September 25: Sunday Webinar: What Teens Want From YA Literature, and How We Can Give it to Them, with Darling Axe

Member Price: $10

Non-Member Price is $20

What Teens Want From YA Literature, and How We Can Give it to Them

with Michelle Barker and David Brown from Darling Axe

What do YA readers really want and what are the tropes that make them cringe? In this workshop, you’ll learn from two industry professionals who’ve dug into the disconnect between the YA novels being published and the novels teens actually want to read. They’ll discuss everything from unrealistic relationships to absentee parents, and writers will come away with a better understanding of how to write engagingly authentic YA novels.

Bio

Michelle Barker’s most recent novel My Long List of Impossible Things (2020) is published by Annick Press and is shortlisted for a Vine Award. Her previous novel, The House of One Thousand Eyes (2018, Annick Press) won numerous awards, including the Amy Mathers Teen Book Award, and was named a Kirkus Best Book of the Year. She is also the author of A Year of Borrowed Men, finalist for the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award. Her poetry, short fiction and non-fiction have been published in literary reviews around the world. Michelle is represented by Westwood Creative Artists and works as a senior editor with The Darling Axe. She holds an MFA in creative writing from UBC and lives in Vancouver, on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

David Brown founded Darling Axe Editing in 2018 after working as a freelance editor for more than fifteen years. He is an award-winning short fiction writer, recipient of a 2022 Canada Council for the Arts award, and his debut novel is represented by the Donaghy Literary Group. He has published poetry, fiction, and nonfiction in magazines and literary journals, and he has an MFA in creative writing from UBC. David lives in Victoria, Canada, on the traditional territory of the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. 

Digital Doors Open at 12:55, Event Starts at 2PM

This event will be recorded.