More and more YA authors are writing books specifically for adults; this year, at least five bestselling authors are making the leap. Moving from one audience to the other—and the fluidity between the two—is so popular, in fact, that it will be the focus of a panel at BEA on May 25 starring many of the names below.
Author
Ellen Hopkins
YA claim to fame
Free verse novels Crank, Burned, Impulse, Glass, and others
Adult novel
Triangles (Atria, Oct.)
Same song, different verse?
Hopkins touches on familiar themes, e.g., infidelity and the trials of parenting teens.
Author
Melissa de la Cruz
YA claim to fame
The Blue Bloods series, about a group of elite Manhattan vampires
Adult novel
Witches of East End (Hyperion, June)
Same song, different verse?
De la Cruz shifts the action to the Hamptons, and witches stand in for vampires.
Author
Melissa Marr
YA claim to fame
The Wicked Lovely series, a modern faerie story with some glamour
Adult novel
Graveminder (Morrow, May)
Same song, different verse?
Graveminder deals with the supernatural, but favors zombies over faeries.
Author
Sonya Sones
YA claim to fame
Novels in verse What My Mother Doesn’t Know; ...Girlfriend Doesn’t Know
Adult novel
The Hunchback of Neiman Marcus (Harper Paperbacks, Apr.)
Same song, different verse?
Sones still writes in verse, but this heroine confronts menopause.
Author
David Levithan
YA claim to fame
The Realm of Possibility (poetry); collaborations with Rachel Cohn
Adult novel
The Lover’s Dictionary: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Jan. 2011)
Same song, different verse?
Love’s the focus, but with more adult issues.