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Even in the prolific world of Utah's successful writers-for-youth, three national book launches in one month seems remarkable. So we invited all three writers — Ally Condie, Emily Wing Smith and Lindsay Eagar — to the studio to mark their new publishing directions.
Condie and Wing are writing colleagues and friends who also share the same influential editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel, the publisher of Dutton Children's Books. Eagar is publishing her debut novel, but she has a rare four-book contract. All three will be appearing at Wasatch Front book events in coming days.
Condie, 37, broke into mainstream publishing in a blockbuster way, with reports of a five-figure contract for "Matched," her three-volume, best-selling dystopian YA series. Now she's crossing genre categories with her heartwarming middle-grade contemporary novel, set in a town much like the writer's native Cedar City.
"Summerlost," which will be released March 29, tells the story of a young girl who learns to negotiate her grief over the recent deaths of her father and younger brother as she falls into a fast friendship with the quirky boy who lives on her street. The pair work and play around a theater company that resembles the Utah Shakespeare Festival.
Smith, 35, who lives in South Jordan, is the author of two interesting YA novels whose tough stories rely on the breathing room of white space and a fragmented prose style. Now she's written "All Better Now," an unusual memoir aimed at young-adult readers that explores the world through the eyes of a teenager who survives a traumatic accident only to have doctors discover an undiagnosed brain tumor the size of a grapefruit. She's lucky to be alive, well-meaning friends and family tell her, while the teen feels pressured to be all better, to be "normal."
Eagar, 28, is a Lehi native whose novel "Hour of the Bees" is about a 12-year-old girl who develops a relationship with her prickly grandfather as he unspools his spellbinding, mythical stories about the New Mexico landscape where he raised her father. The novel blends a contemporary story with magical realism that draws upon archetypal stories about a healing tree of life.
Ally Condie's "Summerlost"
Background • After attending Southern Utah University and then graduating from Brigham Young University, Condie taught high school for several years before publishing four LDS fiction novels for teen readers. "I had never taken a creative-writing class until this last year," says the mother of four children, who is earning an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Inspiration • Her new contemporary novel is rooted in a fictional account of the author's influential friendship, beginning in seventh grade, with a boy named Justin, who Condie says possessed an unusual sense of humor and an even more unusual sense of understanding. "We never worked at the [Utah Shakespeare Festival], but we told people we were cousins, to get them not to ask if we were boyfriend-girlfriend, and that is in the book," she says. "I think that kind of friendship is really rare."
Condie was also inspired by her hometown of Cedar City, fictionalized into a town called Iron Creek. "Usually I have to build the setting, but in this case I knew it backwards and forward," she says.
Another important weave of the plot is about how the main character, Cedar, comes to a tentative understanding of her grief after the death of her father and Ben, her younger brother, who has autism. She based the character of Ben on her son, who has special needs. "I do know how it feels to love someone and be bad at communicating with him, and wanting desperately to be better at it," the author says specifically about her son, in a comment that also explicates the universal complications of human relationships.
What sets it apart • Condie says it's the most personal thing she's ever written. And the book required less revision than any manuscript she's turned in, despite the noted rigor of editor Strauss-Gabel, whose best-selling young-adult list includes John Green's blockbuster "The Fault in Our Stars."
"For the first time I don't need to tell you these are good ingredients, but I need you to bake me a new cake," Strauss-Gabel told Condie. "I just need you to frost this cake."
What sets it apart for her editor • "It's a complete revelation and a surprise coming from an author who everyone knows as a YA voice," says Strauss-Gabel, praising the emotion and focus and intelligence of the writing, while its younger narrator should introduce Condie's work to new, younger readers. "It's kind of the best of everything. It's new and fresh, but everything we know about her work is there in the storytelling."
Condie hopes the story will inspire readers to remember "a time when it seems like things couldn't be harder, and then something magical happens."
Emily Wing Smith's "All Better Now"
Background • Smith, 35, grew up in Taylorsville and Centerville and now lives with her husband in South Jordan. She attended BYU and earned an MFA from Vermont College.
Her textured, breathtakingly candid memoir, told in short chapters through a smart, difficult girl's eyes, incorporates details from her childhood, including lists of the shrinks she has known, photographs and letters Emily authored from her imaginary best male friend.
Her story is about her "journey from the Head Case to the Thank-God-She-Got-Hit-By-A-Car-Girl to a writer — and ending up as Emily," she writes in a letter to readers.
"Every window on Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco," Susanna Kaysen wrote in her stunning 1993 memoir, "Girl, Interrupted," and Smith says writing about her childhood was inspired by that thought.
