Nicola Yoon

Nicola Yoon: Love is risky. Love always ends. And should you do it anyway?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Nicola Yoon loves love, and she loves asking questions about our universal experiences with it through her writing, including the hard parts.

Nicola Yoon: Love is great and wonderful. I say this all the time, but also it sucks because, like, you have to be vulnerable and loss is part of it.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Nicola is a 2 time number 1 New York Times best selling author, a National Book Award finalist, a Michael L. Printz honor book recipient, and a Coretta Scott King new talent award winner. In this episode, she tells us how she fell in love with the romance genre, why she wants more diverse characters at the center of swoony love stories, and the long story about how she finally ended up writing as a career, which fittingly is kind of a will they, won't they saga. We'll also hear about her own real life kissing in the rain scene, which, okay, does not actually involve rain or, well, kissing, but it does have the Beastie Boys. My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookie, and this is The Reading Culture, a show where we speak with authors and illustrators about ways to build a stronger culture of reading in our communities. We dive into their personal experiences, their inspirations, and why their stories and ideas motivate kids to read more.

Make sure to check us out on Instagram for giveaways at the reading culture pod. And you can also subscribe to our newsletter at the reading culture pod dot com forward slash newsletter. Alright. Onto the show. Alright.

Let's start at the very beginning. What was your life like growing up?

Nicola Yoon: I was born in Jamaica, which, you know, a small island in the Caribbean, not Jamaica, Queens, you know, which people often think.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Nice to clarify. Yes.

Nicola Yoon: And, I went to Catholic school as a kid. I wore, like, you know, like, a little gray uniform with big suspenders. There were nuns in my life. I read all the time, even as a kid. I started reading a lot because of harlequin romances, and there's like a long story there that involves like watching the poltergeist movie.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Wait. Okay. And what's that about?

Nicola Yoon: So I was 8 or 9, and I had seen Poltergeist. And I don't know if you remember this movie, but there's a tree that eats this little boy in the movie, and, you know, so key spoiler. And I was at my grandmother's house, and I was in my aunt's room. And there was a tree outside and I was just super convinced that it was the same tree and it was gonna eat me. And so I rolled off the bed and I went underneath the bed, and I found my aunt's stash of harlequin romances.

And I remember reading about, like, oh, god, gorgeous amounts of flesh, and like, it was absurd. I understood nothing. I was amazed, but I read everything. Like, I read so much, and I think that honestly turned me on to reading, and it probably is why I, like, read romance and am such a romantic goober. Like, it's probably because of Poltergeist in the end.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: So when you were young, you were reading a harlequin romance. I love I love that you call yourself a romantic Uber. You do that a lot, but did that kinda open up the doors for other romances at the time?

Nicola Yoon: Those opened up, like, you know, like Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. I remember the Sweet Valley Highs. I read all of those.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Those are kinda like gateways for romance. Yeah. The Hive, Sweetheart Hive.

Nicola Yoon: And then, like, VC Andrews, like that. Do you remember that?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Flowers in the Attic?

Nicola Yoon: Yes. Oh my god. It just serves a gateway drug basically to other books too. I mean but I never have stopped reading romances. I still read all the time and all the erotic things too.

I still absolutely do read those to this day.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. I've read that you read really widely, so you'll read, like, across genres and everything, but you still, like, always have your your romance novels on your nightstand.

Nicola Yoon: Yeah. My Kindle is, like, absurd.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You got from the Kindle. Didn't show those covers.

Nicola Yoon: It's all that right on the covers. I remember when I worked in Boston, I used to just, like, fold the cover over because, you know, they had those, like, Fabio covers and whatever. You're like, I can't. This is not doing this.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: So you're going like they don't have to be high brow.

Nicola Yoon: I really believe that the right books find you at the right time. Right? And then I think there's a book for everything. I mean, obviously, there are books that I really love and remember and will go back to, but some books are just for those 2 hours, and that's great.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. Can you think of times when you've had, like, just that book hits you, and you're like, oh, yeah, that was I needed that right now?

