Image courtesy of Jenn Chushcoff (Jennerationphotos.com) YARN reader and photographer, Jennifer Chushcoff, submitted this amazing shot to illustrate "Babydoll" by Jacqueline Jules. Join Jennifer as a published photographer! YARN is searching for amazing images to illustrate upcoming poetry, fiction and essays.

YARN is searching for images that capture the eye, are artistic in nature, and that surprise us.  We are excited by photographers that play with light and color…we are not so excited by vacation photos.  (Well, I mean, they’re really cool and all…but probably won’t artistically fit someone else’s words.)

Please check our submission guidelines for specifics on how to submit photography.

For our fall line-up, we already need images of  the following: microwave, microwave meal, a bagel, junk food, bottle(s) of water, swimming pool for laps, a gym, a paring knife (preferably Japanese), a crucifix on chain (worn by a man, even better), a Star of David, a smoky club, a band playing, a tatoo of numbers on an arm, a tatoo of a swastika, an arm with scars on it, a soccer field, a baseball/mitt/bat, a bb gun, a football, an alarm clock, a school hallway, a “we need to talk” text or IM, kissing, a pirate, a gypsy, Oreos, Halloween candy, a fence, a lion, a diamond ring.

Whew!  That’s a lot.  But keep in mind that we’re always happy receive other kinds of images–if you’ve got great pics, send them on!

Photo courtesy of Patty Nason.

YARN editors were thrilled to interview Malinda Lo, the brilliant and witty author of “Ash.” If you haven’t yet had a chance to read “Ash,” (which you definitely should) it’s the Cinderella story retold with a fairy/lesbian twist. Malinda’s prose recreates an ancient world, where fairies dominate the forests alongside farming villages, and carriages carrying want-to-be-princesses clatter down cobbled streets leading to the castle. When you read “Ash,” you travel into the world of the fairytale with all five senses.

“Ash” is is a nominee for the Andre Norton Award, was a finalist for the 2010 William C. Morris Award, and was a Kirkus Best Young Adult Novel of 2009. Prior to writing “Ash,” Malinda worked in publishing, as an entertainment reporter for AfterEllen.com, and earned Masters degrees from both Harvard and Stanford. “Huntress,” Malinda’s second book is due out in April of 2011. Malinda also blogs regularly.

On “Ash”

YARN: Many fairy tales and folk legends carry a message for young boys and girls about how they are expected to behave in society and the consequences if they fail.  American children grow up to idolize Disney princesses who win their prince with a beautiful face and a charming song. Your blog notes the many versions of Cinderella which served as research when you wrote “Ash.” What specific choices did you make while writing Ash’s character to make her different from the Cinderellas of the past?

ML: A tongue-in-cheek but accurate list: (1) She does not talk to animals; (2) she does not sing while cleaning the house; (3) she is not a blonde; (4) she does not fall in love with the prince.

More seriously, I didn’t really think too much about how Ash should be different from other Cinderellas. I actually tried to find the common threads among those different versions. The one thing that is true across all Cinderellas is that she is a young girl who loses both of her parents. That’s where Ash’s character began.

YARN: You mention on your blog that the first version of the novel had Ash fall for the prince. Was Sidhean present in that version of the story? How did the fairy conflict evolve within your tale and what research made you first consider using the magic of a powerful and seductive fairy instead of a plump, maternal fairy godmother?

ML: Yes, Sidhean was present in the first draft. All of the main characters were present in the first draft.

When I began my research for the book, I knew that I wanted a fairy in it, but at the time I didn’t know much about fairy folklore. I was an anthropology graduate student, so I began to read 19th century folklore about fairies in Ireland and England. That folklore leads directly to a concept of fairies as powerful and seductive supernatural creatures. The plump, maternal fairy godmother is a much more recent development.

My decision to make the fairy a male instead of female was probably my first big choice in terms of differentiating my version of Cinderella from others. I’m pretty sure I chose to make Sidhean male because I liked the idea that fairies shared traits with vampires, and I was a big fan of Spike on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Sidhean started out as a Spike-like figure, but he did change and evolve as I got to know him. (For example, he is not as funny as Spike.)

YARN: What role do fairy tales have in defining our ideas of love and companionship? Do you see “Ash” as an important step in reclaiming and redefining those ideals?

ML: This is such a complex question, and I encourage readers who are interested in exploring this further to check out Marina Warner’s “From the Beast to the Blonde,” as well as Jack Zipes’ numerous analyses of fairy tales.

Briefly, I’m sure that many readers can think of fairy tales in which the main female character is saved by a prince, or is rewarded for being good by marrying a prince. This does underscore both heteronormativity and class hierarchy; in other words, a girl should marry a rich man. But I do want to point out that fairy tales can actually be very complicated things, and there are different ways to interpret them.

I think that “Ash” is part of a long history of women reclaiming stories for themselves, and of queer women writing themselves into stories. “Ash” hasn’t even been out for a year yet, so I can’t predict how important it will be in the long run. But I’m happy to be part of that history.

YARN: You’ve noted that the point of the novel is that “Ash” falls in love, not that it’s with a woman.  Can you explain why this is a significant distinction?

ML: If the novel were about Ash falling in love with a woman for the first time, it would be a coming-out story. A coming-out story typically involves dealing with homophobia, facing others who don’t accept one’s sexual orientation, and learning to accept oneself. (I’m generalizing here!) The main point is: In a coming-out story, homophobia usually exists.

I say that “Ash”s about falling in love, period, because there is no homophobia in Ash’s world. The gender of Ash’s love interest is irrelevant. She doesn’t have to come out, because it’s totally normal for her to fall in love with a woman. It is very much a fairy tale, especially for queer readers.

YARN: Can you tell us a little about “Huntress” which is being published in Spring 2011?

ML: “Huntress” is set in the same world as “Ash,” but several centuries earlier, so there are no crossover characters. It is about the origin of the first huntress in the kingdom, and it’s fantasy. I think of it as a hero’s quest, except with two girls as the main characters. And there’s adventure and weapons and romance and lesbians!

On Writing

YARN: You mention on your blog that when beginning a book, you try to write 1500 words a day. Is this only when you’re working on a new project? Do you write everyday, even when not working on a novel or editorial piece? Do you keep a journal or diary?

ML: The 1500 words/day goal is only for when I’m writing a rough draft, when the point is to just get the story out on the page. I have to keep moving forward during this stage, and having that word count goal helps me to do that.

I don’t write fiction every day. Although I do write emails, blog posts, etc., daily; and I have noticed that if I don’t work on fiction a couple of days a week at least, I start to get antsy. That’s a fairly recent development, though.

I do keep a journal. I actually keep two: one for writing about my current novel, the other for writing about anything. One is basically more personal than the other.

YARN: How much does outlining and research play a role in your writing process prior to drafting a novel?

