Young Adult Fiction is one of the most important areas of publishing, for reasons discussed below , Yet the UK has no conferences specifically devoted to it. There’s a lack of critical discussion and even awareness of what YAF is. In particular, many readers fail to recognise that there is a large subsection of YA fiction that is aimed at readers chronologically aged 13 or 14+ rather than at 11+s with a reading of 14 are more. YAF writers are often a small add-on to children’s book conferences rather than an integral part of them. Although YAF is emerging as an important area of academic study, there are no academic conferences devoted to it there either. That’s why, earlier this year, when I got a…
Tomorrow, I’ll be one of the guests on the Jeremy Vine show, appearing at 1PM to promote and discuss The eBay book. As part of the show, I’ve set up an auction for the tie that Jeremy is wearing on today’s show. I’ve just been emailed two digital photos of Jeremy wearing the tie, so I’ve begun the auction listing process…. OK, after resizing the photos, I’ve got eBay to accept them. Any moment now, the auction will be live. You can go straight to it by clicking the link here. This auction is in aid of the BBC’s official charity, Children In Need. You can listen to the show live and hear it for up to a week afterwards by clicking on this link.…
I was watching the ‘Imagine’ documentary about Children’s Literature last night. Alan Yentob more than once referred to the ‘blurring’ of the boundaries between children’s fiction and adult fiction without once mentioning that there are writers working specifically in the zone between the two. The area that I mainly write in is called ‘Young Adult’ fiction (YAF) in order to differentiate itself from children’s fiction. YAF has been around for at least thirty years, yet many people are unaware that it exists. To be fair to Yentob, Malorie Blackman, who writes at the younger end of YAF, was given a couple of minutes, while Melvin Burgess, at the older end, got a couple of snippets in a 50 minute show. These ratios accurately reflect the…