Nicola Yoon: Yeah. I mean, there's, like, all the summer romance. Like, if I go on vacation, I mean, not that Emily Henry fits this category because I really love her books, but grab an Emily Henry, grab Christina Lauren, Talia Hibbert. I love those women. I love those books.

I probably will not reread them, like, every year forever and ever, but they're terrific. Do you

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: have a book that you reread every year forever and ever?

Nicola Yoon: I reread The Little Prince quite a bit.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh, that's real.

Nicola Yoon: You have

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: a lot of yourself in a lot of in a lot of places. Is there more to go around for future books? Are you like, that's it. I've bared my soul in all of my books.

Nicola Yoon: I mean, it it would be sad if I would stop, like, learning and doing things. Right? So

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: When did you read The Little Prince?

Nicola Yoon: I don't actually remember what the first time. I think I was already in America when I read that. I just remember thinking that this was amazing, that you could do this with a book. Yeah. Like, he was just traveling around learning.

It's not that much of a plot. I mean, he's trying to get home and everything, but it was just really about love. Like, that's it.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. I love that book as well. Okay. And when did you come to the states?

Nicola Yoon: We left Jamaica when I was 11, because my dad wanted to move to America, and, like, classic immigrant story, like, find a better life, more opportunities. He wanted to be an actor. So he was, like, in America for a couple of years before we moved, and that's how we ended up in Brooklyn.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: How would you describe that school experience? You have it. People can't see, but might know that you have blue hair now, so I'm assuming it was a little more restrictive. No no no blue hair. What was the, like, school environment like?

Nicola Yoon: There's so many different aspects to this, but, like, in Jamaica, pretty much everyone's black. I was just Nikki there. I found that to be different when I got to America, because the racial politics are so different. And I remember sticking out and people saying what I was allowed to like and not allowed to like, and it was just strange. And then there's just, like, the foreignness of being somewhere new.

And what was your love life like?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Did your love life equal up to it, or was it just, like, everything, like, you know, requited or unrequited?

Nicola Yoon: Uh-huh. Jordan. I don't think anyone's actually ever asked me this before. My love life was tragic. Really?

Tragic.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Are we talking middle school, high school? Where are we?

Nicola Yoon: No one loved me. Not in middle school, not in high school. I was extraordinarily shy. My mom is also really shy, but I was super, I didn't have my first boyfriend until, I wanna say, it was junior year of college, and then senior year of college, I, like, fell into love with this other boy who did not love me back, and that was a disaster for a number of years.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: But you have a million ideas of the ways that people can and do fall in love, and so we're thinking about it, like, all the time. Right?

Nicola Yoon: Right. I think that was part of the problem as I read all of these books, and I was like, well, this is how love should be and all this stuff. Okay. Here's a terrible story. There was this boy, a basketball player in high school.

His name was Fred. I will not say his last name even though I remember it still. I had such a crush on him for no reason, and he was really cute and tall.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: That's a reason in high school. That's sufficient.

Nicola Yoon: Somehow, I got his phone number, and I called him, and, you know, told him I had a crush on him and blah blah. And we had maybe 2 or 3 phone calls, and then, you know, he wanted to meet and I said, okay. And I said, I described myself and what I would be wearing. This ends so poorly. Then I did, like, go in my outfit, and he was with, like, a group of his friends.

And he saw me, and I was downy, unattractive, and whatever, and he was a jerk. And he saw him with his group of friends, and he pointed and laughed, and then he just walked on by. It's like Oh my god. It's like a high school movie.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: That is so traumatic.

Nicola Yoon: It was terrible. I know. It was so bad.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Were you just, like, devast I mean, obviously, you're devastated. It was

Nicola Yoon: just crushed. Oh. Crushed. Even, like, talking about it now Yeah. And I've and I've talked about it a couple times.

It still just makes me go, you know, like, that feeling of you know how nothing is as evocative as, like, the sort of shame you felt at something? It's so True.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I know. Especially around that, around relationships, and you put yourself out there, you call them.

Nicola Yoon: Yeah. I mean, and I was really shy. Right? So this was so unusual for me. But, yeah, Fred.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Were you journaling and writing and so forth when you were in high school in those high school years? Were you into it at all?

