What to Do After Your Debut? Keep Writing, Of Course!

The 2021 Morris Award Finalists (shown above) were announced in December, and the winner will be revealed at the ALA Youth Media Awards on January 25. First granted in 2009, the William C. Morris YA Debut Award recognizes the most impressive debut published in Young Adult Literature each year.

With more than a decade of winners to look back on, let’s see which of our former debuts are still impressing readers today.

2010’s Morris Award went to L. K. Madigan’s Flash Burnout. Tragically, the author passed away just a year after receiving the award. The rest of the finalists from that year, however, have continued to contribute to YA in significant ways, perhaps none more notably that Nina LaCour, who went on to win the 2018 Printz Award for We Are Okay. LaCour’s latest novel, Watch Over Me, has been nominated for the 2021 Best Fiction for Young Adults Selected List.

In fact, several names on the 2021 BFYA nominations list were originally finalists for the Morris Award, including 2015’s Jessie Ann Foley, 2016’s Anna-Marie McLemore, 2018’s Nic Stone, and David Yoon in 2020.

Last year’s winner, Ben Phillippe, has been nominated. Both the winner of the 2019 Morris Award and one of its finalists have companion books that were nominated — Adib Khorram with Darius the Great Deserves Better and Tomi Adeyemi with Children of Virtue and Vengeance. And Becky Albertalli, the winner in 2016, is enjoying praise this year for Yes No Maybe So, cowritten with Aisha Saeed.

What about books out in 2021? Morris Award recipients have those, too!

Just released is Concrete Rose, 2018 Morris Award winner Angie Thomas’s follow up to The Hate U Give.

And out in August is In the Wild Light from 2017 Morris Award winner Jeff Zentner.

In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner

The moral of the story is this: no matter which finalist is chosen in 2021, we will look forward to reading them for years to come.

Amazing Audiobooks (#AA2021) Nominees Round Up, October 28 Edition

See the current Amazing Audiobooks nominees along with more information about the list and past years’ selections.

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Charming as a Verb by Ben Philippe; Narrated by James Fouhey
HarperAudio
Publication Date: September 8, 2020
ISBN: 9780063025622

Henri  “Halti” Haltiwanger, a first generation Haitian-American is full of charm and ambition. Excelling at his prestigious New York high school, running his own successful (if slightly misleading) dog walking service, he is determined to get into Columbia, his (or his father’s?) dream school. When his neighbor Corrine blackmails him into teaching her how to be more social, unexpected ventures begin. 

Continue reading Amazing Audiobooks (#AA2021) Nominees Round Up, October 28 Edition

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2021) Nominees Round Up, September 18 Edition

Click here to see all of the current Best Fiction for Young Adults nominees along with more information about the list and past years’ selections.

Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson
Katherine Tegen Books / HarperCollins
Publication Date: September 15, 2020
ISBN:  978-0062840356

Enchanted feels as if she is in a dream when music star Korey Fields mentors her singing career, but the dream quickly turns into an obsessive, violent nightmare. This book addresses the pattern of grown men abusing their power and being excused for their misogynistic behaviors, while young girls are blamed.

Continue reading Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2021) Nominees Round Up, September 18 Edition

Amazing Audiobooks (#AA2020) Nominees Round Up, April 24 Edition

The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philipe; Narrated by James Fouhey
HarperAudio
Publication Date: January 8, 2019
ISBN: 1982607815

Norris Kaplan, a Haitian French Canadian teen, is immigrating for the second time in his life. This time he is moving from Montreal, Quebec to Austin, Texas. As he tries to survive the sweaty heat, he records his observations of the teens around him as an attempt to keep the threat of making friends in this new land at bay. Soon, his assumptions over his new classmates are challenged, and a few friendships seep in.

Continue reading Amazing Audiobooks (#AA2020) Nominees Round Up, April 24 Edition

Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2020) Nominees Round Up, March 29 Edition

The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe
Balzer + Bray / HarperCollins Publishers
Publication Date: January 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0062824110

Black French Canadian Norris Kaplan, who has lived in Montreal his whole life, has to adjust to high school in Austin, Texas after his mother gets a new job as a professor at the University of Texas.

Serving as both a coming-of-age story and a depiction of an immigrant experience, this is an appealing realistic fiction book with a funny, relatable, diverse protagonist and an interesting, dynamic set of secondary characters. Continue reading Best Fiction for Young Adults (#BFYA2020) Nominees Round Up, March 29 Edition