#UKYASpotlight is a month-long event across social media to promote YA books by British and Irish authors (resident and national). For more information, click here.
About the Authors
Shirley-Anne McMillan is a Young Adult novelist and the Children’s Writing Fellow at Queen’s University, Belfast. She has published four YA novels set in Northern Ireland, and in 2021 she had a short radio play commissioned by Radio 4’s United Kingdoms project. Shirley-Anne also teaches creative writing at the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast, and offers mentoring through the Irish Writers Centre. Her agent is Jenny Savill.
Kat Ellis (she/her) is an award-winning young adult horror and thriller writer from North Wales. Her novels include Wicked Little Deeds, Harrow Lake, and The Devouring Light (coming in 2025 from HarperCollins). When not writing, Kat can usually be found exploring cemeteries and ancient ruins for story inspiration, or watching scary movies.
Marisa Noelle writes tense and pacy novels in dystopian, science-fiction, fantasy, and horror. The ocean and mental health are her two deepest passions (besides her family, naturally, and let’s not forget the dog). Although quite a few ocean settings a have made it into her novels, she can’t find an excuse to set everything by the sea.
About Their Books:
Title: GRAPEFRUIT MOON
Author: Shirley-Anne McMillan
Pitch: Charlotte and Drew, two young people from very different backgrounds, are brought together when Charlotte’s ex-boyfriend’s threats cause them to question if the futures they have planned are worth more than personal integrity. A YA novel about two young people finding ways to challenge patriarchal constraints though poetry and drag.
Find on Goodreads.
Title: WICKED LITTLE DEEDS
Author: Kat Ellis
Pitch: Burden Falls is a small town dripping with legends and superstition. Something Ava Thorn knows well – and when her school nemesis is brutally murdered and Ava becomes the primary suspect, she starts to wonder if the legends surrounding the town are more fact than fiction.
Find on Goodreads.
Title: VENDETTA
Author: Marisa Noelle
Pitch: On a quest for revenge, Gal sets sail to hunt down Zale, the shark-shifting killer of his mother. Joined by two stowaway friends, they battle brutal storms and ancient secrets. As love and vengeance collide, Gal must decide: pursue retribution or risk everything for a chance at love.
Find on Goodreads.
What do you think is special about UKYA?
Shirley-Anne McMillan: Stories from Scotland, the North of England, Northern Ireland, London, Cardiff, are all going to be different, and that is what I love about it. I’m personally very invested in promoting YA voices from NI. We’re a fledging movement but at the minute our narratives are very strong.
Kat Ellis: UKYA is special because it often talks about on the places, cultural issues and experiences that are most relatable to UK teens.
Marisa Noelle: It’s lovely to have UK books in the bookshelves rather than being dominated by the US market. And it’s a lovely community of authors!
What distinguishes a YA book from middle grade or adult? Why do you think it’s so popular at the moment?
Shirley-Anne McMillan: YA stories are stories about becoming. I think people of whatever age like that because it offers hope. If you can always be ‘becoming’ then you can always be moving, always learning.
Kat Ellis: YA focuses on that sweet spot in older teen life where they are making life-changing decisions for the first time: what to be, where and how to live, how to behave without such close adult supervision. It’s an exciting and a daunting time, which is what makes it so interesting to write about. I think YA has been popular for as long as the category has existed; the genre trends may change, but there will always be YA readers.
Marisa Noelle: YA usually has themes of coming of age, no matter the genre, while middle grade the characters are only just setting out to identity themselves as independent from their parents and having their first adventures, and in adult, other themes are explored and coming of age is not often addressed. Romantasy seems to be huge across YA, adult and new adult right now, and my teenage self would have eaten it all up! (I still do!)
There has been a lot of talk about the adultification of YA and what that means for teen readers. What sort of balance do you think UKYA strikes between teens and older readers? Do you think this balance needs to shift in a particular direction and how?
Shirley-Anne McMillan: For me I don’t really see YA as all that homogenous. I feel like my job is to focus on the voice and tell the truth of the story through that voice. I’m trying to stay true to the real life youth voices that I have known and that I know, and I hope that I get as close to that as possible. YA will always be changing because youth culture and society is always changing. I think that’s OK. I feel like my responsibility is to keep things truthful and hopeful, and that’s it. I don’t want to write any other way, no matter what age the reader.
Kat Ellis: The shift towards ‘adultification’ in some YA might be partly in response to things like social media increasing the scope of what teens learn about and are exposed to day to day, and the fact that a lot of YA readers aren’t actually teens themselves, but older. Because of this (but also generally) I think it’s important to be transparent about what the themes/subjects of a book are, and to give teens the freedom to decide what they want to read and are ready to read.
Marisa Noelle: UKYA actually brackets a large span of reading ages. I’d love to see teen separated out from YA. I see teen as being for readers 12-16, and YA being 15/16+ with more adult scenes and potentially a bit of spice. Teenagers read adult books, so its important to have that older age bracket where they can identify with the character but are also ready for something more adult. It’s equally important to protect younger teenaged readers from content that might be too adult.
How do you think UKYA will evolve in the coming five years?
Shirley-Anne McMillan: I really hope I’ll never be able to answer that. I like the surprise of writing, and of reading. I like that it has taken me to unexpected places, and I hope that my readers find that in my work. I am doing my best to stay in the moment of my own work, and that can be very difficult, but I feel like once I stop doing that and start trying to second guess ‘markets’ and predict evolution then it will ruin the way that I try to work. I do not expect that I will ever make any money this way!
Kat Ellis: Hmm… Possibly a harder category line between younger YA and older YA?
Marisa Noelle: It will be interesting to see if a teen category becomes more established. And I can only hope that more genres and mashups are released!
For more interviews, check here and don’t forget to check instagram (here) for book recommendations from these authors and more!
#UKYASpotlight 
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