Nicola Yoon: No. I didn't at all. I, a few years ago, found an old journal from when I was still in Jamaica. So less than 11 when I said I wanna be a writer when I grew up. I think I was about 8.

So I found that, but I had forgotten for years years that I actually wanted to do that. I tell this story a lot, but I was very good at math in high school, And so I just sort of got led astray by math, right? So, like, I ended up majoring in electrical engineering in college and just, like, sort of forgetting about it. Like, even though I still write all the time, I forgot that I actually, at some point, wanted to write.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Like a will they, won't they saga that perhaps drags out a bit too long, Nicola's relationship with writing, though in an off period during her 1st few years of college, was about to be rekindled. And what better way to rekindle love than with love?

Nicola Yoon: So, again, another story that involves boys and unrequited love. So this was, like, senior year, and I'd broken up with, like, the very first boyfriend, which was the junior year boyfriend, and I was, like, suffering through unrequited love with this other dude. And so I wrote all this stuff about him in this class, like I wrote terrible poetry, and I wrote a one act play. I remember short stories. Yeah.

Like, it was all about, you know, a girl who loved a boy, who, like, didn't love her back, or eventually did love her back. And I remember my professor sitting me down, like, at one of our, like, meetings, and she said, you have potential. And she liked my writing. And she also told me that I was gonna get over the boy one day. I remember disagreeing with her and being like, no, This is the one.

As I sat there brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the Republic rolled on under the night. Guess we believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter.

Tomorrow, we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. And then one morning so we beat on boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Those melancholy, dreamlike lines conclude The Great Gatsby, f Scott Fitzgerald's jazz age classic. You might remember that things do not go well for Gatsby, an aspiring social climber whose efforts to join the upper crust and win back the aristocratic hand of his childhood sweetheart, Daisy, are undermined by his working class origins. His love and his life end in ruins. And yet, Gatsby's unfaltering desire for Daisy has become an currents of life tugging us aside. And for Nicola, beautiful books like Gatsby were her own green light.

Thankfully, a creative inspiration rather than a destructive one, calling her, eventually, to her career as a writer.

Nicola Yoon: Every time I read it, I go, it's so beautiful. And then there's the line sort of right before that with, he came face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder, and I just fall apart. Yeah. How

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: do you put it together, you know?

Nicola Yoon: It's so beautiful. No, I don't know. It's like, you're just like floating along, and it's big and small at the same time. It's great.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: And so when you read that, it I guess it didn't make you wanna be a writer. You hadn't didn't have that in your mind, you said, in high school, but what did it do for you?

Nicola Yoon: You know, I don't know. It's like something waiting on hold, you know, like, there was a part of me that was always going to write, I think. And once I started writing after my senior year of college, this is one of those books I went back to. Like, I didn't know that this was in there, like, just sort of waiting for me. I went back to this, I went back to Little Prince again, I went back to Toni Morrison.

There were all these things that were just there. It's strange because you don't know they're there. It's like you're obscure to yourself in so many ways sometimes. You're obscure to yourself.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Can you explain what you mean by that?

Nicola Yoon: Yeah. I mean, I think part of what writing is for me is, like, discovery. Like, there are things inside of you you don't know are inside of you. There are times when I write, especially when I write in the morning, and I will reread it, and I was like, where did that come from? I have no idea.

I'm like, I will have forgot. People will quote things back to me, and I will not remember that I wrote it. Sometimes we're a mystery to ourselves. I mean, in that way, in the sort of creative way, and then just in general, honestly, like, I think that so many times people do things that they don't know why they're doing it. There's just the living of it all.

There's so much stuff all the time. Sometimes it's hard to see, you know, the thing that's important to you or what you really, really want anyway.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. I heard recently, that one way to, like, maintain romantic love with a person is through viewing them as unknowable still, like, not known in a way, and that kind of reminds me of that because I think we maybe always see ourselves that way, or maybe we don't. I don't know. But, like, you know that there's, like, more in here. You feel that, but sometimes with the person that is that you're in love with, over time, you know, you can feel that you you know them.

