Its been five long years, but Ally Condie is headed back to YA.
(As to what, exactly?
Even and especially when you think all is lost.
Erin Summerill
Read on below.The Last Voyage of Poe Blythepublishes March 26, 2019, and isavailable for pre-order.
I actually started writing this book in 2014: It was going to be my next YA.
Its a revenge-novel…I realized something I was missing.
Penguin Young Readers
And it turned out that was rage!
[Laughs] You kind of have to have that to write a revenge novel.
Then 2016 came around and, all of a sudden, I had it all.
That made me very angry.
Youre right that theres an element of rage here, certainly.
Did you have the same experience?Yeah, I did.
I mean, everyone cares about whats happening.
Thats our entire job.
I also come at it from the position of having young children in my home.
My oldest is 15, my youngest is 7.
I feel like that, in a way, gave me extra catharsis.
I was feeling it on a few different levels.
Thats also therapeutic: Saying something like, Heres a story for you.
I know its not changing the world.
Were lucky to have that.
But I think people knew all along how bad it was.
So maybe it galvanized us a little bit.
I feel like it opened my eyes to the way people around me though, that I didnt realize.
I shouldve been doing this all along.
I knew shed be focused.
I knew shed be very, very lonely.
Those were the things I had right from the beginning with the story.
Youre like, What happened here?
And I was like, Oh, we did this!
That seems like a really good place to put her.
I also wanted to ask you about the dystopian element.
But dystopian is like everything else.
We have the things we like to see in them.
Mostly I was just excited by what everyone else has been writing and what Ive seen in the genre.
It felt great to go back to it.
That is, weirdly, the genre I feel the most natural to write in.
Reading that made me excited.
It makes you want to do your thing the best you could.