Huge! I love to research and I do a lot of it before I start. The research really helps me to conceptualize the story and the characters. I have to write outlines for my publisher, but I would write an outline even if I didn’t have to. I like to plan out the story in advance. That doesn’t mean the finished book is just like the outline, but it’s a great pre-first draft draft.

YARN: Can you tell us a bit about your revision process? Does your editor see your first draft? How much time does revision take? Any advice for our teen writers about revision?

ML: I think of the first draft I write as a rough draft. Nobody sees that except me! (The very idea of it horrifies me!) I clean it up a bit before I send what I call the first draft to my agent and editor. Revision can take a long, long time, but I suspect it varies depending on the book. I worked on “Ash” for eight years, but I had a day job at the time, and I wasn’t working under contract (i.e., with deadlines) the whole time. I worked on “Huntress” for one and a half years.

I like to encourage all writers to not think of revision as a horrible thing. Revision is really the most important part of writing because this is where stories begin to sing. This is where you shape the story, hone the characters, and sharpen your prose. Revision is writing.

YARN: As a career writer in many forms, there must have been one point at which you had a piece that either you didn’t want to write, or the writing didn’t come easy. Any advice to our teen writers who might be facing writer’s block?

ML: I think there are a few different kinds of writer’s block, and in order to deal with it successfully, you have to figure out which one you’re facing. Here are some different types:

1. I don’t wanna write this crappy report! — This is the kind of writer’s block I encountered when I had to write articles about subjects I was just tired of (e.g. reality television). However, I was a working writer and I had deadlines, and if I didn’t write the article I wouldn’t get paid. So in this case, the only solution is to suck it up and write the thing. The sooner you write it, the sooner it’ll be done. (This kind of writer’s block often afflicts students forced to write academic papers on topics they didn’t choose.)

2. I have no idea what to write! — I used to have this kind of block, and I think it stems from liking the idea of writing, but not actually having written enough. If you’re stumped as to what to write, you might be a beginning writer. The solution here is to grab some of those writing books that have exercises, and do them. Just write about whatever. Also, keep a notebook where you can note down ideas. The more you write (and the more ideas you jot down), the less you will have this problem. These days, I have the opposite problem: There are way too many things I want to write!

3. I’m totally stuck in this scene and don’t know what to write next! — I deal with this a lot myself. The thing that works for me is taking a break from writing by doing some sort of physical activity: exercise, yard work, painting, whatever. Just stop thinking about the place where you’re stuck and let your subconscious do the work. At some point, the solution will float to the surface.

On Reading

YARN: After reading “Ash,” and while waiting for “Huntress,” are there any YA books you would recommend to our readers?

ML: “Beauty” by Robin McKinley – My favorite retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

“Rampant” by Diana Peterfreund – A group of girls fight killer unicorns. Seriously awesome! And the sequel, “Ascendant,” comes out this October. I even blurbed it I loved it so much.

“Silver Phoenix” by Cindy Pon – An Asian-inspired fantasy adventure with mouth-watering food descriptions and fantastic magical creatures.

YARN: A while back, you wrote an article for AfterEllen.com about the evolution of LGBT young adult fiction. How do you see the genre continuing to evolve? Are we moving in the right direction?

ML: I think that publishing is still on the track I noted in that article: moving away from typical coming-out stories and including more LGBT secondary characters. Personally, I’d love to see more books about lesbian/bisexual teen girls (there still seem to be more books about gay boys than girls), and I’d like to see more LGBT teens in genre fiction (fantasy, science fiction). I have high hopes!

YARN:  Thanks, Malinda, and good luck with “Huntress”!  We can’t wait!

August itinerary for YARN editors.

Since we know you’ve come to depend on your regular doses of YA from YARN, we thought it was only polite to let you know that we’re taking a little break in August.  Only a break from publishing new material, mind you.  We’re still reading and hatching new plans–in fact, in September, we’ll be back with gusto.

We’ll announce and publish the Fan-Poetry Contest Winner, and we’ll be back with some great new YA, including new essays, fiction, and poetry by writers you know and some we’ve discovered just for your reading pleasure.  If you happen to be a teacher, we’ll have something special for you as well: lesson plans designed by the teacher-editors here at YARN!

But we’re leaving you with a few cool treats:  an interview with Malinda Lo, author of “Ash,” and a short story by Emily Deibel called “In the Spotlight.”

So don’t despair if YARN’s Facebook, Twitter, RSS, and email subscriptions are a little quiet for a few weeks, during these dog days of summer.  Use the time to catch up on your YARN–maybe you missed our Meg Cabot interview, or never had a chance to read Alisa Libby’s essay, or comment on Lourdes’s blog.  And if you don’t know what novel to read next, check out our summer reading list, compliments of you, our awesome YARN readers!

We also hope you’ll use August to polish up that submission you’ve been meaning to send us.

What’s your YARN?

See you in September!
Kerri & Shannon

Any minute Ms. Morris will call the girls up on stage.  The cattle call.  You certainly feel like a large heifer standing under the hot lights with Ms. Morris telling everyone to turn right, then left.  This time you suck in your stomach and hold your breath because all the boys in the drama class are staring right at you.  They see your double chin and how tight your jeans are compared to Anna Daly’s, who stands to your right.  Sweat prickles on your brow as the boys whisper and from somewhere in the dark auditorium someone moos.  You suck in your gut even further and tilt your chin to hide the second one.

When Ms. Morris posts the cast list for the school play you are not surprised to see Anna will be Eliza Doolittle in this year’s production of “My Fair Lady” Once again you get cast into the part of the old mother, this time as Mrs. Higgins, who doesn’t even sing a duet, let alone a solo.

Your voice is better than Anna’s, your friend Julia tells you after class.  You shrug and laugh and say you could never do a cockney accent, especially in front of a whole audience.  You tell her you get too nervous on stage to be the star and enjoy doing these small parts that no one really cares about.  You say you like to make the audience laugh, but inside you know that they’re laughing at you, not at Mrs. Higgins.

The morning news reports statistics about how good exercise is for the body.  In the grocery store they line the magazines so that every picture flashes you a smile, and there are muscled arms and firm stomachs and people together enjoying life because they are normal and they love to be active.  The normal people get the lead.  That’s why most of the magazine covers have an actress smiling back at you.

You think that if you get up at five-thirty every morning to speed walk when it is dark and cold and it seems like dawn will never come, that you will have time to lose the love handles before they take measurements for Mrs. Higgins’ costumes.  Anna works out two hours every day without fail and she can run the mile in six minutes.  Her jeans don’t rub together at the thighs when she walks down the hall and there is always a boy standing with her at her locker before and after school and even in between classes when she gets her books.