You know what they're gonna do. You know what they're gonna say. You know you know how they're gonna react, but in a way, it's like removing that thought.

Nicola Yoon: Right. No. I mean, I really do love that. I think there's someone who said that literature or writing, what you're trying to do is to make strange, to make the thing that everyone is familiar with strange again. And I do think that that's true, like writing Everything, Everything, I remember because Maddie is stuck in her house and there's a moment when she sees the ocean for the first time.

And I really just channeled my little girl seeing the ocean because I was there when I saw her see it, and I was like, well, that's what it is, yes, I'll dive bombing this thing. And I was like, oh no, please don't drown. So I do think a lot of writing is like that, and I I love that idea of romance being you have to allow them the space to be new to you, because, anyway, it's boring if you know everything. You

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: are so romantic. Can you tell me about how you and David did meet? You met you were in school together. Right? You and went to school together?

Nicola Yoon: Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: So you had one creative writing class in which you wrote about an unrequited letter. Right. Yeah.

Nicola Yoon: But David and I met in graduate school, in our first writing workshop together. First one. Yeah. But we were friends for 2 years because when I met him, I thought he was cute, but also he had a girlfriend. It's funny because I put him right into a box.

It's like, oh, girlfriends, and then forgot about it. And then we were we became really good friends for a couple of years. And then I started to notice him again, and I could tell that he was noticing me. So we took a road trip from Boston, which is where we went to school, to New York, to my house, and I made him a mixtape because he was working back then. And my crowning achievement was that I timed it so that it would play no sleep till Brooklyn.

When you

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: drove into Brooklyn?

Nicola Yoon: Getting into Brooklyn. I was so proud of myself. I can't even tell you.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: That's a really you know, it is risky because, also, like, there's I hope you were driving at, like, 2 in the morning because that's how you know there's not gonna be traffic. You could time it properly.

Nicola Yoon: I mean, I did not have to think about any of those things. That just totally worked out. So then we got to New York, and I made this trip where I was like asking all these deep questions, do you believe in God and la la la. Like, I really wanted to get to know him, like, in a different way, whatever. We got to New York and then he was when he was going away to see his friend, we had this, like, really long, very, very, very long hug.

And I was like, oh, this is gonna happen. And then it did happen, like, when we got back to Boston, back to school. That was, like, the beginning.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Was it like your romance books? Did you feel like you got your big love in that way, or did everything reveal itself completely unexpectedly to you?

Nicola Yoon: I just had this feeling when I was with him that I was like, oh, this is right. But then it was complicated too because David is Korean American and his parents did not want us to be together. We started dating, and then immediately broke up within a month, because he had told his parents, and they're like, no, absolutely not, we're gonna disown you, whatever. And then we got back together because he's like, I can't do this. And then they did disown him for 10 years.

They did not come to our wedding. It was like a whole thing.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: That's painful.

Nicola Yoon: Yeah. No. It was. And things are great now, but it was trying at the time. We went through a lot, and we still just wanted to be together.

Yeah. Right? Which is he's just the best thing. I don't know. I don't know what to say.

Like, I got lucky. He's the best thing.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: While Nicola's flame with David had only grown stronger, her flame with writing, as a career, at least, was left simmering. After college, despite going to grad school for a master's in creative writing, she ended up working in the finance industry for 15 years. Now let's put this in terms that Nicola would approve of. Picture those 15 years as the start of act 3 in a rom com when the couple splits and goes on in montage mode doing normal life things, but apart. And then just as you expected to happen, the main character has an epiphany followed by a dramatic race to an airport or altar.

Now there isn't actually an airport or altar in her story, but Nicola's path back to writing follows a similar pattern.

Nicola Yoon: Looking back, I don't know why I waited so long. I think about that sometimes because, you know, there's a finite amount of time and I have many books and things I wanna say, and I'm just like, why did I take so long to begin? I don't know how it would have turned out, obviously, had it not been this way. Right? Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, I was writing, but I didn't really pursue it seriously until Penny. And I I tell this story a lot, but it it was actually Penny that made me do it, because I had this sort of classic epiphany when I was looking at her and thinking, oh, I'm gonna tell you to follow your heart and follow your dreams and, you know, sort of live a big life, and and I wasn't trying at all. And she made me try, so she was the reason I really gave it a go anyway.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: And then you were writing I've read you around 4 to 6 in the morning. Those are

Nicola Yoon: your hours. AM. It was 4 to 6 AM, for 3 years for everything, everything. It was 2 things, right? It was like, I really wanted to try to become like a writer to get published and stuff like that.

