Then again, how fun is dystopia and fantasy and metaphor? I wouldn’t want to do without it. That’s actually closer to how life functions-you don’t need to put kids in an arena and have them kill each other when you already have school. In YA from the 1970s, a family would divorce, or a girl would be excluded from her friends, or a parent would lose their job, and that was shattering enough to power a book-long narrative. The big difference is that YA now seems to handle it on a larger, more cinematic spread. LS: YA has always taken on the big theme of adolescence-change, and how one adjusts to its inevitability. By signing up you agree to our terms of use Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox. But being approached to create one in reality was rather a surprise-a very nice one! The planned part: Writing “Fine Lines” for Jezebel, and then collecting those essays in Shelf Discovery, allowed me to amass and organize all the books I loved into what was essentially a functioning library. Lizzie Skurnick: It was both planned and unplanned. Marisa Atkinson: Can you tell us a little bit about how Lizzie Skurnick Books came to be? Was launching a publishing imprint that reissues young adult literature classics always a part of your grand plan, or was this a surprising development? I was delighted to have the chance to chat with Lizzie about the imprint’s launch, the current young adult fiction landscape, and why young adult classics are more relevant now than ever. With contributions from Meg Cabot, Laura Lippman, Cecily von Ziegesar, Jennifer Weiner, Margo Rabb, Tayari Jones, and Anna Holmes.Like many readers, I was psyched to hear that Lizzie Skurnick (who you may know from her blog The Old Hag, from her “Fine Lines” column on Jezebel, or from her book Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading) was launching an eponymous publishing imprint with Ig Publishing, Lizzie Skurnick Books, where the mission is to celebrate and reissue young adult literature favorites from the 1930s to the 1980s. Remember that book you read at that time in your life when everything seemed to be going crazy-the one book that brought the world into focus and helped soothe your raging teenage angst? Fine Lines author Lizzie Skurnick offers a 'reading memoir' that will take you back down memory lane and add a stack of books to your 'to-re-read' pile.

Shelf Discovery by Lizzie Skurnick