¡Qué bonita bandera! AKA what heritage(s) do you claim?
I’m Afrolatina. My mother is Puerto Rican and black. My dad is white.
When was the first time you saw yourself represented?
Carmen in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants! I definitely cried when I read that she was Puerto Rican with a white dad.
How do you connect to your heritage through your books (if at all)?
I don’t consciously think about connecting to my heritage through my books, but people bring their culture to everything they do–in their vocab, worldview, how they think about family. So, no matter what character I’m writing, their heritage is a factor in all of their decisions. If I’m writing a character with my background, then I think about how my aunts and uncles and primas would react to a situation. But being mixed race, I often have to stop and ask friends if something is universal or just a quirk of my own family’s blended culture.
What do you hope for the future of Latinx books?
I just want more. I want more Latinx leads and love interests and best friends. Give me a Mexican girl in love with a Puerto Rican boy with friends who are Salvadoran and Colombian. I want YA novels that feel like the Pero Like channel where everyone is constantly learning about how their cultures intersect. And I want it written by Latinx authors. I wish the first time I saw myself hadn’t been in a book written by a white woman.
What is the book that inspired you to write for kids/teens?
I started writing because of fan fic. I wrote fic based on musicals and Harry Potter. Seeing Cassandra Clare move from fan fic to being a huge front list author made me realize that someday I could be traditionally published.
What are you writing now?
My next book, Not Now, Not Ever, comes out November 21 from Wednesday Books (formerly St. Martin’s Griffin)! A girl runs away from home using Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest as a guide and competes for a college scholarship at a summer camp for geniuses. Hijinks ensue, duh.
LILY ANDERSON is a school librarian and Melvil Dewey fangirl with an ever-growing collection of musical theater tattoos and Harry Potter ephemera. She lives in Northern California, far from her mortal enemy: the snow.
He didn’t move. He barely even smiled. She rolled onto her side and stared at him, a soft pout slipping over her lips and her hand sliding down to rest on the swell of her thigh. The way he hovered around the door made him look like a mobster from the fifties, only the lighting was all wrong. It was morning, and it always seemed like movies from back then had forgotten mornings even existed. It was all midnight deals and hungover afternoons.
He was waiting, but he wouldn’t tell her what. At first she’d been frustrated, whatever it was that he was waiting for being entirely irrelevant in the face of the ridiculous state she’d woken up in. A state, mind, that was entirely his fault, as the idle hand she’d found between her legs upon waking testified.
But he’d just slipped it out, smirked at her and uttered something along the lines of “Good, you’re awake.” before standing up off the bed and moving towards the window and glancing out at the parking lot.
The alarm buzzed desperately in the background, the sound muffled by the keenness of her attention. Regardless, she knew what it meant; half nine in the morning, around the time she usually rolled out of bed, and he answered the door when the mailman popped by.
Realisation struck her with all the force of a caffeine high, and she suddenly perked up.
“Are you expecting a delivery?” She was careful to hide the confidence in her voice, and the self satisfaction.
He turned to look at her, and she could see him roll his tongue around in his mouth. The movement made her giddy; it was his tell, the one he permitted.
“And what makes you think that.” It was stated, not questioned. She didn’t let it slow her down.
“No reason.”
“Uh huh.” She couldn’t help but giggle at that.
“What is it?”
He shrugged, the smirk rolling around the edges of his smile.
“You’ll just have to wait and find out.” This was even worse, she suddenly realised. Before she was just frustrated and denied. Now she was all those things but curious, too. Intolerable.
“Please.” She wasn’t quite at pleading yet.
She didn’t need to be. The doorbell rang, and he pushed off the windowsill.
