91 Books Like Belzhar

I have been fascinated with ghosts since an early age (Casper the Friendly Ghost was a favorite childhood cartoon) because this is the supernatural being that could be in your home right now! I have read numerous ghost stories/novels and have learned all the nuances that spirits can present from poltergeist activity to seances to spiritual possession. I zoom in on those ghost stories where the past is critical to the intent of the haunting spirit, whether it be beneficial or malevolent in nature. As a neuroscientist and author of paranormal fantasy novels, my distinctive background also allows me to approach this genre in a unique way.

During my fifth year teaching 7th grade, I found myself repeating the same lessons as prior years, participating in the same club events, marching in the same parades, etc. My students would inevitably reach the end of the school year and move on, while I was forever frozen in 7th grade. Herein my fascination with time loops was born. Over a decade later, I’m now happily teaching high school English while moonlighting as a writer of stories featuring temporal anomalies and time travel. I hope to spread my wings into dystopians and fractured fairy tales in the future, but until then…I may or may not have 22 clocks in my house.

I have always loved history, ever since my childhood obsessions with Boudica, Anne Boleyn, and the witch trials. I love exploring different historical periods through literature, as books can help us develop real feelings of connection and empathy with people who lived in times and places very different from our own. I like to think that, in turn, this encourages us to be more empathetic with others in our own time. Since coming out as lesbian when I was 14, I have read a great deal of queer fiction, seeking to immerse myself in my own queer heritage and culture. 

I went to four different boarding schools when I was younger, which at the time didn’t seem weird but it definitely is. I think boarding schools are peculiar places, full of teenagers with raging hormones, secret homesickness, and a certain sort of reckless swagger that is a recipe for all sorts of drama i.e. the perfect setting for a novel. I was on quite hefty scholarships and know how lucky I was to be there, but whether you have or haven’t been to boarding school, there is an endless fascination with them. I had a lot of fun writing The Islanders, wallowing happily in my nostalgia and reminiscing with old friends about what we got up to.

My father passed away in early 2005, but it wasn’t until after I finished drafting Touching the Surface, that I became consciously aware of how my writing was deeply connected to the thoughts I had about losing my Dad. The realization only added to my fascination with stories about the afterlife. Simultaneously it also expanded my intrigue with the themes of bad things happening to good people and life-altering mistakes being meant to alter lives. The more I explored the stories I loved and dug deeper into my own writing, the more I realized these themes overlapped like carefully folded origami. Complicated choices are intriguing.

The stories I’ve loved the most in my life have all been about the richness of human relationships, told by a memorable narrator who can find humor and hope in almost everything, no matter how screwed up. Whether it’s Charles Dickens poking fun at his contemporaries in Victorian England or Armistead Maupin sending up friendship and love in San Francisco in the 1980s, I’m a sucker for well-told, convoluted, and funny tales about people who find life with other human beings difficult, but still somehow manage to laugh about it and keep on going. As the author of six novels myself, these are the kinds of stories I always try to tell.  

When people find out I write YA novels, they sometimes ask, “How do you remember what it was like to be that age?” I want to respond, “How do you forget?” I’m still—many years past my own adolescence and after 25 years of teaching teenagers—trying to figure out how high school works. I’m pretty sure I won’t find a satisfying answer, but I hope that, if I keep asking the question (actually, I can’t help asking it), I’ll write some YA books that make kids feel a little less alone. Who am I? Clearly, a person who hopes it’s never too late to be popular in high school.

My father passed away in early 2005, but it wasn’t until after I finished drafting Touching the Surface, that I became consciously aware of how my writing was deeply connected to the thoughts I had about losing my Dad. The realization only added to my fascination with stories about the afterlife. Simultaneously it also expanded my intrigue with the themes of bad things happening to good people and life-altering mistakes being meant to alter lives. The more I explored the stories I loved and dug deeper into my own writing, the more I realized these themes overlapped like carefully folded origami. Complicated choices are intriguing.

When I was starting out as an illustrator, I stumbled into two art director jobs, first at the innovative New York Herald Tribune and then at The New York Times. Working with great journalists gave me the startling idea that a comic strip could have no better subject matter than real life. This led me to create my popular comic strip “Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies,” which ran in The Village Voice and reported on the rowdy New York city of the '70s and ‘80s. Back then, I was alone in combining real-life stories with comics; today many artist-writers use the comic strip format to tell complex and multilayered true stories of the human experience.

I'm a wife, mother, writer—and the mother of a disabled non-verbal thirty-three-year-old man. I'm also Black and a Christian, both of which can be problematic to many readers. I write fantasy and mainstream stories, Christian and non-Christian. Some fantasy readers have certain fears, stereotypes, and expectations of fantasy books written by minorities. Others have those same fears, stereotypes, and expectations of books written by Christian writers. I'm very good at accommodating my readers. For the most part, my readers never feel as if they’re being preached at or lectured. Some aren’t even aware that I'm Black or a Christian, even though my concerns—imperialism, injustice, spirituality, ethnicity, disability, and feminism—are throughout my stories.