Jasmine Warga – My Heart and Other Black Holes

Late Night Debut, hosted by Amber Keller

This week we feature Jasmine Warga’s debut young adult novel, My Heart and Other Black Holes, published by Balzer + Bray, which Publishers Weekly says “addresses adolescent depression and suicide with honesty and grace” and Gavin Extence (The Universe Versus Alex Woods) describes as “laced with pitch-perfect black humor.”

Act 1: Host Amber Keller covers entertaining book news and cool new debuts

Act 2: Co-host authors Sara Gundell and Dan Berne discuss Jasmine Warga’s debut

Act 3: Sara Gundell speaks with Jasmine about writing about depression, dark humor, pursuing your art, and the YA market

I was trying to be as honest as I could about what depression feels like and how illogical it is … I was so frustrated reading all these books that gave you this beautiful language about depression, and that’s wonderful and those are the types of quotes I would pull out as a teenager … [but] it doesn’t feel beautiful when you’re in that place and you can’t move and you haven’t washed your hair in weeks and all this stuff, it’s not a pretty a condition, and so I was looking for just again, an honest image.”

GIVEAWAY: Win a free copy of My Heart and Other Black Holes. Listen to the episode for details, then email your answer to [email protected] by midnight on March 15.

Listen here . . .

PURCHASE THE BOOK HERE

ABOUT OUR ACT 2 CO-HOST AUTHORS:

Sara Gundell is the founder of NovelNovice.com, a website focusing on promoting literacy and education through Young Adult literature. Sara has written about YA lit for Examiner.com, MTV and Yahoo, and is the author of FAME: Suzanne Collins, a biographical comic book about the author of The Hunger Games.

Dan Berne grew up in a working-class family in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he worked in his way through college with jobs in drugstores, warehouses, U-bolt factories, and cement plants. He is the author of The Gods of Second Chances. He lives in Portland, Oregon.