But it was also I mean, and you know this, being a new mom, like, there is no time for you. Like, there's, like, being a mom and then being a wife and all the myriad, like, just other things that happened. And those 2 hours, it was just for me, like I was Nikki, I wasn't anything else. And that was nice, and so it wasn't people you know, sort of ask if it was hard, and it obviously was hard, and my hair went gray and whatever. But like, I didn't feel like I had a choice, like I hated my job intensely, and I needed the time anyway.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. You just had to go. Sometimes you just have to cut the cord. You know? And then from there, you wrote everything, everything.

And when that came out when that book came out and you finally put that first book into the world, and what was that time like for you?

Nicola Yoon: Yeah. It was such a special time, and, like, people would ask me questions and wanted to know my opinion on things, and I was like, what? What is this? But it was so much gentler too than being in finance because like finances, like I joke about it, but it was very bruising, right? Like I would find myself crying in bathrooms after like a hard day or after something someone said or did or whatever.

So it was like a very stressful environment. But I could not believe that kids were reading, I got so many emails, I got so many emails, especially from black girls, who said, This doesn't happen, right? Like, they're not black girls in romances, they're not the lead character. And those meant, like, just the world to me. I remember when I would go to my events, and girls would come up to me and say stuff like that, it's like, I can't believe that I get to and I especially since I wrote it, the character looks like that because she looks like my little girl, right?

She just and I did it for her. I was like, Oh, you are going to read someone that looks like you eventually. It was great, obviously. And that movie getting made was just surreal and unexpected and just absurd. But, yeah, then you after that, you do feel a lot of pressure.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I mean, you delivered, but yes. Yeah.

Nicola Yoon: Yeah. So, like well, thank you.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Okay. But fast forward, and now you've written many books, and they all seem to tackle these big questions that have to do with love. And I was wondering if that's how the process starts for you. Like, are you thinking about the question, or are you looking at plot, characters? Like, what's coming first for you?

Nicola Yoon: I honestly mostly start with a question, or I guess there's always a central question. Sometimes I just hear a word. So for everything, everything, I remember hearing Maddie say, I've read many more books than you. Like in my head, I was just like, I've read many more books than you. I was like, well, who's this?

That book was the central question was pretty clear to me from the very beginning because I had just had Penny, my little girl, she was 3 months old and I it was really just about her, like being a new mom and being a nervous new mom, and just worrying about her all the time, and wondering if I was going to worry about her forever, like in the way you worry about an infant. And then I remember the story switched my mind to be about a girl who had to be taken care of all the time, and that's when it really came alive, and I was like, well, what would she do if she was stuck at home, and she would read all the time? And that book is really about love and the risk that love is, right? So love is great and wonderful, I say this all the time, but also it sucks, because like you have to be vulnerable and loss is part of it. I think the books are always about that, like whether or not love is worth the risk.

For the Sun is also a star, it's mostly about my love with David. And the book is absolutely not autobiographical in any way, which people ask all the time. But it is about a big love and, like, what the possibilities are of a big love and, like, can it be transformative? What does it mean for it to be transformative? And then instruction through Danske is more similar, I think, to Everything Everything, which is that love is risky, love always ends, and should you do it anyway?

And I remember actually, when I found what I was writing about, because I was in the hospital with my mom, and she was very, very sick and we weren't sure if she was going to survive. And I I remember being there and she was asleep, and I was like writing, because I was on deadline, and just thinking, why do we do this to ourselves? Like, why do we love so hard? Because if you're doing it right, you're doing it like with your whole heart, right? Like you all do it completely, and it will hurt so much when you lose them.

And that's really what that book is about. It's like, whether or not you should I mean, can you even stop yourself?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. But if you could, should you?

