Tag Archives: YA

02Dec/22

Gary Eldon Peter

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December 2, 2022

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 7, Episode 48: Gary Eldon Peter + Our Review of Matteo Lane’s The Advice Special!

Gary Eldon Peter shares his award-winning YA novel, The Complicated Calculus (and Cows) of Carl Paulsen, which leads us to talking about the importance of young adult literature. Then Baz & Vance review Matteo Lane’s The Advice Special and share who won their weeks.

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Gary Eldon Peter’s short stories have been appearing in publications, winning awards, and even performed on NPR to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. His debut novel continues this trend, having won the Acheven Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction and just this week made NPR’s 2022 list of Young Adult Books We Love! Having been awarded many artist residencies, Gary currently teaches courses in writing, law and popular culture, and the future of work and technology at the University of Minnesota.

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22Jul/22

J. Marshall Freeman

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July 22, 2022

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 7, Episode 29 – J. Marshall Freeman + Our Review of The Umbrella Academy!

J. Marshall Freeman returns to share his latest novel: Barnabas Bopwright Saves the City with us, and we then discuss how to make inactive adults believable in YA, as well as diversity and father/son themes. Then Baz and Vance review The Umbrella Academy and share who won the week for them!

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J. Marshall Freeman is the author of the young adult fantasy novels, The Dubious Gift of Dragon Blood (2020) and Barnabas Bopwright Saves the City, which came out in May. He is one of three authors in the YA novella collection, Three Left Turns to Nowhere (2022), along with Jeffrey Ricker and ’Nathan Burgoine. Freeman is a two-time winner of the Saints+Sinners Fiction Contest. He is currently researching and writing The Yonge Line, a novel set in Toronto’s queer community in the early ’80s. Freeman lives in Toronto, Canada with his husband.

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April 22, 2022

It gives us great pleasure to welcome Jeffrey Ricker, J. Marshall Freeman, and ‘Nathan Burgoine as the guests on Season 7, Episode 16 – Oooh, Nerd Hot!

Jeffrey Ricker, J. Marshall Freeman, ‘Nathan Burgoine tag-team the show to introduce their latest work, Three Left Turns to Nowhere. Each has written a novella about a young man on his way to a sci-fi convention when Fate intervenes and strands them in Hopewell where they find that thing they didn’t know they needed. These three authors are so much fun, and it’s easy to see how well they worked together!

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Jeffrey Ricker is the author of Detours (2011) and the YA fantasy The Unwanted (2014). His stories and essays have appeared in Foglifter, Phoebe, Little Fiction, The Citron Review, The Saturday Evening Post, and others. A 2014 Lambda Literary Fellow and recipient of a 2015 Vermont Studio Center residency, he has an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and teaches creative writing at Webster University.

J. Marshall Freeman is a writer of novels, short stories, and poetry. He is the author of the young adult fantasy novel The Dubious Gift of Dragon Blood (2020) and the upcoming YA adventure Barnabas Bopwright Saves the City (May 2022). He is a two-time winner of the Saints+Sinners Fiction Contest (2017 and 2019), and lives in Toronto, Canada, with his husband and dog.

’Nathan Burgoine grew up a reader and studied literature in university while making a living as a bookseller. His first novel, Light, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Triad Blood and Triad Soul are also available from Bold Strokes Books, as is his YA novel Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks and his first collection, Of Echoes Born. For novella lovers, In Memoriam, Handmade Holidays, Faux Ho Ho, Village Fool, and A Little Village Blend are shorter queer romances (often with a dash of speculative fiction). A cat lover, ’Nathan managed to fall in love and marry Daniel, who is a confirmed dog person. They live in Ottawa, Canada—with their rescued husky, in case you were wondering how the cat-dog thing turned out.

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November 20, 2020

It gives us great pleasure to welcome J. Marshall Freeman as the guest on Episode 295 – Coming Out As a Novelist!)

J Marshall Freeman shares his latest release, The Dubious Gift of Dragon Blood. We talk about the evolution of the book and real, self-discovering queer characters in a world with dragons!

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J. Marshall Freeman is a writer of fiction and poetry, a musician, and graphic designer. He is a two-time winner of the Saints+Sinners fiction contest (2017 and 2019). In 2019, he published “Arthropoda,” a chapbook of poetry.

In December 2020, his young adult fantasy novel, The Dubious Gift of Dragon Blood, will be published by Bold Strokes Books. Upcoming work includes the young adult adventure novel, Barnabas Bopwright Saves the City, and the climate change science fiction novel, Cicada Rises from the Earth.

He lives in Toronto, Canada with his husband and dog.

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01Apr/22

Candas Jane Dorsey

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April 1, 2022

It gives us great pleasure to welcome Candas Jane Dorsey as the guest on Season 7, Episode 13 – If You Read This Your Head Will Explode!

Candas Jane Dorsey shares her wise-cracking, grammar-obsessed, pansexual amateur sleuth from her The Adventures of Isabel and What’s the Matter with Mary Jane? crime novels AND her intersex teen from her The Story of My Life Ongoing, by CS Cobb young adult novel. She also can’t help teasing a masterclass in harnessing her passion for advocacy and using it to guide her writing.

