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Many authors' jobs in school, public, and academic libraries have informed their writing for teens.

We know that many teachers have become writers for young people, and librarians are no different. Beverly Cleary and Lewis Carroll both spent their days in information services, and many contemporary YA authors also accept experience in school, public, and bookish libraries. And between gaining research experience, developing knowledge of the publishing market, and having conversations with teens, their careers inform their writing. In honor of National Library Calendar week, here are some YA authors whose piece of work is both in the stacks and behind the reference desk-bound.

Juleah del Rosario, photograph by Flor Blake; Thousand. K. England; Jenny Han, photo by Janelle Bendycki

The Bird and the Blade author Megan Bannen's library life started when she was young. "My mom was a school librarian, and I would earn my assart by helping her sort itemize cards and shelve books," she says. In her mid-20s, Bannen made it official equally a youth services associate for the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library and other public libraries in Kansas, where she hosted storytimes. "Patrons didn't always know my proper name, but they definitely knew me as 'the lady with the pinkish ukulele,'" she says. She talks to kids and teens virtually what they want to read, whether or not it'southward on the shelves. "It's helped me see opportunities," she says. "I find myself thinking things like, 'I wish there were more than YA books dealing with organized religion. Oh, hey! I should write that!' Or when I see a lot of elementary-aged reluctant readers shy away from the really thick books getting published in the middle grade market, it makes me retrieve, 'Maybe we could use more books under l yard words in length. Oh, hey! I should write that, too!'"

As an acquisitions librarian at the University of Colorado Boulder, Juleah del Rosario is in charge of buying all of the resources for the library. "Working in a library at a academy played a part in how I thought about college admissions for my first novel, 500 Words or Less," she says. "The opportunity to attend college can be transformative for many students, but is rife with anxiety, pressure, and, as recent news demonstrates, systems of inequity. Libraries, public, school, or university, can play a role in guiding students and teens through periods of transition, whether information technology'southward navigating complex societal issues or relationships through YA novels, or learning how to critically evaluate data available online."

Emily A. Duncan is a youth services librarian at the Hudson Library and Historical Society in Hudson, OH, where she coordinates storytimes and programming for teens. "Working in a library and seeing what teens are reading is helpful merely to run into what they gravitate toward, just information technology rarely informs my writing because I've found the teens who really like fantasy will read all fantasy," she says. Her first novel, Wicked Saints, is the start of a dark fairy tale trilogy.

G.K. England, author of The Disasters, started in libraries as a summer volunteer when she was a teenager, then took a work study job at her higher's music library when she was an undergraduate. Finally, she decided to brand librarianship a career. "When a librarian friend finally shook me and asked, 'WHY AREN'T Y'all A LIBRARIAN? Yous WOULD LOVE Information technology,' I finally got my deed together and went to library school." Now, she's a YA librarian in Virginia. "My favorite function about the task is working with the teens themselves, specially my Teen Advisory Board," she says. "They're creative, passionate, then full of ideas, and beingness around their energy admittedly informs the characters I write and my desire to write them. I desire to give them the world! And other worlds, I guess, since I write sci-fi/fantasy!"

Finding—and writing—what teens are looking for

As the young adult librarian at the Morristown and Morris Township library in Morristown, NJ, Sandy Hall ran teen programming and was in charge of YA collection development. She was also a reader for the Garden State Teen Book Awards. Hall'southward offset novel, A Fiddling Something Different, was inspired by i of the teens in her library. "She wanted to read a book nearly living away at college. Nosotros couldn't find anything quite like what she was looking for and I filed the idea away," she says. The writer'due south next YA romance, The Shortest Distance Betwixt Dearest and Hate, comes out in July. Fifty-fifty while writing, Hall is never far from libraries. "I currently piece of work part-time as a reference librarian because I dear being a librarian and didn't want to give upwards the profession completely."

To All the Boys I've Loved Before writer Jenny Han worked with eye and upper schoolhouse students in the library at the Calhoun School in New York City, where she bought books and coordinated programming like school visits with Rebecca Stead and Gene Luen Yang. That's all while publishing her offset heart grade and YA novels, including Shug and The Summer I Turned Pretty. "My own books were coming out the entire time I was a librarian, and I was and so fortunate to accept a supportive and generous library managing director in Jenna Lanterman," she says. "She was flexible nigh my schedule, and she always said my book career should come outset."

