folks, and it's not very nice. First, I've updated my spreadsheet of all the bans and challenges that have targeted my books. If you'd like to dive into the nitty gritty details, you can view that spreadsheet here: Banned Books Spreadsheet Credit where credit is due: I learned about the vast majority of these bans and ch ..read more

Yesterday, I joined my publisher, Penguin Random House; the Iowa State Education Association; authors Laurie Halse Anderson, John Green, and Jodi Picoult; three Iowa educators; and an Iowa high school student and parent in filing a lawsuit against the state of Iowa and challenging Senate File 496, which was enacted in May 2023. SF 496 prohibits books featuring any description or visual depiction of sex—regardless of context—from public school and classroom libraries, covering students all the way through twelfth grade. SF 496 also prohibits books relating in any way to gender identity or sexu ..read more

Photo: I am standing inside Belmont Books in Belmont, MA, signing a copy of A Scatter of Light. As the holidays approach, I wanted to let you know that I’ve partnered with Belmont Books in Belmont, MA, to offer signed and personalized books for holiday gifts. (You can gift them to yourself, too! ) All you have to do is order them from Belmont Books before Dec. 11, 2023, which should provide plenty of time for shipping (U.S. only). Then, I will go to Belmont Books and sign and personalize them for you! I’ll throw in a bookmark or two as well. This is the first time I’ve been abl ..read more

Photo: I stand next to the Cessna 172 at Hanscom Airfield that I’m about to fly. I’m totally pretending I’m not nervous! On a Thursday in June 2023, I drive to Hanscom Field in Bedford, MA. I’ve scheduled myself to take a flying lesson. I’m nervous. I feel fully present in the way I do when I’m doing something scary. I’m aware of every tiny gurgle in my stomach. The lesson has already been rescheduled once because the instructor wasn’t available, and I wonder if the weather will ground me today. It’s been raining for nearly a week, with thunderstorms and low clouds hovering over Mas ..read more

Notes From the Telegraph Club #4 This is the fourth installment in my series Notes From the Telegraph Club, which dives into the research I did to write my most recent novel, Last Night at the Telegraph Club. I do my best to avoid major spoilers, but I do mention some things that happen in the book in order to explore the historical context. I don’t believe that knowing some plot points will spoil this book, but if you’d like to avoid all potential spoilers, you may wish to read the book before reading these essays. A major part of the background research for Last Night at the Telegraph Club i ..read more

Notes From the Telegraph Club #1 This is the first installment in my series Notes From the Telegraph Club, which dives into the research I did to write my most recent novel, Last Night at the Telegraph Club. I do my best to avoid major spoilers, but I do mention some things that happen in the book in order to explore the historical context. I don’t believe that knowing some plot points will spoil this book, but if you’d like to avoid all potential spoilers, you may wish to read the book before reading these essays. I’ve always believed that food is an integral part of world-building. It’s the ..read more

If you follow me on Twitter or if you remember my National Book Award acceptance speech, you’ll know that for several months now, right-wing efforts to remove books about people of color and LGBTQ people from schools and libraries (including public libraries) have been ramping up across the U.S. These efforts include book challenges (in which a parent or community member challenges a book’s inclusion in a school or library), outright bans (when books are removed from schools and libraries), and state legislation that aims to prevent teachers from teaching about racism and gender. My books have ..read more

Inarguably the highest highlight of my year: Here I am holding my novel Last Night at the Telegraph Club, featuring the gold National Book Award sticker, and the actual National Book Award trophy for Young People’s Literature. Every year I do an annual review in which I look back on what I did and look forward to what I hope to do in the year to come. I just reread my post from last year, and wow, it seems like it happened a century ago. So much has happened since then, and so much of it was at extremes. I had an incredibly good year professionally, but personally we had some difficult t ..read more

Every year I do an annual review post in which I look back on what I did and look forward to what I hope to do in the year to come, and I tag them annual review on my blog to make them easy to find. This is a holdover from the years of active blogging (a decade ago now!), and I still do it because I still like having this record of what happened to me. This means if you’re interested you can go back over a decade to see my annual reviews. Last year (at the end of 2021, in case you forgot what year this is), I wrote that my goal was to figure out what to write next, and I can report that I have ..read more

Notes From the Telegraph Club #7 This is the seventh installment in my series Notes From the Telegraph Club, which dives into the research I did to write my most recent novel, Last Night at the Telegraph Club. I do my best to avoid major spoilers, but I do mention some things that happen in the book in order to explore the historical context. I don’t believe that knowing some plot points will spoil this book, but if you’d like to avoid all potential spoilers, you may wish to read the book before reading these essays. Grace Miller tending bar (Photo from the Grace Miller papers, San Francisco ..read more