The first day convinces you the gym teachers are conspiring to get you to drop the class.  There are eighty people enrolled and because there are only seven girls, your spotter was Matt Karson, from the wrestling team, who could probably bench press you, thunder thighs and all.  You can’t even lift the bars alone and after one week you moan every time you have to climb stairs or put your arms above your head to wash your hair.  The gym teachers only shake their heads and stare as you huff and wheeze to lift the bar, to revive the muscles you must have somewhere.  In the locker room before class you swap exercising tips with the girls in your stall because they are all trying to get in shape and lose ten pounds even though you look at their ribs poking through their skin and wonder where those ten hideous pounds are. You position the locker door to shield as much of you as possible and hope no one notices the twenty pounds you’ve been trying to shed for the past three years.  You figure you’ve lost and gained more than all of the girls in the class put together.

But still you push yourself during the “surprise” mile run at the beginning of class that the teachers have suddenly decided to make a permanent fixture in the training schedule.  You even feel like all of the other normal people when you run the entire four laps and the football and basketball jocks walk the last one.  You pass the coaches standing at the sidelines, with clipboards in hand to record your time, and smile because you finished and you were not last.  Your chest is burning and your side feels like it’s going to split wide open, but you did it and you are normal.

Wasn’t that a great run? someone asks and you try to slow your breathing and say that exercise always makes you feel a hundred times better even though you want to kneel on the ground and lose your lunch.

They say variety is the spice of life and you wonder if that’s really true when you quit speed walking to try aerobics and switch to an elliptical machine two months later because you think that a change in routine will make you want to get out of bed in the morning.  You tell yourself the real reason you haven’t skipped a workout is because it was getting easier and you felt better and not because Ben Waldrom, a boy in your drama class, asked Julia if you were changing somehow.

On opening night he stands in the wings after your last scene with a hand outstretched.  You are high on the adrenaline rush that comes with first night jitters and the applause.  You wonder if he is on the same high or if he is purposefully waiting to congratulate you and not just anybody that comes off the stage.  Everyone is best friends on opening night so it’s hard to tell.  You give him a high-five only to find he grabs your hand and squeezes it.  The audience loves you, he says.  You thank him like a robot and can’t think of anything else to say.  Are you going to the cast party at Nancy’s? he asks and you nod and say of course like you go to parties all the time, when really no one had told you about the party.  Good, he says.

After the show you skip the congratulations from family and friends in the lobby and hurry home to wash your hair and find some outfit that doesn’t make you look like you swallowed an entire watermelon.

Music blares from a stereo system and a table nearly groans under a cache of chips, pizza and cookies.  You give Julia a worried look and she punches you in the arm and says relax.  She knows that you’ve been eating carrots and lettuce like a rabbit for two weeks and that you skipped your workout that morning because you were nervous about the play, yet she steers you to the table and shoves a plate full of tortilla chips dripping with cheese and a mountain of Oreos into your hands.  You ask for a glass of water and Nancy looks at you as if you were asking for the moon and directs you to the pop at the end of the table.

You say thank you because everyone is eating and laughing as if they ate like this every day.  You know that they don’t have to measure their cereal every morning and count the grapes they eat with lunch.  You know that normal people don’t care if they eat an Oreo because they can stop after one and just one night of junk food won’t show up on their thighs the next morning.

You stand with Julia next to the wall and laugh at all her stupid jokes when really you are watching the door.  You want to see what Ben will do when he walks in and he sees you there with everyone else in the cast.  When he finally comes Anna ambushes him in a corner and they talk in hushed tones like they’re sharing special secrets.  You see him look your way and hold your breath wondering if you had just imagined if he had held your hand and asked you to be here tonight.

Finally he walks toward you and nodding at Julia, asks if you prefer blonds or brunettes.

Brunettes, you say without thinking because the butterflies in your stomach have morphed into a distracting swarm of hornets buzzing in your brain.  And then you realize his hair is blond.  His smile freezes on his face and there is disappointment in his eyes. Your tongue feels numb from a thousand stingers.

He says good, but like he wasn’t expecting that answer.  He says he knows Scott Lewis was interested in asking you out and since you like brunettes he could set you up.

Scott Lewis, the fattest boy in drama class, coupled with the fattest girl.

How perfect, you think as you walk to the table and spoon another large helping of nacho cheese over your already soggy chips.  On the first bite you suck the cheese right off the chip so hard you can even taste the grease from the tortilla.  Dinner, consisting of one slice of whole wheat toast with ¼ C of tuna, hold the mayo, was so long ago.  All the sudden you have a headache and that hornet swarm you get when you’re nervous is now in your arms and legs and you are shaking all over as you chew the next chip and then the next.  You stop tasting cheese and you don’t even know that three cookies have disappeared as well.  They don’t taste like anything anymore. You almost don’t even chew anymore, just swallow, swallow, swallow.  The body is a machine, they say, that needs fuel to keep running.  You know they are wrong.  Sometimes the body is a black hole that needs to be filled.  Only does it ever really get full?

You walk together on the road that circles the town cemetery because that’s where the entire neighborhood goes to run and walk.  Sam Halson and his friends roller blade there every Wednesday night and you hope he has sprained his ankle or something this week and doesn’t come because you are there with your mom and everyone at school will probably know because Sam has a big mouth.

You count One, Two, Three, Four after every lap and it doesn’t make the time go by any faster and it never seems shorter and your body never feels different.  You are told that after twenty-one days of doing the same thing you can form a habit, but experience has proven this is a lie.  You wonder when you will consciously stop thinking about forcing one foot in front of the other and smile while you exercise like Denise Austin in all her DVDs.  Even the fat people on the “Weight Watcher’s Walk at Home” DVD smile and laugh like they are having the time of their lives and exercising is their favorite thing to do.  Someday, you keep telling yourself. Someday you will be like everyone else and you will be happy if you just keep getting up, going out, and torturing your body like all the news reports, doctors, and gym teachers tell you to.

Mom thinks you should both run your last lap around the cemetery before going home.  You don’t say anything, but leap into motion because it’s Wednesday and you hear roller blades surfing asphalt somewhere behind you.  And you are younger than your mom and if you were really normal you could outrun her.  Come on, Mom, you say as you dash out in front of her.  Run faster.  Run faster, it’s good for you.

Surprise pep rally today, Ms. Morris tells the class.  The student body president has asked the drama department to perform a song from the play.  We’ll be doing the Ascot number, she says as the bell rings.

You wait until almost everyone is gone before shuffling to Ms. Morris at the piano.  You tell her you’re not in the Ascot number.  While everyone else in the cast is on stage pretending to watch horses racing across the audience, you are ditching a parasol while a crew member unhooks mic one before you jog behind the backdrop in time for crew member number two to jam mic two on the back of your skirt for the following tea scene.

Ms. Morris drops sheet music and purses her lips.  She’d forgotten about you.  Join the cast anyway, she says.  Stand in the back.  Deep down you know you want to, but there is also anger there.  Anger that she made you Mrs. Higgins who doesn’t sing.  You tell her it’s okay.  You’ll sit and watch.

Before you turn to leave, she cuts deeper.  Loosen up on your last monologue, she says.  You’ve been too stilted the last couple performances.