When Kelly Jensen worked in youth and teen services in Illinois and Wisconsin, she became exhausted by the heavy nonfiction tomes that were beingness published for teens. "I'd only had another frustrating vendor meeting where I was beingness shown all of these books that looked so boring to me, and I realized there was a massive hole in the nonfiction side of YA literature," she says. "Good, interesting reads for both the coincidental reader who likes nonfiction, equally well as books that would be perfect for school assignments just not experience like they were work to read. Those books have their place, but they shouldn't be the primary course of what YA nonfiction is." Since then, Jensen has taken matters into her own hands, publishing two nonfiction YA anthologies, Here Nosotros Are: Feminism for the Real World and (Don't) Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start the Chat nigh Mental Health. "I'm constantly reading and talking about YA nonfiction, and it's nice to not simply be part of this growing area, but to besides know that librarians have way more choices when information technology comes to filling their nonfiction shelves for teens and that teens have so much more than depth and pick," she says. "I know teens will read adult books, but there is existent value in offering something to them, for them."

​I Behemothic Leap writer Heather Kaczynski worked in an Ground forces library for seven years. "Our mission is to support soldiers and military families, as well equally the Department of Defense civilians," she says. "Nosotros are often the first place new families come when they arrive on base for their new assignments, so we would be a welcoming community center that would assist them get their bearings, learn most the surface area, and provide amusement and educational activity." Being a YA author and a YA librarian was a symbiotic human relationship, keeping her enlightened of the "next big thing," also as the "less-hyped" books that would resonate with the kids she served. Kaczynski lived in a bourgeois area, but her library patrons came from all over the world, and she says information technology was common to hear three dissimilar languages being spoken in the children's section at one time. "My experience in the library definitely informed my writing, equally it opened my eyes to the diversity of our community that I didn't necessarily experience in my own life," she says. "It helped me realize the importance of reflecting the real world and its people, respectfully, in fiction."

Alex London; Makiia Lucier, photo past Jenny Bowles; Hal Schrieve, photograph past Micah Brown

​Alex London, author of Black Wings Beating and the forthcoming Cherry Skies Falling, worked as the YA librarian at the Countee Cullen Branch of the New York Public Library from 2006–2007. "It definitely exposed me to the wide array of YA that was out there and also exposed me to the gaps," he says. "I don't think I would've written my outset YA novel, Proxy, had I not read so much sci-fi for teens that was so profoundly straight. Luckily, that'due south much less of an consequence now as well, with writers across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum writing beyond every imaginable genre. A well-read librarian right now tin point to all kinds of books with all kinds of heroes for all kinds of kids, and what a approving information technology must be!"

Makiia Lucier, author of Isle of Blood and Stone, started working in libraries when she was just 17. Her first job was as a library assistant at the Academy of Oregon Knight Library. "Back then I never idea about librarianship equally a career," she says. "I was a journalism major and my goal was to go a paper reporter. Merely working in an bookish library taught me the fundamentals of research—how to navigate online databases, how to search the archives, where to turn when I hit a brick wall—an invaluable skill for a author of historical fiction and historical fantasy." Lucier worked in public and academic libraries throughout her career, and received her MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "But by then, after two years of studying literature for children and young adults, ideas had started running through my brain in a never ending loop.... To tranquility the voices in my head, I picked up a pencil and a notebook and began my first draft of A Death-Struck Year, which is ready during the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918."

Angie Manfredi has worked in libraries her entire life, commencement in her after-school job as a teen, then as Assistant Director at the Arthur Johnson Memorial Library in Raton, NM, where she "did everything from shovel the steps to send invoices to nowadays storytimes." Afterward receiving her MLIS, she spent 11 years as head of youth services for the Los Alamos County Library System and now serves as a youth services consultant for the State Library of Iowa. Her first book, The (Other) F Word: A Celebration of the Fatty & Fierce, is an anthology about body image and body positivity that comes out on September 24. "Working with teens and with YA for and so long made me see gaps I wanted to fill up in the market place and I especially noted the way so many teens talked hatefully well-nigh their bodies and thought about being fat as the worst thing you could exist, even though they adored me, a fat person," she says. "I wished they could have a book to meet a lot of other fat people and a volume that told them to hang in there, because loving yourself can change everything."

