Thank you for subscribing to the B&N YA Podcast! This is a special message to let you know, soon we'll be merging our YA podcast with our main B&N Podcast. We've got so many YA writers joining us in the studio and we cant wait to share these conversations with all of our listeners!

Our guest today is the novelist Abigail Hing Wen, who joins us to talk about her new YA novel Loveboat, Taipei, a coming-of-age story about taking risks, finding your voice, and discovering yourself in places you never would have predicted. Ever's Chinese-American parents have planned every aspect of her future: but one summer in Taiwan -- a trip they've sprung on their daughter as a not-very-welcome surprise might change everything. The result is an absolutely sparkling story that's based...

On today's episode we're joined by Ryan LaSala, for a conversation about his bewitching debut novel Reverie. It's a story that begins as a mystery -- a high school student named Kane Montgomery is recovering from a terrible auto accident that left him nearly dead, and has robbed him of a large part of his memory. When Kane tries to solve the puzzle of what happened that night -- and why people he barely knows seem to treat him as an old friend -- what he discovers will turn his world upside...

Hi YA Podcast listeners. If you're a regular listener you know that one of our most exciting episodes ever was Melissa Albert's interview last December with the groundbreaking fantasy author Tomi Adeyemi, when the writer joined us for a deep dive into her critically acclaimed and hugely bestselling Children of Blood and Bone, the first volume in her West African–inspired series about an oppressed magical class and the girl who fights to reclaim their power. Huge world- building, electric...

On today's episode science fiction and fantasy titan Brandon Sanderson joins us to talk about his brand new YA novel Starsight, the sequel to 2018's New York Times bestseller Skyward. Sanderson has made his name with fans all over the world through epic fantasy like the Mistborn series and the Stormlight Archive, as well as the bestselling Reckoners trilogy for young adults. With Skyward, Sanderson says he set out to take a classic fantasy pairing -- think a girl and her dragon -- but gave...

On today's episode we're thrilled to have bestselling author Marie Lu joining us to talk about creating one of the most powerful and popular YA series of the decade, the page-turning dystopian saga that began with 2011's Legend. Her latest novel, Rebel, returns readers to the world of the authoritarian future state known as the Republic, with her focus moving to Eden Wing -- the younger brother who the heroic Daniel Wing has tried so hard to protect. Our frequent YA Podcast host Melissa...

Our guest for today's episode is Akwaeke Emezi, the author of the new YA novel Pet, which is a finalist for this year's National Book Award for Young People's Literature.  Emezi burst onto the literary scene with their novel Freshwater, a powerful story of a young woman inhabited by multiple spirits, and her journey to understanding her many-sided self.  Now, writing for Christopher Myers's Make Me a World YA imprint, Akwaeke brings us the story of Jam, a teenager living in the city of...

What would happen if the future were made perfect?  That was the question National Book Award-winning author Neal Shusterman posed in  2016's YA blockbuster Scythe, a story set in a world without hunger, poverty, disease or war, in which human life is only ended by specially trained figures known as Scythes.  But perfection turns out to have its own problems, and the Arc of the Scythe trilogy follows young characters caught up in the question of the price we might pay for having everything...

Maggie Stiefvater is the keeper of a host of odd obsessions, threading her bestselling fantasy novels with vicious water horses, sleeping Welsh royalty, ley lines, and liminal spaces. She’s the author of books including the Raven Cycle, which continues this fall with the first installment of the Dreamer trilogy, Call Down the Hawk. In it she’ll further explore the Lynch brothers and the dark gift of dreaming, taking objects from your unconscious life into your waking one. I talked to...

On today's episode, we're joined by the writer Rick Riordan, known by thousands of readers around the globe for his blockbuster series including Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the Kane Chronicles and Magnus Chase. Riordan takes his fans on thrill rides through fantasy worlds that draw up on Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Norse mythos, mixing anachronistic humor and page-turning thrills to make figures from Poseidon to Loki come alive as friends or foes — and in the process he's left an enduring...

Nic Stone entered the YA canon with her blistering debut, Dear Martin, in which a contemporary Black teen writes letters to Martin Luther King, Jr, following a galvanizing incident of racial profiling. Her next book was the cliche-cracking love triangle tale Odd One Out, and her latest, Jackpot, is a story of income inequality, teens growing up too soon, and the irresistible allure of a lottery win. I talked to Stone about destabilizing her characters, driving plot through dialogue, and...

Today special guest is the internationally bestselling author Ruta Sepetys. In novels like Between Shades of Gray and Salt to the Sea, Sepetys has given readers glimpses into turning points of 20th century history through the experiences of characters set right in the midst of these gripping real-world dramas. She's told the stories of Lithuanians sent to Siberian camps by the Soviet regime and refugees fleeing the devastation of the second world war — all via intricately constructed tales of...