You sit on the second story of the field house during the pep rally and watch the drama class below.  They form a single line, smoothing black and white dresses, tapping tall hats in place, flexing satin gloves.  You’ve never seen them from this perspective. They all look poised, elegant, the same.  And you are sitting up here in a 1X sweatshirt, filling two seats.  You wonder why you sacrifice the time for this stupid class.  Screw next year.  You should take more AP classes for college anyway.

You arrive late on closing night.  Ten points off your term grade, Ms. Morris reminds you as she sprays your hair gray.  You pretend you don’t care, collect an armful of makeup from her cubby and head to the girl’s dressing room.

Ben is about to go in the boy’s dressing room as you pass.  You pretend to take stock of your makeup pile to avoid looking him in the eyes.

Hey, he says and his voice stops you as effectively as a brick wall.  Where were you yesterday?

You play stupid.

At the pep rally, he says.  Our show isn’t a show without Mrs. Higgins.

Ben had missed you.

A beginning of a smile tickles your lips when Julia bursts through the girl’s dressing room door and shouts loud in your ear, Mrs. Higgins returns!  She drags you into the bowels of the girls’ domain and you only have time to give Ben a weak wave.  He is still staring at you as the door shuts on his face.

We missed you at the pep rally yesterday, Julia says, chorused by the six other girls sharing your mirror.

You mumble something about not being in the scene and Julia tells you not to be such an idiot.  We almost didn’t go on at the rally without you, she says.  Then Ms. Morris told us you didn’t want to participate.

A senior helps apply the gray and white wrinkle lines to your brow, transforming you into Mrs. Higgins, and admits it’s hard to read you sometimes.  You do such an amazing job on stage, she says, and then a curtain comes down and you disappear in some dark corner in the wings.  You know she’s speaking metaphorically and shrug, wishing you had a literal curtain to hide behind.

Of course a senior wanted your part, she continues, but you are the best Mrs. Higgins we could have got.  Friends? she asks.

Your smile comes back full force.  Friends.

Wait until senior year, she continues.  With that smile and that voice of yours, you won’t be third string any more.  You’ll be in the spotlight.  Yeah, chime the others, patting you on the back.

There are similar groups around the other mirrors.  After two long weekends of coming early and staying late, this last show brings back all the excitement and belonging you caught a glimmer of at the cast party.  Girls are curling each other’s hair, helping with zippers, reapplying mascara after crying through the first application.  Everyone hugs the seniors who will walk out on stage for the last time, hug you for being the perfect Mrs. Higgins.

You are glowing.  It’s not just the hot lights raining on you, casting a slender silhouette across the stage, a figure you’d kill to have in real life.  It’s being here on this stage.  The audience shifts in the dark, unseen, waiting upon your every word.  But it’s not your words.  It’s Mrs. Higgins’.  Under the lights you are not the dumpy brainiac.  You are anything you want be.  With gusto you haven’t felt since tryouts, you lay into your final scene and tell Professor Higgins to basically get over himself.  It usually garners a few laughs, but tonight, the crowd claps and cheers so loud it’s deafening.  You go girl, shouts someone in the audience.

There are friends waiting in the wings, and they pull you in.  You are the middle of a bear hug, with one of Ben’s hands squeezing your shoulder.  Maybe he’d been sincere when he said the audience loved you.

Senior year.  Yes, everything will be different senior year.  Summer’s a perfect time to get in shape.  When you come back, no one will even recognize you.

There’s pizza in the green room after the show.  Ms. Morris lets everyone have a short party before striking the set.  You see Ben dithering over pepperoni or sausage and mushroom.  You fill your cup with Coke to the brim, wondering if he’s taking so long because you are.  He smiles.  You smile.

Senior year, you tell yourself as you take your plate over to Julia.  When you are normal and pretty like everyone else next year, then you’ll take that vacant seat next to Ben’s before Anna claims it.

Cheers, you tell Julia as you raise your third slice of pizza and tap it against hers.  She laughs and says something about the diet going out the window tonight.

Tomorrow, you tell her, watching Ben get up from his chair and leave.  You fill the frown on your face with another bite of greasy cheese and crust.

There’s always tomorrow.

Emily Deibel lives and writes in Michigan, where she manages to cram in writing time when her four kids are asleep or outside playing.  She graduated with a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University and is currently a member of SCBWI.  Her work has been published in “Lighthouse” magazine and in 2008 she placed third in the SCBWI-MI novel mentorship program.

On the rare occasions when I voluntarily read more than one book at the same time, I honestly feel like I’m cheating on the book I started first. There have been two exceptions to this for me: 1) School—being assigned to read more than one book at a time was not cheating, it was required. 2) Talking books in my car. I had an approximately 2-hour round-trip commute to and from FDU, and I found that talking books made the time speed by pleasurably and productively. And because my car books served such a specific purpose—in fact, at times they were a sanity-keeping necessity—I never felt like they were a naughty distraction from the book on which my eyes lingered, the one that sat by my bed waiting for me to pick it up and sink into its oblivion.

When I started reading more YA a few years back, I had no problem bouncing back and forth between so-called adult fiction and YA, even though I was reading so much YA partly as research, because I was writing a YA novel and wanted to feel like I understood the genre I was trying to break into. In fact, I set up a kind of informal ping-pong pattern: one YA novel, then an adult novel, then YA, then adult, and so on. I read without compunction.

But now that I’m a YA editor, there is a whole new way I feel the guilt of cheating on my books: When I take a break from YA novels to dally with a favorite adult author’s new book, or to mess around with a memoir for my book group, or linger over a novel that came highly recommended, I find myself suppressing pangs of conscience: You should really be spending more time with YA. How else will you know who to interview next? You already don’t know half the authors YARN’s fans do… The fact that I’ve been a teacher of writing for the past eight years doesn’t help—it’s made me a bit too much of a slave to the idea of the reading assignment (even if my assignments are self-imposed).

A smattering of my summer reads.

I suppose I’m just not cut out for cheating, because for me the experience is not what you see in movies, or in “Sex and the City” when Carrie cheated on Aiden with Big—tortured but orgasmic. Instead, I feel like I rush through the non-YA read just to get back to YA. While I’m rushing—I cannot lie—YA begins to feel more like a chore than the pleasure it really is. But then when I crack open the spine of my next YA novel, and get into the groove of the voice and story, I feel happy and secure again, the way you’re supposed to feel in a good relationship.

Do I enjoy YA all the more for my time away? Yes. Yes, I do. So maybe book monogamy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I suspect there are loads of other readers out there who have lists of books they are required to read this summer (by their schools, their circles of friends, etc). It doesn’t matter what genre you’re supposed to be reading—classics, mysteries, Pulitzer prize winners, whatever—I’m here to tell you to take a refreshing break from those requirements.

Yes, cheat on them. With impunity. Go ahead a pre-order that copy of “Hunger Games,” and try to finish “The Illiad” before it arrives so you can wallow in Katniss’s next big adventure before delving into “The Odyssey.” It’s okay. As a teacher, a writer, and an editor (and, okay, a cheater), I give you permission.

