8 Authors Discuss Dyslexia, Sexual Harassment, and More in December’s YA Open Mic

YA Open Mic is a monthly series in which YA authors share personal stories on topics of their choice. The aim of the series is to peel away the formality of bios and offer authors a platform to talk about something readers won’t necessarily find on their websites.
This month, eight authors discuss everything from sexual harassment to dyslexia. All have YA books that either release this month or released in recent months. Check out previous YA Open Mic posts here.
Note: Content warning for discussion of sexual assault that may be triggering.

Erica Cameron, author of Sea of Strangers

I married young. We met as children and grew up together, and no one was surprised when we got married right after I graduated college. Despite how long we’d known each other, we were wrong for each other in some of the worst ways. Sex was one of them. I hadn’t yet learned about asexuality, so I had no way of making my hypersexual partner understand why I had so little desire for or interest in sex. He thought he could make me like it. He tried to make me like it. When the nicer ways of doing this didn’t work, he tried to force me to like it. More than once, the man who professed to love me as I was pushed past my physical reluctance and my verbal refusals and took.
The thing is, nothing in society told me he was wrong. Media representations and social expectations told me I was the one with the problem, that I was denying him something our relationship gave him some sort of right to, so I kept my silence and persisted in trying to change an aspect of myself I now understand is immutable. Eventually I did walk away from the twisted mess our relationship had become. It wasn’t soon enough.
Assault and harassment are hot topics of conversation right now, and the prevalence of it is finally getting national attention. Like many women, I know what it’s like to be harassed by a stranger/coworker/boss/etc., but so few people ever discuss the ways sexual harassment, manipulation, and coercion occurs in relationships. The lines are too blurred there, and proof, in most cases, is impossible to obtain. It’s the worst case of one person’s word against the other. There is one certain truth, though: No still means no even when you’ve said yes to someone before. Anyone who doesn’t take that seriously, no matter what your history with them is, is guilty of breaking a trust no spouse or partner ever should.

Liana Liu, author of Shadow Girl

I was always an indoor kind of kid. My mother likes to tell the story of how she’d take me to the park and I wouldn’t sit in the sandbox, I would squat. I didn’t like sitting in grass, either—my college roommate still jokes about my “issues” with grass. Maybe it was because I was raised in a city; maybe it was because once I learned how to read all I wanted to do was stay at home and read and read and read. Yet I spent most of this past summer in the woods, poking around weeds and talking to trees. How did this happen?
Some changes are drastic and unmistakable. When you move to a new place or get a dog or end a relationship, you know that your life has changed. Other changes are made up of a thousand tiny shifts. If I were to map my journey from dirt-phobic to tree-whisperer, the highlights would include an island camping trip, stargazing in the desert, and various weekends spent in the country with friends. Then suddenly—yet not at all suddenly—I was a person who loved nature.
It’s a useful reminder. I’ve been feeling a little restless lately and it helps to remember that change doesn’t have to mean quitting your job or running away to another country. Change can be as simple as leaving the house or eating something different or saying hello. Then an indoor kid becomes a nature lover. A picky eater becomes a foodie. A new friend becomes a best friend. And nothing was ever was the same again.