Laura Ruby is the author of books including the fairy-tale inflected award-winner Bone Gap, the York trilogy, a steampunk series for younger readers, and her latest Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All, a ranging, layered historical tale told by a ghost who can't stop tangling with the living.  She watches over Frankie, a girl consigned to an orphanage in World War II era Chicago in a story of heartache and survival that mixes worlds both haunted and achingly real. We talked to Ruby...

On today's episode we've got a conversation we've been waiting for since... well, since we heard that author Rainbow Rowell was going to give readers a sequel to her captivating contemporary fantasy Carry On. In Carry On, we meet Simon Snow, the most unlikely Chosen One ever, in his last year at the Watford School of Magicks and having a distinctly un-magical time. But Rowell steers her creation through it via adventure, laugh out loud humor, a wonderfully inventive magical system, and an...

Today on the YA Podcast, our special guest is the celebrated graphic novel writer Mariko Tamaki, in to talk about her razor-sharp and groundbreaking new take on a DC comics character who has crossed over from villainous sidekick to fan-favorite antihero. Mariko Tamaki is the Eisner Award and Caldecott Honor-winning author of celebrated graphic novels including Skim, This One Summer and Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me. With Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass, Tamaki offers a story of teen...

David Yoon is the debut author of Frankly in Love, a tale of fake dating, first love, and life as a first-generation Korean American that deepens as it goes, from a wickedly incisive comedy to a painfully beautiful exploration of how identity is determined by and in spite of our families. We talked to Yoon about his high school years; how fatherhood has changed his craft; collaborating with his wife, the novelist Nicola Yoon; and writing his first novel.

On today's episode we spoke with novelist Shelby Mahurin about her darkly enchanting debut Serpent and Dove. It's a story of deception, betrayal, love and magic set in a world divided between an authoritarian religious government and a mysterious society of powerful witches. Louise le Blanc is a witch hiding among townsfolk who would consider her a monster, and she finds herself in an uncomfortable alliance with righteous witch-hunter Reid Diggory. Mahurin sets their story in an atmospheric...

Our guest on today's episode of the B&N YA Podcast is the writer Katharine McGee talking about her new novel American Royals, which hits bookshelves this week. McGee first dazzled readers with her Thousandth Floor trilogy, a glamorously imagined story of wealth, power and intrigue set in the dizzying atmosphere of a future Manhattan in which the word "skyscraper" takes on a whole new meaning. With American Royals, the inventive author places a modern romantic comedy in an alternate...

We are resharing one of our favorite conversations that we originally posted earlier this year, in case you missed it! Leigh Bardugo is the keeper of the Grishaverse, a sprawling fantasy landscape that includes the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, gorgeous fairy tale collection The Language of Thorns, and now King of Scars, the opening title of a duology about Nikolai, the charming, haunted Ravkan king. On the eve of its publication we talked to Bardugo about her path to...

Gretchen McNeil is the author of YA books including the Agatha Christie-inspired Ten; the Don't Get Mad series, coming soon to the BBC and Netflix; and the #MurderTrending series, continuing this month with #MurderFunding, an anarchic horror comedy about a reality TV show gone disturbingly wrong. We talked to McNeil about what really scares her, how her performer's past influenced her writing, and being the teen with all the bad ideas.

Today our special guest is Derek Millman, author of the new novel Swipe Right for Murder. Millman burst onto the YA scene last year with his darkly funny debut Scream All Night, set in an off-kilter world of B-movie monsters. Swipe Right for Murder is part classic noir story, part 2019 coming of age, and absolutely page turning throughout. Millman sat down with B&N's Melissa Albert to talk about his obsessions, inspirations and the stories that have fed his one-of-a-kind imagination. 

I'm not Dying with You Tonight is the story of two high school seniors who find themselves thrown together when a fight at a sporting event ignites into widespread violence of a kind that's become heartbreakingly familiar.  As events spiral out of control, Lena and Campbell — who are most certainly not friends — will need each other to make it through the night, get to safety and pick up the pieces.  It's a propulsive story that unfolds over the course of hours, but the conversations that...

If we had to name two things we're maybe most obsessed with on the B&N YA Podcast, they would be amazing debuts, and fascinating twists on classic tales. So we're thrilled today to have as our guest Erin A. Craig, whose brilliantly conceived debut novel House of Salt and Sorrows is coming next week — a story that mingles eerie atmosphere, a tantalizing mystery, and a twist, of course, on one of the most haunting and beguiling of classic fairy stories, The Twelve Dancing Princesses. House...

For six books and counting, author Serena Valentino has enraptured readers with her stunning upendings of the tales of favorite heroes and villains in her Disney Villains series, reimagining beloved tales like Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and The Little Mermaid. The golden thread that linked these stories? Her mischievous, troublemaking trio, The Odd Sisters, who finally get to share their version of things in their very own edition of the series. B&N Teen Blog editor Sona...