“That suggests that what you fear most of all is – fear. Very wise, Harry.”  Professor Lupin, “The Prisoner of Azkaban”

I don’t fear ‘scary movie’ fear. I dread it. I avoid it. I scuttle around it. But I understand it.

I fear the type of fear that lurks in the corners of your brain and affects decisions before you realize it’s present. This type of fear stops you in your tracks. It convinces you that you’re not ready to take the next step. It motivates you to slow down, think twice, consider whether you’re strong enough. Sure, I know you’re thinking that these qualities don’t sound all that bad on the surface, and you’re right. Think twice before you buy the ridiculous stiletto-heeled shoes to wear to that wedding…on the beach….in the sand.

The fear I’m describing is the fear that slowly and surely reinforces the idea that really, you’re not quite good enough for the task at hand.  And that’s the fear we battle in the night, that’s the fear that demands attention and respect. I say respect because if you ignore this type of fear, it can control you forever. Silent, lurking, unrecognizable. It’s known as caution. Sensibility. A conservative nature. Smart.

Being a writer, especially an unpublished writer, means that at some point, you need to stand up and search out Fear to face him head-on. It means you need to crawl through the damp corners of your mind to find that voice which says, “You’re not a writer until you’re published.” Then you must brand “FEAR” on his forehead, and kick his ass. A fear smack-down is not for the faint of heart.

That story that got rejected…are you going to let Fear convince you that it’s not worthy of publication? Once you’ve done you’re homework as a writer, once you’ve drafted and revised and feel confident, are you going to let Fear steal this certainty from your grasp? Are you going to let him join up with the nay-sayers and take residence in your soul? Will you let Fear dictate when you send out your query letters? Will you let Fear step onto the pages of your novel and make choices for your characters? “No,” he’ll purr, “she can’t do that. Nobody want’s to read about a girl who does that.”

The YA books that I admire are the books with characters I aspire to be. Characters who conquer the sources of their outer and inner fears in the face of true peril. Harry Potter, Katniss in “The Hunger Games”, Melinda of “Speak” — these characters choose their destinies. Even when the events of their lives spiral out of control in dangerous ways, they never cease stumbling after Fear in the dark to tag him and call him ‘it.’

This is what we all need to do. Be bold in our writing, and in our choices. Let Fear step in to remind us about the perils of stiletto shoes, but not to push us away from the path that leads to both success and failure. The surest way to miss success is to avoid the road entirely. So conquer Fear, push him aside, and get on with your journey.

Wear the shoes if you want to.

Shannon Marshall is YARN’s Assistant Editor. She’s not afraid of those birds, either.

Asha hurried through the aisle of pulsating washers and whirling dryers. The machines sang like a choir of middle-aged American ladies, but she ignored them. She was headed for the table marked “Give-Aways.”

The laundry room could have been a refuge if it hadn’t been for the other, darker room beside it, which housed the apartment building’s incinerator. There was no telling when the huge creature would come to life, roaring, snarling, devouring trash that came hurtling down chutes from the apartments above. Even when the incinerator was silent, the pitch-black room stank of scorched rubber and melting plastic.

“Keep away from that machine,” Ma warned the girls. For once, Asha found it easy to obey.

Ma mistrusted the laundry machines, too. She and the other Indian women in the building scrubbed their laundry by hand and then took it up to the roof, where they pegged it to lines.

The colors of the discarded quilt had faded into a soft pattern of pastels that smelled faintly of lemons and soap. Asha grabbed it and dashed past the incinerator. The apartment upstairs smelled of stale spices from yesterday’s cooking. Asha threw open her window, climbed onto the fire escape, and closed the curtains tightly behind her.

One ladder led down to the next floor and the next, and another led up and up, as high as the roof, where her mother and sister were collecting laundry.  Asha arranged the quilt in a corner and sat cross-legged on it. The autumn afternoon was fading quickly. Wispy, rose-colored clouds floated behind tall buildings, and sparrows swooped and called to each other. Far below, children screamed as they played tag.

Like a deep-sea diver coming to the surface, Asha drew in a long, deep breath. Then, she opened a small notebook and began writing. Words were springing up inside of her; she’d been waiting all day to spill them across the page.

“Osh!” a voice called from inside. “Ma wants you!”

Asha sighed. “Coming!” she answered.

“Were you out on that fire escape again?” her sister asked. “She’ll find you sooner or later. She always does.”

“No,” Asha answered, lifting her chin. “Not this time.”

Rita shrugged. “I’ll cover for you,” she said. “But be careful. Come on.”

On the roof, Ma was removing clothespins from the line. “Where were you?” she asked Asha, frowning.

Asha shrugged. “Rita found me,” she said.

Ma shook her head and went back to work. The girls began to fold a sheet, stepping together to make the corners meet, backing away to stretch it taut again.

A neighbor approached them, another Indian woman who lived down the hall. Asha nudged Rita, and the sisters ducked behind the one sari still floating on the line. This woman liked to pull them aside and ask what the fighting had been about the night before. Flinging the sari out of her way, she surveyed the girls. First, she held Rita’s chin and swiveled it from side to side, like she was checking a mango for bruises. “This one’s a good girl,” she told Ma. “You’ll have no trouble with her.” Then she pinched Asha’s cheek. Hard. “But this one …? Sly. I’d keep my eye on her if she were mine.”

With Ma’s back to her, Asha picked up one of the laundry baskets and escaped. It was chilly on her balcony. She wrapped the quilt around her shoulders and watched the sparrows dance against the darkening sky.

Inside the apartment, a door slammed shut. “Where’s your sister now?” she heard Ma ask.

“I don’t know, Ma,” came Rita’s dutiful answer.

Ma’s sigh drifted out to the fire escape. “That girl always wants to be alone.”

She was right. Asha pursued solitude with a measured desperation, like a hungry tiger stalking a rare delicacy. In India, when she was six, she’d crawled behind a sofa with her books and crayons. Her grandmother had pulled her out, dusted her off, and scolded her. Next she’d escaped to the flat, low-walled roof, but her aunts had convinced Ma that she would fall. The servants were instructed to padlock the door. When they came to America, she’d discovered the park, a wide, grassy field studded with shady, empty benches. But Ma forbade the girls to leave the building alone. Then, about two weeks later, Asha claimed the fire escape.

Her sister’s frantic whisper found her in the darkness. “Dinnertime, Osh! Hurry!”

Baba was already eating, and Ma was heaping rice and curry on their plates. As usual, she was muttering under her breath, and Asha caught a phrase or two as she took her seat at the table: “Sending half his paycheck to his mother. What does that leave for us?”

“We have enough!” shouted Baba. “That fellow on the eighth floor can’t even find a job — I found one as soon as we came to this godforsaken country.

