Young Adult
Writers of Young Adult books from Minnesota.
Jacqueline West
Jacqueline West is the author of The New York Times bestselling series The Books of Elsewhere, the Schneider Family Award Honor Book The Collectors, the middle grade mystery Digging Up Danger, and the middle grade ghost story/mystery Long Lost, as well as the YA novels Dreamers Often Lie and Last Things. A four-time Minnesota Book…
Brian Malloy
Brian Malloy’s novels have been a Book Sense pick, a New York Times New and Notable title, an Oprah selection for best LGBT books of 2021, an Apple Books best new release selection, a 2021 Publishers Marketplace buzz book, and a Booklist editors’ choice. Other honors include the Minnesota Book Award, the American Library Association’s…
Marcie Rendon
Marcie Rendon, citizen of the White Earth Nation. Rendon received the McKnight Foundation 2020 Distinguished Artist Award and was listed in the Oprah Daily 2020 list of “31 Native American Authors to Read Right Now.” Girl Gone Missing, Rendon’s second Cash Blackbear mystery series novel, was nominated for the Mystery Writers of America – G.P.…
Sheila O’Connor
Sheila O’Connor’s work includes Where No Gods Came, Tokens of Grace, and Evidence of V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, and Fictions. She has received the Michigan Prize for Literary Fiction, Minnesota Book Award, International Reading Award, and Midwest Booksellers Award among others. A multi-genre writer, O’Connor’s stories, poems, and essays have been published in…
Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich is the author of novels, children’s books, short stories, volumes of poetry, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. The Plague of Doves won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and her debut novel, Love Medicine,…
Kate DiCamillo
Kate DiCamillo is the author of many books for young readers. Her books have been awarded the Newbery Medal (Flora & Ulysses in 2014 and The Tale of Despereaux in 2004); the Newbery Honor (Because of Winn-Dixie, 2001), the Boston Globe Horn Book Award (The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, 2006), and the Theodor Geisel…
Sara Biren
Sara Biren is a graduate of the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Minnesota State University, Mankato. She is a content and social media manager for a Minneapolis marketing firm and offers freelance editing and copywriting services. She lives northwest of Minneapolis with her husband and their two children.…
Peter Bognanni
Peter Bognanni is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His debut novel, The House of Tomorrow, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction and the ALA Alex Award and was adapted into a feature film. His second novel, Things I’m Seeing Without You, was a Minnesota Book Award finalist. He teaches…
Kirstin Cronn-Mills
Kirstin Cronn-Mills is a writer and teacher who lives in North Mankato with her family. She’s published both fiction and nonfiction for young adult readers. Three of her books have been finalists for the Minnesota Book Awards. Her novel, Beautiful Music for Ugly Children, won the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award in 2014.
Shannon Gibney
Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of See No Color, a young adult novel that won the 2016 Minnesota Book Award in Young Peoples’ Literature. Gibney is faculty in English at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, where she teaches critical and creative writing, journalism, and African Diasporic topics. A Bush Artist…