Mindy McGinnis worked in a high school library in a rural town in Ohio. Many residents in that location alive in poverty, and teens at her school dealt with corruption, violence, inequality, and addiction on a daily basis. Her YA novels are a response to the gritty realities young people face, and the dearth of YA that engaged with these topics when she was their age. In an essay for SLJ , she writes, "Equally a librarian I became proficient at finding the readership for a particular book, particularly for my students who were dealing with tough topics. It's a modest town, and frequently I knew what their story was, without them having to tell it. I could pair a teen with a title, and felt the warmth of advantage when they finished information technology and asked for another similar it. It'due south an unfortunate fact that a volume similar Heroine or Female of the Species has elements that will resonate with and so many young people."

"At that place truly is a reader for every single book"

Hal Schrieve, author of the 90's monster murder mystery Out of Salem, is studying for hir MLIS at Queens Higher and previously did special outreach for Queens Public Library to schools, street fairs, and laundromats, as well every bit correctional outreach to Rikers Island. Currently xie runs programs for young children at the Grand Cardinal Library branch of the NYPL. "Library programs also permit me to run into how kids are thinking and what kinds of creative skills they like to exercise, which is really fun—I held a zine workshop last week where 6—10 year olds made mini-zines near everything from Bart Simpson to their blimp animals, and I think kids are really the all-time artists in the world," xie says. Working directly with young people is a driving force in both of hir careers. "I recollect as a writer I would love to offer young people entertaining, absorbing things to read which make them think critically almost the world around them and as a librarian I desire to straight kids to the many astonishing materials that already be which encourage contained thought, question-asking, and self-expression," xie says.

Jessica Spotswood has been a children'south library associate at the DC Public Library since 2014. "The kids I see every day are primarily Black, from low-income families dealing with neighborhood violence, rapid gentrification, and systemic racism," she says. "These kids are funny and artistic and smart and independent, and they accept a lot of responsibilities I didn't accept at their historic period. They deserve authentic portrayals of themselves in fiction. Their stories aren't mine to tell, but working with them has fabricated me more aware of the importance of supporting accurate #OwnVoices work. In my latest anthologies, The Radical Element: 12 Stories of Daredevils, Debutantes & Other Dauntless Girls and Toil & Problem: fifteen Tales of Women & Witchcraft, we sought out contributing authors who are various in terms of race, religion, sexuality, and neurodivergence."

For the past five years, Alyssa Wees, author of The Waking Forest, has worked as an assistant librarian in youth services in Chicago. "My particular specialty is creating take home Stem kits ranging in theme from urban center engineering science to robotics to circuit boards." Librarianship has influenced her as both a reader and a writer. "Since I began working at the library I read so much more widely than I have in the past," she says. "Trends tend to come and go, only above all teens are looking for a sincere and interesting story. Doing readers' advisory at the reference desk has made me realize that there truly is a reader for every single book. Working in a library has encouraged me to write the books of my middle and to trust that there is an audition for them."

In March, Monica Zepeda was named the 2022 winner of Lee and Low's New Visions Award for Boys of the Beast, a YA contemporary novel about iii cousins who keep a road trip after the expiry of their abuelita, which volition be published in 2020. Zepeda currently serves as the Teen Services Librarian at Beverly Hills Public Library in California, where she also works in adult services and does school outreach and summer reading programming for fourth and fifth graders. "Working in a library allows me to proceed rail of trends and what's popular in YA," she says. "I get to know what teens are into and what's no longer cool. I go to see their dynamics when they interact with each other. I'm a niggling like an anthropologist that way and I may accept some of those observations for my writing. But if a teen vents to me about friend drama or confides something personal, I'chiliad not going to fictionalize that because that'due south not my story to tell."

Katy Hershberger

Katy Hershberger (khershberger@mediasource.com) is the senior editor for YA at School Library Periodical.

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Source: https://www.slj.com/story/16-ya-authors-who-built-their-career-in-libraries

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