Ma turned, wooden spoon jabbing the air like a sword. “Some job! Hardly pays enough to put food on the table.”

“Enough!” Baba said, slamming his hand on the table. “Money, money, money. YOU wanted to come to America, remember? I have a good mind to go home. With or without you.”

“Did you girls hear that?” Ma asked. She put one hand to her throat, and Asha saw her fingers tremble. “Tell him, Rita, to stop talking like this. Tell him how much it upsets you.”

Rita looked at her father, who sat glowering at the head of the table. “Baba —” she whispered, but she couldn’t finish.

Asha saw the steam rising from the rice, the spices sizzling in the pan on the stove, the red chili peppers her sister was slowly removing from her plate. With one last swig of water, she stood up. “I’m done,” she announced. She had mastered the skill of gulping balls of rice after only one or two chews. She could even swallow a chili pepper without flinching.

She hurried to her fire escape, where cold, still air greeted her and cooled her cheeks. A neon sign across the street made the colors of the quilt glow beneath her knees. Asha pulled out her pencil and notebook and began to write.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Asha dropped the window with a bang. Ma was holding the notebook in one hand and the quilt in the other. “Where did you get this … dirty blanket?”

“It’s mine,” Asha said. “Give it back.”

“Is this what you’re learning in America? How to dishonor me with crooked answers? I asked where you found this. Answer me!”

Asha took a step forward, and then stopped. “In the laundry room,” she muttered.

“And you brought it here? Full of other people’s germs? I’m getting rid of it right now.”  Ma gathered up the quilt and headed for the kitchen.

“No!” Asha cried, running after her mother.

Ma was opening the incinerator door in the kitchen wall.

“Stop!” Asha shouted, trying to grab the quilt.

Rita joined her. “Stop, Ma!” she yelled.

The tug-of-war continued. Then, with a sudden burst of strength, Ma yanked the quilt out of the girls’ hands and stuffed it down the chute. Asha groped for it, but it was too late. The incinerator consumed Ma’s offering without a sound.

The three of them stood for a moment, breathing heavily. Then Asha looked around, remembering her notebook. She spotted it on the floor, picked it up, and brushed it off. It was full of words she had woven together, words that made pictures glow in her mind each time she read them. “Did you read this?” she asked her mother, holding it between them, a last token of parley.

Something in her voice made Ma take a step back. She turned to her older daughter. “I have to find out why she’s becoming so sly, don’t I?”

“You shouldn’t have read it,” Rita said quietly.

Even then, Ma didn’t meet Asha’s eyes. For a moment, she glanced around the room fearfully, like a child in a crowd of strangers. Then, she sat down, gathered up the loose end of her sari, and pulled it over her head.

Asha cradled her notebook in both hands. It was too late for this one – the words inside were captured. But in the top drawer of her desk a new notebook waited, full of blank, cool pages that would shelter the sentences to come. Opening the door in the wall once again, Asha tossed the old notebook inside. It tumbled and banged down the sides of the chute, as if her words were shouting their last defiance, like zealots refusing to recant.

When she could no longer hear the roar of the fire, Asha walked to where Ma was sitting. Gently, she fingered a bit of the soft, faded cloth of the sari, admiring the ease of her mother’s ancient escape.

A Brief Q&A with Mitali Perkins

YARN is thrilled to be featuring “Fire Escape” by Mitali Perkins. Mitali’s books, such as “Secret Keeper,” “Monsoon Summer,” and “First Daughter, Extreme American Makeover” shed light on the experience of a teen living between two cultures. Mitali has a gift for transporting her readers into worlds so vividly realized that the settings are tactile, the colors are vivid, and the private thoughts of the main characters resonate in the reader’s mind days after the book is completed. “Bamboo People” is Mitali’s most recent novel and has received much critical acclaim including being a Junior Library Guild Selection and being nominated for ALA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults.

YARN: Today’s teens are constantly tethered to technology. Cellphones, computers, ipods… “The Fire-Escape” points out the importance of quiet and time for reflection. How do you point out the importance of quiet reflective time for young aspiring writers to whom being alone is almost a foreign concept?

MP: It’s not just teens who are tethered to technology, that’s for sure. I’m addicted myself. It feels a bit hypocritical to give advice here, but I’ll share what I do to build in quiet reflective time.

I start each day with prayer and writing in my journal. Sundays are screen and plug free for the most part, and I take at least 2 overnight retreats a year on my own to read, write, and be silent. I back away from technology in the summer and winter, too, and stay more connected in the fall and spring, when I’m also interacting more in real life via school visits.

Solitude is an absolute must if we’re to give our imaginations space to flourish and create good stories.

YARN: What advice might you give young people who are considering writing across the lines of culture?

MP: If you’re an “outsider” to the culture, do your homework. Listen, do research, love someone deeply who belongs to that culture. Let it be read by people of a different class and/or culture than yours and receive their critique. Consider whether the story wouldn’t be better served if written by an “insider,” and have the grace to let it go. Or to wait on it.

The other part of the equation is power. If you’re perceived as a powerful outsider thanks to race and/or class and/or gender, your story is going to be told and heard differently. Are you going to commandeer space on the shelves and displace a story that could be told by a less powerful “insider”? Or is there room in the global library both for your version and hers?

On the other hand, I don’t believe in setting up some kind of “right-ethnic-credentials” apartheid in stories. Who gets to decide who writes for whom, anyway? We’re all essentially outsiders when we write fiction, right? Otherwise, we’d be writing memoir. Let’s represent lots of races and cultures in our stories as the setting and plot demand.

Bottom line—cross cultures boldly, but humbly.

YARN: Teens today are barraged by a slew of images of people who are considered to be important and perfect. How do you encourage young people to ignore the faces on the book covers and the television screen long enough to believe that the stories they have to tell are valid and important?

MP: Even though our culture is saturated with celebrity worship, I think we’re all still on the hunt for heroes. Real heroes. That’s what story offers — the chance to know and root for characters who, though flawed, still strive to be and do good.

Life gets interesting when we study nuance of character, focus on the undercurrents in conversation, explore the stuff that happens under the waterline of the human psyche, and fiction does that so well.

Stories, written and verbal, also hand more power to the imagination of the hearer and reader than stories in a movie or television show. The reader gets to picture the characters and setting, and be in charge of the timing of story consumption. I like the fact that control is shared, don’t you?

It was only a few months ago when I boarded the subway looking like some suburban snob. I was wearing stockings in July because they made me feel pretty and my face was painted with bronzer and blush, ballerina pink. I remember feeling, put-together, poised, purposeful. That morning in the mirror I slid my fingers down my figure, tucking in the ivory blouse, inching the stockings up my calf and then my thigh until they perfectly rested on my hip. I brushed my hair, a side-part to the right. I wore lipstick with a funny name, “Turning Heads Red.” According to Vogue I couldn’t pull off red with my chocolate hair and pasty skin, but I did it anyways like Audrey Hepburn, or Liz Taylor, or Spanish tango dancers with crimson mouths.

