Lucy Silag (2/9/2010)

This week on The Lit Show, Lucy Silag reads from Wanderlust, the latest installment in her Beautiful Americans series. Silag is currently a fiction student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and she’s written for publications like Salon, Allure, and New York Magazine.

Beautiful Americans chronicles the exploits of four American teenagers in Paris, as they undergo through the exhilarating, wild, awkward process of becoming young people. They manage to have some fun on the way—and they get themselves into plenty of trouble.

Lucy Silag exemplifies why serious writers should write young adult fiction. What reader doesn’t want to recapture the feeling of encountering their first good long-form fiction—the dawning awareness of the power of words on a page ? I remember how a girl from my fourth grade class—I’ve never admitted this to anyone—passed on to me in secret all of Judy Blume’s books, and I read them in marathon sessions, until my parents dragged me to dinner. The best books, even very difficult ones, still give me that YA feeling.

YA writers like Lucy have a very important job- they initiate young people into the pleasures of reading—how fun it can be, how much it can make us feel. I feel like, as writers, we’re always chasing that first high of YA—that level utter absorption. It’s writers like Lucy who inspire new generations of writers and readers. And given the number of times I’ve snored through a piece of “serious” fiction—there’s a few adult novelist who should take a page from her book.
So, it is with great pleasure that I introduce to you tonight’s author. In person, Silag continually plays down her accomplishments—but she’s a talented prose stylist who can play in any register on the emotional keyboard. The Beautiful Americans books are written in four different present—tense voices—a tricky feat for any writer, and an unorthodox move in YA. But the work that must have gone into these books is not apparent in any of their graceful chapters.

Silag is fiction student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and she’s written for publications like Salon, Allure, and New York Magazine. People love her books—her outspoken and tech-savvy fans are facebooking, twittering, and commenting their delight every day.

Lucy Silag will give a reading/signing at Prairie Lights Books on 2/11/2010. Purchase Wanderlust through Prairie Lights.

Complete Show:

Excerpts