Kendare Blake, author of One Dark Throne

When I was a freshman in high school, I started dating this guy. His name wasn’t Dave, but we’ll call him Dave. Anyway, Dave was a sophomore. The first older guy I had ever dated (and come to think of it, maybe the only?) and by virtue of that alone he was automatically cooler. Dangerous. A rebel. Nearly able to drive a whole car. He was a little wild. Into punk rock. A mountain biker. And would you believe it, he liked that I was a writer, and wanted to write something together.
If I hadn’t been a smitten kitten already, that would’ve done it.
And so Dave and I embarked on our whirlwind winter romance (and we’re talking Minnesota winter here, so it was basically a lot of scurrying from building to building in white-out conditions and trying to canoodle while wearing a snowsuit) set to the backdrop of composing the single-most disturbing collection of horror fiction the world would never set eyes on.
Oh the mayhem that poured out of our pens as we shunned the other kids at lunch, hunkered down over our own private island of the cafeteria table. Day after day we traded pages and survived on M&M cookies and bags of chips. We churned out an anthology’s worth of short horror fiction, and I, with my superior knowledge, wrote the introduction. It was several hundred pages of murder and dismemberment, betrayal and schemes, monsters and curses, with hidden F-U’s to our least favorite teachers that in retrospect were probably not so well-hidden.
It was terrible. I mean, mine were bad, but Dave’s were worse; after all, he was just doing it on a lark to bond with a new girlfriend; he wasn’t serious.
Still, we finished an entire collection of short stories. In like, a month. Far faster than I write now. And we were so, so very into it. We were ready to submit it to the world. We were ready to take over. Dave and me. Me and Dave. Ride or die, or whatever that phrase is.
And then one day he shaved his head completely bald. So…you know, that was pretty much the end of that.

Erin Summerill, author of Ever the Brave

The words skipped around on the page. I was in the upper years of grade school and reading was frustrating. My mom had a term for my reading aversion—dyslexia. All I understood was words were often difficult. I struggled when pictures weren’t part of the story and the page was filled with words and words. Letters were difficult to pin down. Sometimes I practiced reading them aloud without crossing sounds and getting tongue-tied, but by the time I finished each passage, I couldn’t grasp the meaning of what I had read.
My friends and siblings graduated to older books. They carried copies of Sweet Valley High and The Hardy Boys. I clung to early readers and picture books. The succinct clips of words and the illustrations on the page helped me to see the story. I loved Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon, and Amelia Bedelia. Even now, thirty years older, I can still see the vivid details of those beloved stories in my mind.
It took me years to manage my dyslexia. Often, I felt dumb. When the other kids could blast right through their reading and math assignments, I struggled to make sense of what was on the page. But my mom was always there, always saying, “Erin, you can do this. You can be whatever you want to be.” Her encouragement stuck with me and helped me find a way to turn my struggles around. Now instead of struggling to read books, I spend my time writing them.

Leah Scheier, author of Rules of Rain

I get bored easily. Not day-to-day boredom—more like a life goals type of thing. I was raised by immigrant Russian parents who taught me that nothing worth achieving comes easily. They sent me to kindergarten speaking no English, so I would grow up bilingual, and introduced me to music lessons shortly afterward. I wasn’t particularly good at violin, but those hours of fruitless practice taught me to welcome challenges, even look for them.
When it came time to choose a career, I decided on medicine, ignoring well-meaning relatives’ predictions that “there was no way to balance a medical career and a family.” When my three daughters were born, I learned how to study and nurse at the same time—and how to live without sleep. Those years are something of a blur—but I got through them.
And then I got bored again. Working part-time as a pediatrician was great, but what was I supposed to do with my nights? So while my girls were asleep, I started writing. Two years later, I finished a novel. It was terrible, but I was proud of it. Shockingly, an agent was interested enough to sign me, and after almost a dozen revisions, she sold Secret Letters. I thought, “Hey, maybe I can do this!” and kept on writing.
But in the meantime, I was getting restless again—so my family and I picked up and moved overseas to Israel, where I spent several years learning to practice medicine in a language I didn’t speak. Nine years later, I finally felt comfortable in my new home. I thought, “Great. Now I’m done.”
Two weeks after my oldest daughter announced her engagement, I discovered I was pregnant. With twin boys. At age 42.
My babies were born six weeks ago, just forty days before my daughter’s wedding. It’s been a wild month—but a wonderful one. Now I’m rocking a babe with one hand, the other balanced on my chest, while I type away at this blog post. It’s past the deadline (so sorry!), I’m foggy after another sleepless night, but I am clear about one thing.
I will never be bored again.