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Candas Jane Dorsey is an internationally-known author of sci-fi, Y/A, and contemporary novels, poetry, short stories, reviews, and critical essays. She has received a variety of awards and honours for her books and short fiction.
Dorsey is a partner in Wooden Door & Associates, a professional communications consulting company in Edmonton since 1992, providing writing, editing, and consulting for private, public and non-profit clients. At WDA, Dorsey was the co-author of several significant reports including The Report of the Review Panel on the Alberta Human Rights Commission, Cultural Diversity in the Workplace, and Children’s Interactive Television in Canada. She has written screenplays and educational television scripts. She was editor/publisher for ten years of the arts newspaper The Edmonton Bullet and for fourteen years of literary press The Books Collective, including River Books and Tesseract Books.
She teaches writing to adults and youth, has been teaching at universities and continuing education since 1983, and at MacEwan University since before it was a university, where she now teaches in the Bachelor of Communications programme. She also speaks widely on writing, speculative fiction, and other topics.
She was founding president of SFCanada, and has been president of the Writers Guild of Alberta. Her awards include the Province of Alberta Centennial Gold Medal for her artistic achievement and community work, and the WGA Golden Pen Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts, the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, YWCA Woman of the Year Arts and Culture, and an Edmonton Arts Achievement Award. And in 2019 she was inducted into the City of Edmonton Arts and Cultural Hall of Fame.
Candas is also a community activist, advocate and leader who has won two human rights awards and served on many community boards and committees working for neighbourhoods, heritage, social planning, equality of policing, and human rights advocacy. And she also makes time to be a visual artist.

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14Jan/22

Matthew R Corr

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January 14, 2022

It gives us great pleasure to welcome Matthew R. Corr as the guest on Season 7, Episode 02 – Start In The Action!

Matthew R. Corr shares his debut novel, Land on Me, which leads to discussions about LGBTQ issues in fiction, Young Adult vs New Adult, and a few stories from a first-time author.

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Even though Matthew was born and raised in New England, he always knew he was a city boy. He moved to NYC at 18 to pursue his dream and never looked back! He attended the American Musical And Dramatic Academy where he earned a degree in Musical Theatre. After years of performing on stages across the country, he is now adding Author to his resume! He currently lives in Brooklyn with his boyfriend, their cat Logan, and their pug Finn. Check out his socials to get to know him even more; but he guarantees it’s mostly made up of Marvel Superheroes, Movies, and cute pets.

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09Jul/21

Chris Bedell

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July 9, 2021

It gives us great pleasure to welcome Chris Bedell back as the guest on Season 6, Episode 27 – You Know What Happens At Parties

Chris Bedell returns to discuss his novel Love Him/Hate Him and the real-life themes and difficulties he wove into this novel.

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Chris Bedell is an author who is chasing his dreams of being a tv writer and actor.

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September 27, 2019


It gives us great pleasure to welcome Chris Bedell back as the guest on Episode 235 – Like High School on Steroids!

Chris Bedell returns to share his upcoming release, Deathly Desires, and then joins a conversation about YA Paranormal Romance/Thrillers and writing for magazines!

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Chris’s previous publishing credits include Thought Catalog, Crab Fat Literary Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Pidgeonholes Magazine, Abbreviate Journal, Short-Story.me, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Chicago Literati, The Vignette Review, Teleport Magazine, Entropy Magazine, Inklette Magazine, Sprout Magazine, and The Drunken Odyssey. He’s also a contributing blog writer to Moledro Magazine and YAtopia. He graduated with a BA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University in May of 2016.

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August 17, 2018

It gives us great pleasure to welcome Chris Bedell as the guest on Episode 177 – I Know How to Tease A Little Bit!!

Chris Bedell joins us to discuss his upcoming release In the Name of Magic – a Y/A dystopian fantasy set in an earth-like 1920s – as well as discussing the craft of writing for a Young Adult audience.

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Chris Bedell’s previous publishing credits include Thought Catalog, Entropy Magazine, and Foliate Oak Literary Magazine to name several examples. His debut YA Fantasy novel In the Name of Magic is forthcoming from NineStar Press and is the first book in a trilogy. Furthermore, Chris sold a second series to NineStar Press. A YA Sci-Fi Thriller series that can be described as Adam Silvera’s More Happy Than Not meets Arrow, and involves cryogenics and superheroes.

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04Dec/20

Wayne Goodman

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December 4, 2020

It gives us great pleasure to welcome Wayne Goodman as the guest on Episode 295 – I’m Missing a Part of My Brain!)

Wayne Goodman, writer of historical fiction and producer of the Queer Words Podcast, joins us to discuss his recent releases, Tim Tam and the Space Pirates, and his collection of queer short stories, All the Right Places.