Nicola Yoon: Uh-huh. I don't know. There are days I'm just like, well, I'm not doing this.

Everything, Everything Movie Trailer: This is my whole world. My nurse, my mom, my sickness. I'm 18 and I've never been outside. If I did, I would probably die.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Everything Everything was not only Nicola's first book, it was her first to be adapted into a movie. Her second book, The Sun is Also a Star, would be her second to be adapted. Yes. An impressive record. Getting your book made into a movie can be a dream come true, but when you've spent so much time deep in the characters' minds, it can also be hard to see those characters taken out of your control.

So I asked Nicola about that process.

Nicola Yoon: The first time I read the Everything Everything script, and I can say this because I loved the script that ended up, but the first version of it, I hated it so intensely. Oh, man. Right? But I also just was so new to the process. Right?

Like, I just didn't understand why it was different than the book, and I hated it and I flung it. Like, I was so upset, I genuinely flung it, because I printed it and then I flung it across the room. I was like, what is this? But then the version that ended up on the screen, like there is a scene in the movie that I did not write and I love and I wish I had written. The scene was, Ali is pressing his hand there are Post it notes on the glass in her green room, and they press their heads up against.

That's not in the book. And I wish I had written it. It's so good. Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: That's cool. So you love it so much that you're like, oh, that would have been Yeah.

Nicola Yoon: And I was like, I didn't think of this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean and now my I always say there's there's just 2 different versions of these characters that I love, right, in the world, and so that's nice, right? They are different, like the books and the movies, but I love Maddie and Ollie, and I love Daniel and Natasha.

And so the fact that there's more art about them in the world is great because I I love those characters.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yes. I love your characters. We all love your characters. And, actually, rereading those books in preparation for this interview got me thinking, and I was wondering I know you must speak with a lot of young people and especially young women, readers. And do you feel like in today's world, like, they have realistic about what relationships are and what they want from them or should want from them.

I guess there's just so much media that has, ironically, romanticized romance in ways that sort of take the realness out of it. And I was just curious if you've seen the effects of that or what your thoughts are there.

Nicola Yoon: I think there are a couple of things. Right? There's, like I mean, I definitely write about ideal relationships. Right? Like, the ones that make your world bigger, the ones that don't narrow you down, the ones that make you love yourself more, the ones that don't make you feel bad about yourself.

And so I hope that they're seeing that, that when you find a partner, it's supposed to be good, and it isn't supposed to be something where you're chasing after them or they make you feel insecure or bad about yourself, and ideally, they make you see the world in a new way, right? Like they're it's expansive. But I'm also aware of just like, these are ideal relationships and not, it takes a while to get there, it takes a while for you to grow up and know what you want. And I don't want anyone I sometimes worry that kids will read them and think that, wow, I gotta hold out for like this one perfect thing or something like that. I'm writing about these big loves, right, because that's what I'm interested in, and also I do think that we can find it, and I do think you just have to be open to it.

So those are the things, but especially, I mean, the main characters are usually girls and smart ones too. Right? I mean, they're definitely flawed. Right? Yeah.

But I just want them to know they're worth it. It has to be someone that's worth it.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. Do you ever, at your visits, talk to girls about do they ever come up to you and tell you about their their relationships?

Nicola Yoon: I get letters.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh, really?

Nicola Yoon: And I even got a letter, like an email, the other day about someone who had just broken up with someone and what to do about the heartbreak and like all about the other person and all this stuff. And it's hard to know what to say. There's like heartbreak is heartbreak. You just gotta survive it, you know?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: That's really the only healer, you know?

Nicola Yoon: Yeah. It's the only time. And then I wrote something someone wrote to me in my newsletter about this, about being in heartbreak, and I just had this thought that that's the sign your heart is working. If it hurts, that means it was working. And so that's what I said.

I was like, that means, you know, you just gotta let it do its thing. It's okay. I mean, there's nothing for heartbreak, right? There's just, it's just time that sucks. Yeah.

I wanna say something that will make them feel a little bit like there's nothing.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: It's like just try to be distracted for a year.