Like Kaysen, Smith incorporates psychological evaluations and details from her medical charts in her book. "They released everything to me, but they also asked my parents to sign the release," she says, which prompted flashbacks to junior-high field trips.
Writing the book helped her understand more about her lifelong struggle with headaches and what might be considered a brain disability. Even the story's title — "All Better Now" — strikes a dual note of irony and earnestness. Adults, she says now, simply don't like to see children suffer, and she often felt pressured to act as if everything was OK.
"I did not feel as disabled then as I was, and now I see that more clearly," she says, reflecting on a lifetime of trying to overcompensate for waking up with a Woo-Head headache, a combination of dizziness and light-headedness and trembling that leads her to spend the day fighting with Bad Hand. "I never really thought of myself as being that sick, because I was always Emily in my family. And being Emily was always being the sick one."
Inspiration • A blog post she had written about her struggle with brain injury and the aftermath of brain surgery prompted her editor to purchase the memoir — before it was written. Smith hesitated to tell her personal story at first because "I've only written two YA books. I'm not even that well known in the young adult community. I'm not famous."
But her editor was convinced that her story, in its specificity, would also convey a more universal story about recovery. Smith says YA memoirs might also be a burgeoning publishing category, as high-school teachers seek narratives to fulfill Common Core requirements for nonfiction.
What sets it apart • "I like to think that this book will maybe give hope to young readers," Smith says. "I hope it gives people a feeling that they can do hard things."
What sets it apart for her editor • Smith is an "insanely talented and stunning" writer, says Strauss-Gabel. "There are so many things about it that speak to what we all go through as young people. Feeling like an outsider, feeling like there must be a reason you don't fit in. It was not only really brave to take on the project at all, but there's a real bravery and ferocity about what she's willing to say."
Lindsay Eagar's "Hour of the Bees"
Background • Eagar, 28, lives in Draper but still is deeply rooted in Lehi, where she grew up. "I was there when they put in the first stoplight and when they built the McDonald's in the 'Footloose' fields," she says.
She's a classically trained pianist and piano teacher who originally studied biology at Utah Valley University thinking she would need a "useful major." Yet Eagar says she always planned to be a writer and eventually changed her major to English. She learned useful lessons about the publishing business while working as an unpaid intern for a literary agent.
Inspiration • The title — "Hour of the Bees" — popped into Eagar's head while she was out running one day. She was working on another novel at the time, which, after multiple drafts, she just couldn't seem to get right. When she plunged into telling the new story, it seemed to just pour out of her. She says the first draft was finished in about 10 days.
From the first chapter, Eagar knew the book's pivotal relationship would be between 12-year-old Carolina and her difficult grandfather, whose mystical stories may or may not be inspired by his dementia. At the time, much of what she knew about Alzheimer's patients came from her sister's observations while working at an assisted-living home.
What sets it apart • "It's weird, and I say that in the most loving way," Eagar says. "It has an odd thing that happens in it. The magical realism makes it accessible for people like me who like fantasy and magic, and for people who only want contemporary stories, like my mother. There aren't a whole lot of stories about dementia and also about relationships with grandparents. This grandfather really shares the stage."
What sets it apart for her editor • "Absolutely the writing," says Candlelight Press editor Kaylan Adair, who encountered the manuscript after maternity leave and found herself making excuses to take longer breaks so she could keep reading. "She does a wonderful job with the real-world setting that is so real and hot and dusty, and somehow the magic lush green world [of the grandfather's stories] feels just as real. The writing just cast a spell on me. It was the kind of story I kept thinking about after-hours and at home. This book is going to launch a really promising career."
facebook.com/ellen.weist —
In conversation: Ally Condie with Emily Wing Smith
The event will launch Smith's new young-adult memoir, "All Better Now."
When • Tuesday, March 8, 7 p.m.
Where • The King's English Bookshop, 1511 S. 1500 East, Salt Lake City
Preorder • Signed copies are available at 801-1484-9100 or at http://www.kingsenglish.com
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Ally Condie's 'Summerlost'
Condie will read from and launch her new middle-grade novel.
When • Tuesday, March 29, 7 p.m.
Where • Provo City Library Ballroom, 550 N. University Ave., Provo
Tickets • Free; available at the library's first-floor reference desk March 15 or online at provolibrary.com
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Lindsay Eagar's 'Hour of the Bees'
Eagar launches her debut middle-grade novel about a 12-year-old girl who falls in love with her prickly grandfather's fantastical stories. The event will include a reading and Q&A, salsa bar, local honey tasting and cupcakes.
When • Tuesday, March 8, 6:30 p.m.
Where • The Gardens at Dry Creek, 877 N. 100 East, Lehi