Nova Ren Suma - Foreshadow: Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading and Writing YA

Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading & Writing YA

Created and edited by

Emily X.R. Pan & Nova Ren Suma

Algonquin 2020

For the writers waiting to share their voices with the universe,

who trace fingers along shelves,

dreaming of spines with their own names,

who scrabble and dig for words

in the dark and unholy hours,

who know their hearts are full of tales,

and are just beginning to hope

we cant wait to read your words.

The world needs your story.

And for Michael Bourret, incredible friend and human and advocate.

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INTRODUCTION

by Emily X.R. Pan

Stories are the best kind of spell. Theres nothing like cracking open a book and being magicked away to a different time and place, giving your heart over to characters who will live forever in your mind. Whats remarkable about the short story is how an author manages to sharpen that experience, condensing it into something powerful.

This is why a short story is so difficult to write: How do you make someone fall in love with your characters in the span of so few words? How do you pull your reader in fast enough and make them feel the hum of a deeply resonant emotion? Theres also the question of structure, the style of the prose. In a short story, all the things that make a good novel have to be compressed into a neat little package.

Tell the blank page a story, and it will tell you who you are. It will shine back at you the quiet undercurrents of your mind. Peer into those waters, and youll see your swells of confidence, your sleep-stealing fears. Storytelling, if you think about it, is the most human thing we do. Its a universal language. Its so instinctive, baked into our way of surviving and connecting, that we do it without even thinking about it.

Whether or not youve ever tried to catch a story and pin it to the page, you are a storyteller. Im sure, for example, that you could easily tell me about the time you got into such trouble that people who love you wheeze with laughter to remember it. The hilarious thing that happened to you some weekends ago. The best moment of your life so far. The most devastating way youve ever had to say goodbye.

This is how we connect. We share experiences. We tell of what happened. Many of us even conjure our stories up out of nothing.

There was one time, a handful of years ago, that writing a short story changed my life.

I had sent a fantasy novel out to agents, crossing every bone in my body, hoping-wishing-praying... but what came back were only rejections. I felt fragile; I needed to rebuild my confidence. That was when I turned to a short story Id written years earlier. The execution had never been right, but I still loved the idea. With new characters and new stakes, I rewrote the whole thing from scratch.

That was a turning point for so many reasons. First, it offered the reminder that I could finish something, that I was capable of it. Those agent rejections had not destroyed my love or my creativity. Second, the process of rewriting something so thoroughly and successfully turned me bold. It takes a great deal of bravery to scrap existing words. From that experience I learned to trust myself. I learned that returning to the blank page isnt truly starting over, because all the earlier sentences make for crucial scaffolding. It changed the way I think about the revision process.

But most importantly, that storyweird and sad with a touch of the fantasticalcarried me back to my instincts and helped me pin down the kind of writer I wanted to be. My excitement for it was electricity crackling in my veins.

People often ask me about the process of writing The Astonishing Color of After. I explain how I rewrote it again and again. How I found new angles, how the premise morphed. The book wouldnt exist if I hadnt first developed the courage to rewrite from scratch.

When I read short stories now, I find myself searching for similar sparks in the works of other writers. Sometimes you can see them wrestling with creative questions on the page. Sometimes you can see the first few bricks being laid for works that came later. Always, theres something of the author preserved like a fossil in amberyou can see it so much more clearly because a short story is sliced so thin.

FORESHADOW was originally born as an ode to the short story, and it was our way of finding brand-new writers whose voices we wanted to champion. We wanted to celebrate young adult stories by authors of many different backgrounds in an online format of our own invention.

And since our love for the short story came from our devotion to the craft of writing, here is a book with a sprinkling of exactly that. Weve added commentary to go along with each piece, a peek behind the curtain as we discuss the various facets of storytelling. Like an orchestra with its many instruments, the individual elements of fictionvoice, worldbuilding, stakes, just to name a fewmust work together and take their turns being loud and soft.

So please: Drink these stories in. Taste the words on your tongue. Relish the worlds that have been built here. After all, whats the point of storytelling magic if it isnt shared?

Flight

Tanya Aydelott

I adore mother-daughter stories, and this dreamlike one by Tanya Aydelott kept me rapt with its mysterious atmosphere and mythic elements. With a delicate hand, the author seduced me into a strange, magical world that feels very original, surprising, and psychologically complex.

Jandy Nelson, author of Ill Give You the Sun

i

She remembers the first time she saw the unicorn tapestries. Mama had just moved them to New York City, piling their weathered brown suitcases in the foyer of an apartment almost too small to be called a home. On a sticky August afternoon before Mama started her new job on TV, they took the M4 bus, crowded and noisy, up to the top of Manhattan. She sat in Mamas lap, watching the other passengers: the teenager with the headphones so much larger than his ears, the tired woman with thick ankles and stretched shopping bags, the older gentleman with a checkered hat tugged low over his bushy white eyebrows. She couldnt see his eyes. There were young twins, their hair bound up in braids, babbling to each other in a language she couldnt understand, and an older brother watching them with exasperation. Maybe she wasnt the only one who didnt know their language.