Nicola Yoon: You know? Like, yeah, play a video game or something. I don't know. Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. And do you have a lot of, like, young men, boys who read your books, or do you know about I'm just kind of curious because I was thinking about how I think it's so important for young men to read romance and to have because it's like only girls have that.

Nicola Yoon: Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I'm like, you need to read these romance books.

Nicola Yoon: Yeah. But boys, it drops off. Right? Like in, like, middle school or middle grade, they read, like, sort of all the fantasy books and stuff, and then it sort of just feeds away. I do wish more boys would read.

There's always a handful at my events, but it's not not nearly as many as there are girls.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yes. The girls. We all all of us love romance, I guess. Okay. And now you are writing an adult book.

Yeah?

Nicola Yoon: Yeah. It's not a romance. It's a thriller. I mean, there's love in it. The main character is married and has a child, and so there is love in it, but it is not centered around romance at all.

It's definitely a thriller. And the thing I will have to say to any young adult, this is an adult book, I promise you. I am a mother.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: You're not trying to do not read this book. It's an adult book.

Nicola Yoon: If you are 16 or 17, please just wait. This is not for you. Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Did you always think, like, I want to write this adult fiction book, or did it just come to you and you knew that's what this was gonna have to be because of the content?

Nicola Yoon: Yeah. No. This one definitely just came to me. I didn't know I was gonna write it until I was writing it, and I wrote the first draft in 6 weeks, which is, yes, unheard of. Like, I mean, it was a very, very short first draft, but I'm a very slow writer, it takes me years to write a book, And this one, like that first draft was just like, came pouring out of me.

And it's because like the issues in it are things I've been thinking about just forever. And so, you know, when I was saying before that sometimes you have security of yourself, where these parts of you are hidden, and then they get revealed, and I feel like this book was like that, because I had been thinking about so many of these things for so long, and they just came out.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Can you share what some of the issues are in the book?

Nicola Yoon: I'm picturing it as get out meets the step forward wives. And so it's this woman, Jasmine, who she's married. She has a young son. They moved to, like a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles, a black utopia, like, so everyone's black, and she moves there for safety and for freedom and for community, but when she gets there, most people are obsessed with the spa at the centre of town, and like they spend a lot of time there. And so she and a few friends start investigating, and they find terrible things.

Things go horribly wrong.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I'm so excited to read it. So for anybody who's read your work to know that you're writing something like that is just so neat to see somebody write.

Nicola Yoon: I am, like, genuinely terrified about what's gonna happen next, but we'll see.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. You'll be at a school visit, and they're like, hey. I was reading this.

Nicola Yoon: I'll be like,

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: like, I'm here to talk about this. This is for dancing. So Through all of her books, Nicola has not only brought captivating and hopeful love stories, she's also brought increased diversity to the romance genre. In her new project with her husband, David Yoon, she aims to expand that diversity even more. I asked her to tell us about their company, Joy Revolution.

Nicola Yoon: You know, it actually started a long time ago. So Barbara Marcus is the head of Random House Children's Books, and ever since I published Everything, Everything, she has just been really great, like a mentor, and we've been talking over the years just about the kinds of stories that get published for people of color and, you know, what we could do about it. And it wasn't until, I think, early in 2020 that Steve and I had also been talking about these kinds of stories over the years, because when we met in graduate school, we were both, like, such big romantic fans, and one of the things we always talked about is how, like, the love stories just never had people of color in them, or they were sort of always on the side, right? So it was always like sort of the sassy black girl sidekick, Dave always says that the Asian person is always, like, the lab tech who, like, says

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Who has, like, great insights. There's, like, surprise surprisingly good insights. Yeah.

Nicola Yoon: Right. Or it's, like, congratulations. It's a boy. Because it's, like, the sonogram test or whatever. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, we're just so thrilled to be able to do this, but Joy Revolution is an imprint, so we publish books, we do 6 a year, and it's love stories written by people of color, starring people of color. And there is no sort of big issue in them, it's just swoony, there's a lot of kissing, there will be heartbreak, but then you get a happily ever after. Like, I just don't think you see enough of those stories. Right?