The station smelled of empty Corona bottles and sidewalk street food. A man sat with his head against the stucco wall, holding a Marlboro between two bony fingers. Another man carried a empty orange juice carton, “Just a dime, a nickel,” he pleaded. “Help my family.” He extended a jagged arm, rocking the cup, grinding his cigarette-blackened teeth to the turning of pocket change. I did not look at him because he was dirty, ratty, poor, and his nails were cracked and my father is European and I live in a big white house with a garden. He lives on concrete and eats out of wrappers. I did not look at him.

You see, I really did not want to take the subway that morning. Waking up from a weekend of city nights, with my nose in the air, superior, above the sultry atmosphere where everyone looked so strange: limping, sauntering, straggling, begging. I was dreaming of ivory arches, Providence, the man in a suit, the one who would ask me lots of questions. Because I am the type of girl who wears bows in her hair. I enunciate; I study; I sigh. I play the piano to please. I’ve got it all figured out.

I waited for the train as men coughed into their hands with fingers nails caked in dirt and hands strained workday soreness. I thought about college, about that interview I was going to, how I had to carefully package my life into a conversation that would only last one hour. And that man on the other side of the table had a family, a home, bills. He had seen thousands of girls like me and I was just another bright-eyed dreamer, another polished pick, another name: Lili. Looking around, I concluded the motley mix of characters passing by didn’t seem like the “college type.” There were the punk teenagers with cartilage and nose-piercings, those kids from abusive fathers perhaps, and alcohol, and greasy hair, and drugs.

“Hey, pretty girl,” said a boy with black hair sprinkled with dandruff. He did not wear a tie, or Sperrys, or Armani cologne. He smelled like a dollar burger and he spoke with a lisp and I was too pretty for him. I nodded, smirked, and walked on.

But there were more like him. There were the construction workers. There was a man in a Starbucks apron. Minimum wage. Why wouldn’t I judge a man who spends his life filling cups?

A girl waddled in wearing a cherry red dress with big white polka dots. She looked like a waitress at some crappy diner off route 95: hair in a bun that sagged at her neck, long white striped socks that ascended her calf, a fatigue that created wrinkles at the edge of her lips giving her that bulldog pout. Her eyes were calf-brown. Her cheeks were round, bulbous. She looked vulnerable. Of course that was because she was pregnant and I just kept on staring at her stomach, the way it swayed with each step, the way it bounced with each breath. This girl was indeed only a girl. Her legs were still slender. She had the frame of an adolescent and her bulging stomach looked awkward, unwanted. She was some  character on Lifetime or a statistic you learn about in Sex Ed. Did she know where she was going, where they were going? I imagined her walking into my college interview with that balloon belly, a knocked up teen with rich, plum hickies sprinkled across her neck. I sort of snickered and then started to feel bad. The mother was suffering so many eyes, stuck somewhere between motherhood and adolescence, insanity and normalcy, just trying to walk on that thin, ragged margin, as if it were a tightrope and she was hoisted hundreds of feet in the air. But she could barely walk; she waddled.

The mother looked around, holding a bare hand with fingers cupping the bump and the other hand holding a broken back, trying to support the weak knees, the nausea, the fear. I was watching from a bench, with my ankles crossed, and my arms crossed, and I thought about people disappearing, reappearing, walking toward me, walking past me. They were all lives that I would never know because I never wanted to know them. I was judging because it is easier to be knowing and powerful than to be ignorant. It is easier to judge. The mom walked toward the bench that was full with stragglers. I saw her eyes, not just the stomach this time, and I got up. She  looked up at me and I let her sit down and I know she appreciated it because the small glance became a smile.

She eventually boarded the train, the one going north. (I was going south.) She pressed a hand to the cool metal as the cart began to trundle down the tracks. I knew what she was thinking: Where are we going? Do we have a place to stay? Away, away, away echoed in the rhythm of the train.

But I saw her there differently. I saw her for what she was., Not a slut. At that moment I saw myself in her: scared, unsure, just trying to pull it together. And the truth is I don’t have it all planned out, although I try so hard to. Sometimes the red lipstick fades and my chapped lips appear. Sometimes the shirt wrinkles, the stockings rip, I don’t feel so beautiful anymore. Providence is only a distant hope; I have become just another girl that life puts on a tightrope, watching to see if I fall. And I do; I fall so hard outside the margins that I’m not even straddling the line. Perfection perishes. I stop judging the outliers in the station: the man smoking, the beggar, the girl nursing a baby. I’m just one of them, hoping to get on the right tracks, hoping to go in the right direction.

My name is Lili Rosenkranz and I am 17 years old. I am going into my senior year at GreenwichAcademy in CT. I have always loved writing. I attended the UVA summer writing workshop last summer and am currently teaching poetry to young children through an art therapy program called CARING at Columbia medical school. I have beenpublished in “Connecticut Student Writers,” “Blue Pencil,” “Apprentice Writer,” and have been recognized at a regional level with a gold key from the Scholastic Awards and placed third in the Lynn Decareo Connectice State writing contest.

One of my favorite things about the book was including Becca’s versions of poems written by existing poets. When you’re starting out as a writer, you often get (very good) advice to find work by other writers you like, and emulate it. I thought this was advice that Becca, who is serious about poetry, would definitely follow. Poets she “copied” in “After the Kiss” include Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Pablo Neruda, and William Carlos Williams, among others. (You will know when you get to one of these poems, because she always writes “With Apologies to . . .” after each title.) It’s my sincere hope that some of you curious readers will track down the originals and compare how she did!

There were some bits of “After the Kiss,” however, that stayed on the cutting room floor—poems and passages from Becca and Camille that didn’t quite fit for whatever reason: didn’t end up moving things along at the right pace, or saying things in the exact best way.

Note from YARN: We’ve hyperlinked the titles of Terra’s poems so that if you click on the title, it will take you to the original poem.

These are a couple of the homage poems Becca wrote that we didn’t include:

the Public School children who live in furnished souls
(with apologies to e.e. cummings)

the Public School children who live in furnished souls
are too beautiful and have lazy minds
(also, with the tired teachers’ blind-eye blessings
elevated grades—unwarranted intellect)
they believe in themselves, and You Tube, both idiotic,
and are invariably interested in so many inane things—
at the present one still finds
nimble fingers twittering. . . or tweeting?
perhaps. While permanent faces boredly banter
the scandal of Olivia and Tyler
. . . the Public School children do not really care, among
Decatur, if sometimes in their box of
cinder-block-bricks and shadowy corners, their
poetic peer rattles like a fragment of broken-hearted candy.

A Song In the Coffeehouse
(To Nadia, with apologies to Gwendolyn Brooks)

I’ve stayed in my notebook all my life.
I want to peek behind the counter
where it’s dirty and crowded and friendship grows.
A girl gets sick of feeling alone.

