Fall 2020 Children’s Flying Starts

By PW Staff |

Dec 18, 2020

We spotlight the authors of six of the season’s most promising children’s and YA debuts.

Tracy Deonn

Tracy Deonn discusses her debut YA fantasy, Legendborn, a mash-up of Arthurian legend and Black girl magic set in the contemporary South.

Chloe Gong

As a college senior, Chloe Gong, author of These Violent Delights—a fantastical take on ‘Romeo and Juliet’ set in 1920s Shanghai—is one of PW’s youngest ever Flying Starts.

After years of being unable to find books representing his experience as a queer Latinx trans individual, nonbinary author Aiden Thomas has written one himself: Cemetery Boys, one of the year’s standout YA novels.

Darcie Little Badger

We spoke with Darcie Little Badger about her #OwnVoices YA debut, Elatsoe, a supernatural mystery starring an asexual Lipan Apache teenager.

Jashar Awan

Author-illustrator Jashar Awan’s debut picture book, What a Lucky Day!, which follows a group of animals as they confront their stereotypes and misconceptions of each other, has a timely message.

Van Hoang

For as long as she can remember, Van Hoang has been a writer, so the release of her first middle grade novel, Girl Giant and the Monkey King—inspired by her Vietnamese heritage—is the fulfillment of a lifelong ambition.

A version of this article appeared in the 12/21/2020 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Fall 2020 Children’s Flying Starts