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Wayne Goodman has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area most of his life (with too many cats). Goodman hosts Queer Words Podcast, conversations with queer-identified authors about their works and lives. Over the last decade he has mainly written historical fiction with an emphasis on queer characters. Recently, Wayne has branched off into the world of Middle Grade Readers. When not writing or recording, he enjoys playing Gilded Age parlor music on the piano, with an emphasis on women, gay, and Black composers.

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09Oct/20

Abigail de Niverville

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October 9, 2020

It gives us great pleasure to welcome Abigail de Niverville back as the guest on Episode 289 – They Went There!

Abigail de Niverville returns to share her latest novel, We Go Together, and we discuss healing from abuse, bi-representation, a trans love interest, and music’s role in a story. A great discussion all the way around.

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Abigail de Niverville is a Moncton-born composer and author living in Toronto, Ontario. She graduated from the University of Toronto in 2017 with a Master’s of Composition, having studied with Alexander Rapoport. She has previously studied with Kevin Morse at Mount Allison University. While studying music, Abigail would often escape the daily stresses of university life by writing stories and novels. Her experiences in theatre performance and production often influence her creative works in all mediums. In 2019, her debut novel I Knew Him was released by NineStar Press. She continues to dedicate her time writing novels, poetry, and songs.

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April 26, 2019


It gives us great pleasure to welcome Abigail de Niverville as the guest on Episode 213 – Unnecessarily Mysterious!

Abigail de Niverville joins us to discuss her new novel, I Knew Him, as well as how her musical composition informed her work and her take on YA literature.

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Abigail de Niverville is a Moncton-born composer and author living in Toronto, Ontario. She graduated from the University of Toronto in 2017 with a Master’s of Composition, having studied with Alexander Rapoport. She has previously studied with Kevin Morse at Mount Allison University. Her experiences in theatre performance and production often influence her creative works.

Recent musical works include: Letters (for tenor and piano), Let Me In (for Ensemble Atlantica), and October 4th, 1967 (a mini opera).

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11Jan/19

Josh Aterovis

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January 11, 2019


It gives us great pleasure to welcome Josh Aterovis as the guest on Episode 198 – Suddenly There Was a Dead Body!

Josh Aterovis joins us to discuss his YA sleuth series (with the current release of A Change of Worlds), and how the landscape of queer YA has changed so much from 2001 when he published his first gay mystery novel.

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Josh Aterovis fell in love with mystery novels in the fourth grade when he discovered the Nancy Drew series in his school library. He soon moved on to Agatha Christie, which led to a lifelong love affair with whodunits, culminating in his award-winning Killian Kendall mystery series.

His first book, Bleeding Hearts, introduced gay teen sleuth Killian Kendall, and won several awards, including the Whodunit Award from the StoneWall Society. All Lost Things was a 2010 Lambda Literary Award finalist for Gay Mystery.

Aterovis grew up on the bucolic Eastern Shore of Maryland, which, coincidentally, just happens to be the setting for the Killian Kendall books. He now lives in the quirkiest city in America — Baltimore, Maryland — where, besides writing, he is also an artist and, sometimes, an actor.

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04Jan/19

Tash McAdam

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January 4, 2019


It gives us great pleasure to welcome Tash McAdam as the guest on Episode 197 – Cassius Is Screaming!

Tash McAdam joins us for a ripping conversation about the status of YA, their current release, I Am the Storm, and about the importance of trans and queer representation in literature.

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Tash is a Computer Science and English teacher in Canada, although they were born and raised in the hilly sheepland of Wales (and have lived in South Korea and Chile before settling down in Vancouver). Tash identifies as trans and queer and uses the neutral pronoun ‘they’. As an English teacher they are fully equipped to defend that grammar! They have a degree in computer science so their nerd chat makes sense, and a couple of black belts in karate which are very helpful when it comes to writing fight scenes.

Their novel writing endeavours began at the age of eight although they will admit that their first attempt was derivative, at best. Since then, Tash has spent time falling in streams, out of trees, juggling, dreaming about zombies, dancing, painting, learning and then teaching Karate, running away with the circus, and of course, writing.

They write fast-paced, plot-centric action adventure with diverse casts. They write the books that they wanted to read as a queer kid and young adult (and still do!)

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07Dec/18

Sarah Ward

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December 7, 2018


It gives us great pleasure to welcome Sarah Ward as the guest on Episode 193 – Finding Your Tribe!

Sarah Ward joins us to discuss her recent YA release, Aesop Lake, and how her social work with troubled teens helped inform her writing.

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Sarah Ward writes young adult fiction, poetry and journal articles in the field of child welfare. Over a twenty-five-year career as a social worker, Sarah has worked with young adults and families with harrowing backgrounds. She won the 2007 Editor’s Choice Award for the New England Anthology of Poetry for her poem “Warmer Waters,” and she is a member of the League of Vermont Writers since 2008. As a social worker, Sarah has published several journal articles, and was recently a co-author on an article published (December 2016) in Child and Youth Services Review titled, “Building a landscape of resilience after workplace violence in public child welfare.” In her limited spare time, Sarah enjoys a good book, a little yoga and a cup of tea in her home in Williston, Vermont.

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