Sunday, October 04, 2009

What is Stephanie Kuehnert reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Stephanie Kuehnert, author of I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone and Ballads of Suburbia.

Her entry begins:
I just finished reading my first Sarah Dessen book. I've heard so many good things about Sarah Dessen and since she's a real master of contemporary YA and that is what I write, I was curious to see what her writing was like. The book I chose to check out was Just Listen. It's got a music theme to it and that's my big thing so it seemed perfect.

Just Listen is the story of Annabel, the youngest of three sisters, all of whom modeled. Her middle sister Whitney is struggling with anorexia, which has changed the dynamics at home. And Annabel has changed too. Something happened at the beginning of the summer, something Annabel refuses to talk or think about, but it involves her best friend Sophie's boyfriend Will Cash and now Sophie's not speaking to Annabel. In fact no one is speaking to her until...[read on]
Learn more about Stephanie Kuehnert's writing at her website and blog.

Read her interview at the Simon & Schuster website.

Booklist called Ballads of Suburbia "....an intensely real and painfully honest novel of high-school anxiety."

I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone made Cecil Castellucci's LA Times list of YA Books that rock. Charles R. Cross, New York Times bestselling author of Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain, wrote: "Kuehnert's love of music is apparent on every page in this powerful and moving story. Her fresh voice makes this novel stand out in the genre, and she writes as authentically about coming of age as she does punk rock."

Writers Read: Stephanie Kuehnert.

--Marshal Zeringue