Laura Creedle, author of The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily

I have no natural sense of the passage of time. It’s an ADHD thing. When I was in high school, my mom would follow me around from the moment I woke up to make sure I didn’t dawdle. I’d sit down to do my make-up, and 45 minutes would elapse in the artful application and blending of four different colors of eyeshadow. Or I’d pick up a novel, start reading, and forget that I had to catch the bus for school. It was easy to forget about school, because school was miserable.
When I was 15, my grandfather died after a long illness. The funeral was in Arkansas, four states away. Maybe my parents didn’t relish the idea of traveling hundreds of miles with two car-sick pre-teens and two surly teenagers, because they allowed my older brother and me to stay home.
Before she left, Mom suggested I lay out my clothes at night and set multiple alarms. She gave me a 10-point plan for time management, which didn’t make any sense. If I was organized enough to follow a 10-point plan for time management, I’d be the kind of person who didn’t need a 10-point plan for time management.
I missed the bus. Three days in a row. On the third day, the Vice-Principal called me into his office; “Miss Creedle, If you’re late one more time, you’re expelled.”
I tried. I really did. On the fourth day, I woke up late, but I went to school anyway.
When I arrived, he called me into his office.
“If you knew you were going to be late, why did you even bother showing up?” he asked.
Which is a really good question, and one that I still ask myself from time to time.

Amanda Searcy, author of The Truth Beneath the Lies

I’m not proud of the beginning of this story, but I am proud of the end.
In college, I spent a summer studying in Mexico. A classmate and I took a weekend trip to the state of Chiapas. I thought it would be cool to go someplace dangerous; to have something to brag about when I got home. It was 1998, and in Chiapas there was an ongoing resistance movement pressing for rights for indigenous people and a bloody military response.
When I dressed in the hotel, I realized I had brought the wrong shoes. They looked ridiculous with my outfit. I was certain that everyone would be staring at my feet.
We walked, me feeling self-conscious about my shoes, to a market where indigenous women were selling handmade crafts. I stopped to make a purchase. The seller, mistaking my indecision for lack of interest, lowered the price over and over again. I could hear the desperation in her voice. It was then that I really looked at her. Saw her. She wasn’t wearing shoes. None of the women were. They had fled to the city with nothing. They had come from the mountains where the massacres happened.
Reality slapped me across the face.
I went on to study human rights in graduate school and met people from all over the world. People who knew fear; people who knew real poverty. They were there on meager scholarships, hoping to return to their home countries and make a difference. To save lives.
It was completely and utterly humbling.
I don’t write about their stories. But I do hope that my characters will inspire readers to take another look at their fellow humans, those who struggle and fight for their places in the world, and feel a little humbled.

Hilary Reyl, author of Kids Like Us

I was 16 the first time I really heard the word disabled. I’d come through the front door after school. Dad was practicing the piano. He stopped short and rushed to tell me about a campaign rally. These were the ’80s. He had been to a Jesse Jackson rally for the disabled. Dad was so enthusiastic that I had to yell over him, which was ridiculous because he had the world’s quietest voice. Literally.
“You’re not disabled!”
My dad was the opposite of disabled. No one felt sorry for him. He was a hero who beat all odds. After throat cancer at 27, he was given six months to live. Instead of dying, he married my mom and had two kids. After radiation, his voice was a static whisper that sounded like a clogged drain. Only his family could understand. We spoke for him in simultaneous translation, like ventriloquists. He communicated almost like a normal person. And we had an almost normal life. Passing for normal was a source of pride. I had a stay-at-home pianist dad who had survived miraculously without making a big deal of it. We were quirky but not ashamed. My dad was so grateful, so optimistic.
Yet here he was, thrilled to call himself disabled. “The rally was powerful,” he whispered. He told me about the people in wheelchairs, the blind, the deaf, the energy in the room. I tried to smile.
He went back to the piano. Slowly, as he played on, I started to get it. Not complaining about a disability doesn’t mean you don’t own it. Dad, the impressive individual, had overcome a huge obstacle by joining a proud group, a rainbow coalition. He was thrilled with the victory. He was disabled. The word rang out from his keyboard. It sounded amazing.