Like, I always have to say this, which is that we live in America, and America is a problematic country, or a country trying to get better, we'll say. And so we still need the other stories and, you know, sort of the issue stories, the ones that deal with racism or the problems of immigration or being the hyphen kid, or, you know, if you're coming out in a community that is against you, we still absolutely need these stories because I really do think those stories can save your life in a real, real way. So I think if you're a kid who is struggling and you pick up a book, and you see that at the end, the main character survives whatever they're struggling through, and goes on to have a better life, I think that story can save your life. Like, it can tell you, I'm a hold on for a second, right? I'm just gonna I'm gonna make it through.

But I always maintain that there is another kind of life to save. There is a metaphysical life, there is a life that says you matter, you count, you fall in love, it's big, your life is not just about what other people think about you. These love stories are supposed to be just like, you know, you pick up The Joy Revolution book, you sit back, you relax, and watch characters fall in love because it's just the truth. Like, we fall in love, and we we just don't see it enough.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: As Nicola shared, her 3rd novel, Instructions for Dancing, was centered around love's most brutal companion, grief. For her reading challenge, Good Grief, she's put together a list of books that also explore this theme.

Nicola Yoon: I've been thinking a lot about love and grief and books that deal with those, you know, like finding a way to love through grief. So I have list of 8 books that I think do it really well. I'll give you The Sun by Jandy Nelson is 1. I won't give away like the central grief in it, but it's 2 siblings and one tells a French story, one tells sort of a backstory, and they're going in time. And it's just beautiful, just really, really beautifully written.

Not written. Yeah. It's terrific, really. Genuinely one of the best You books out there. I have a sort of more unconventional, which is Tracy Thionne.

It's a fantasy. It's called Legendborn. But when we open the book, the main character has lost her mom, and, like, the grief figures really prominently with her burgeoning magic. And you can just feel how much she's just trying to live through live through this and and what saves her. And it's love in the end, right, that always like sort of pulls you through.

So those 2, we've got We Are Okay by Nina LaCour.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: That you ugly cried on the airplane to the house.

Nicola Yoon: Yes. Yes. And it's so quiet and it's like one of those books where, like, it just builds and builds, and you don't realize it's happening. And then you're just like, Katina, why am I crying at this point?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Today's Beanstack featured librarian is my good friend and also the library manager at Franklin Avenue Library in Des Moines, Iowa, Nikki Hayter. As summer inches closer, she tells us about a fun program that her library started a couple of years ago.

Nikki Hayter: Basically, in the summer of 2022, we launched Epic Graphic Novel Book Club. You have to register for this one because, of course, the cost, but each child who registers gets a copy of the book of the month. It is this incredible program where the kids come in and they've already read this book. Right? So they're familiar with the story.

They're excited about the story. But then she has developed this program that pulls in the various themes of the story, but then also elements of steam and just working together. And so, she discusses the theme, she lets them kind of chime in, and then she's created some sort of activity or multiple activities for them to engage with one another. So you see all of these things intersecting, development happening. You've got kids just sort of collectively working together on an art project or some sort of science related project, depending on what the book is, and it's really beautiful.

I mean, we know how important graphic novels are for kids and helping them with reading comprehension, particularly our reluctant readers. But we also know that every kid loves them, so it's really kind of the perfect program model for youth. We gear this program for ages 7 to 11, but we kinda bend the rules a bit.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: This has been the Reading Culture, and you've been listening to our conversation with Nicola Yoon. Again, I'm your host, Jordan Lloyd Bookie, and currently, I'm reading We Are Okay by Nina Lacour, and A Love Song for Ricky Wild by Tia Williams. Obviously, this episode put me in the mood for romance, y'all. If you enjoyed today's episode, please show some love and give us a 5 star review. It just takes a second and really helps.

To learn about how you can help grow your community's reading culture, you can check out all of our resources at beanstack.com, And remember to sign up for our newsletter at the reading culture pod dot com forward slash newsletter for special offers and bonus content. This episode was produced by Jackie Lamport and Lower Street Media and script edited by Josiah Lamberto Egan. Thanks for joining, and keep reading.