I want to go behind the counter now
and maybe down into the kitchen
to where the college kids play.
I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My self-consciousness sneers, but I tell myself it’s fine.
How they don’t start shaking their hangovers until quarter to nine.
My self-doubt, she tells me that Nadia
has grown up into a wild woman.
That Denver’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(on account of what he sells out at the back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a wild woman too.
And wear mismatched knee-socks and t-shirts of lace
and strut around the coffeehouse with a huge grin on my face.

And here is a portion from Camille’s point of view that didn’t make it, either:
waiting
you want to grab them by the shoulders—ellen, luli, willow, autumn, the coffee counter girl, your literature teacher, whomever— and shake them and say, as loud as you can manage (so loud it makes them flinch), what are we doing here??? everything is so at a standstill. everything is waiting for something  else to happen: waiting for a boy to call, waiting for a test result, waiting for approval, waiting for someone else to say something before we have to. waiting for the rice to boil. waiting for the other shoe to drop. and after years and years of waiting it finally dawns on you —right when the thing you’ve been most waiting for might actually arrive— that there is nothing ever in the arrival, only always what you do in the preparation for it. the prince will never kiss your sleeping lips (and if he does, he will have bad breath, and a mommy complex, and eight boxes of comic books he’s embarrassed to show you), and you will never earn enough money (not for the plane ticket, and the apartment, and the designer clothes, and the reservation at the restaurant everyone’s dying to get into). you will never eventually come up with the best comeback, and the life-changing concert will never be quite what you expected once you go. you can wait and wait and wait and still the timing won’t be right, your hair won’t be long enough, your thighs will be too wide and your argument will still have a few holes in it when you finally think of something to say. whatever it is you’re waiting for —your prom date, your graduation, your acceptance letter, your new job— will always only ever be insufficient, be halfway what you wanted, because once it comes you will already be dreaming of the next thing coming around the corner, so there is only here—the time in between the thing you are waiting for. there is only ever this and so you had better pay attention, or else one day you will wake up and you will be lost.

I hope that reading some of what isn’t in “After the Kiss” will entice you to explore what is in there. I’ll be looking forward to all of your comments!

Thanks, and enjoy!
–Terra Elan McVoy
www.terraelan.com

Another note from YARN: We hope you enjoyed this “fan-poetry” as much as we have, and that it inspires you to write some of your own! Remember, YARN is running a Fan-Poetry Contest until the end of July. Enter here!

Maybe you’ve read her first novel, “Pure.”  The title refers to the purity rings worn by the central female characters in the book–a topic discussed with insight and humor by McVoy.  “Pure” is also a delicious romance, and an honest story about female friendships and how complicated they can get.  We highly recommend it.

To support her writing, McVoy’s done a number of things, including managing the indie bookstore Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, GA.  To find out more about her, see her website:  terraelan.com

If you put Gertrude Stein and John Waters in a literary cage fight, who would win? My money would be on Gertrude Stein, scrappy, aesthetically ruthless and downright rude. John Waters, so thin, so well-dressed, would surely step aside, demurely (and dryly) saying, “Gentleman never engage in cage fights with ladies. That is, if Gertrude indeed is a lady.” Or something more clever, simultaneously traditional and subversive.

I’ve been thinking about John Waters* lately because he has been making the rounds of the talk shows, hawking his new book, “Role Models,” and talking about great art. He, in turn, has been making me think about Gertrude Stein, one of my own role models, because Stein and Waters are both writers who discuss art, specifically the masters, with fighting words. So it struck me that I’d like to put these two literary icons in the same room…or ring…to spar about the virtue of having artistic role models.

A side note: I know–it’s a bit reckless to talk about Stein and Waters as if they were contemporaries. Stein (“Tender Buttons”) was born in the 19^th –century, a poet, novelist and playwright; Waters (“Hairspray”) is a current-day film director, writer and actor. The Las Vegas bookies would sneer at my imagined fight club. But I think Stein and Waters were twins separated by time and space, and they have something to teach us about literary masterpieces.

Listen to this clip from an interview with John Waters, and check out this quote** from Gertrude Stein. They use words like “wreck” and “ugly” when discussing the classics of art and letters. They both believe contemporary artists have to break the mold of traditional art in order to make something new. Broken patterns of art are bound to be ugly. Or, at least, what’s new will seem ugly, even obscene, until people get used to it and polish off the edges to create new classics. Then the next wave will come along and break the mold again.

I mention this because this month YARN is asking you to look back at the masters of poetry and write your own poems (more on this later). Sometimes, however, people read the classics and become intimidated by them. They are so beautiful and perfectly crafted. How could we ever do the same? Our society tends to talk about the masters in hushed tones, a worshipful incantation to Homer, Dante and Shakespeare. This (well-earned) reverence makes those masters seem far-away and inaccessible. That’s what I find so refreshing about the way Waters and Stein treat the masters. They aren’t afraid to show a little irreverence. I know it’s summer vacation, but spend a little time re-reading the classics this month and allow yourself to see them with fresh eyes. Pick apart their word choices, their structure, their themes and imagery. Could you do it better?

Here’s where I get back to the contest.

YARN is running a poetry contest right now that encourages you to choose a classic poet and write your own poem following the master’s style. As a literary journal, YARN is in the business of publishing and promoting new work – not only that, but we publish in new media. We’re not your mother’s English class. So why are we asking you to turn back to the old-guard poets? Two reasons:

1. We want to help you be the best writer you can be. It’s partly self-interest. We want to publish the best work we can find. And unless you know good style, it’s hard to avoid bad style. Ask John Waters. Unless you know good form, it’s hard to break the form. Ask Gertrude Stein. If you want to be the next big thing, you need to know what the last best big thing was. In short, to re-make the masters, you need to know the masters.
2. We’re featuring a YA novelist this month, Terra Elan McVoy, whose latest book, “After the Kiss”, includes characters who write poetry in the style of their favorite poets. YARN is hosting a fan-poetry contest in which you can be like Terra’s characters and write your own fan-poems. Terra McVoy herself will help YARN choose the winner. Entries are due July 31. Learn how to submit here.

Do you already have literary role models? If not, it’s time to find some. Pick up your favorite anthology of poets and read, read, read. Choose a few poets who resonate with you. Read them again. And again. Try memorizing them. Walk while you read. Get the rhythm in your body, your breath. Then write your own poem in your role model’s manner. But, of course, don’t be afraid to wreck the work of your role model. Don’t be afraid to create something ugly (especially in your first draft). Don’t be afraid to have fun. Follow the master’s form or style, but make it your own. Stein did this, Waters does this, now it’s your turn. Send us your own literary boxing match: you vs. Stein vs. Waters vs. the world.

Colleen Oakley is YARN’s poetry Editor.

*Caution: John Waters’ book would not likely be rated PG-13, but his interviews could be.

**From “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas” by Gertrude Stein:

“… when you make a thing, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly, but those that do it after you they don’t have to worry about making it and they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when the others make it (30).