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Summary
Adam Silvera is a 26-year-old YA writer who, to date, has published three YA Young Adult Fiction novels, one of which is a New York Times Best Seller. Silvera's novels celebrate the LGBTQ community, their experience and their struggle. He hopes that YA Diverse Literature will continue to grow and encourages all readers to explore YA Diverse Literature.

http://www.adamsilvera.com



Early life
Adam Silvera was born (June 7, 1990) and raised in the Bronx, New York City, NY. Inspired by Harry Potter, Silvera began writing fan fiction at age eleven. As a child he remembers being confused about his sexuality, and feeling like his neighborhood was not a welcoming place to come out to. Silvera didn't come out until he was twenty-years-old. The fact that there was a lack of LGBT literature in circulation when he was growing up, is part of the what led him to his career in young adult literature.

Professional Life
Adam Silvera works as a full-time writer of young adult literature, which is fiction published for readers 12 to 18. Silvera is also the community manager of Paper Lantern Lit content development company. He has been in the publishing and writing industry for five or six years. Silvera began his professional career as a marketing assistant, moving on to become a children's bookseller for Barnes and Noble and Books of Wonder in Manhattan. Silvera is familiar with Paper Lantern Lit because in 2013, he spent eight months working at the “literary incubator” and book development company founded in 2010 by novelists (and former Penguin/Razorbill colleagues) Lauren Oliver and Lexa Hillyer. Silvera was the company's first marketing intern and later promoted to marketing assistant. Wanting to focus on his first novel, Silvera decided to leave the firm. His first novel, More Happy Than Not, was published in 2015 right before his twenty-fifth birthday. Two years later, Silver published two more YA novels including, They Both Die at the End and History Is All You Left Me. After publishing three YA novels in two years, Silvera returned to Paper Lantern Lithttp://www.paperlanternlit.com after being contacted by the company with a newly created position of community manager. “I had definitely missed the literary development game with Paper Lantern Lit, and writing exclusively wasn’t giving me complete fulfillment,” Silvera said. Silvera is a proud supporter and advocate of diverse literature and LGBT literature Part of his advocacy for YA diverse literature is a result of the lack of it while he was growing up. Silvera encourages all people to declare their sexuality and encourages the expansion of LGBT literature because "one person does not speak for their entire community."

Publications
More Happy Than Not, 2015 *New York Times Best Seller They Both Die at the End, 2017 History Is All You Left Me, 2017

Analysis
Silvera's three novels are all emotionally-charged young-adult literature. Silvera explores sexuality through the relationships between his characters. As a gay man who came out at twenty, Silvera explains that writing these books is a therapeutic exercise, despite their sometimes dark and depressing content, "Whenever I’m writing, it’s always from some place of therapy: me getting over a breakup, me facing a challenge, but I leave it on the page." His debut, More Happy Than Not, which the New York Times called "profound"https://www.nytimes.com, includes a lot of autobiographical elements including the setting of the Bronx, NY and the main character who is a gay teen struggling with his sexuality. Silvera explains that this book explores what his life could have looked at if he had come out at sixteen. The novel is about a boy who undergoes a procedure to forget that he is gay. Protagonist, sixteen-year-old Aaron Soto lives in urban poverty in the Bronx with his brother and their mother. Traumatized by the suicide of his father in the family bathtub, Aaron's life is extremely complicated to begin with. Discovering that he is gay only complicates his situation further and so Aaron seeks out a procedure to erase his gayness. Inspired by Silvera's Bronx-upbringing and his struggle to come out, "the book serves as a powerful treatise on the complexities of coming out, as well, in a place where such an announcement is not reflexively met with loving embraces from nurturing, progressive adults." The novel aims to address misconceptions about sexuality and the idea that a person chooses their sexuality. Speaking about his own sexuality, Silvera explains that he didn't choose to be gay, but learned to accept it and embrace his sexuality. His second novel, History Is All You Left Me was inspired by a breakup which Silvera developed into a story of intense loss. The novel begins with the two main characters, Griffin and Jackson delivering a eulogy. The main character, seventeen-year-old Griffin, is grieving the loss of his ex-boyfriend and Jackson grieves the loss of his current, now deceased boyfriend. The story is one of an unlikely friendship developing out of intensely difficult circumstances. In a Q&A with Publishers Weekly, Silvera discusses how much of the novel actually happened to him. "I didn’t personally lose someone to a drowning or death but I had a breakup that felt like a high-end version of abandonment. And the initial spark for this novel came from my ex-boyfriend who called me after he and his new boyfriend had gotten back from the beach where he had almost drowned." Again, this novel is a product of Silvera's personal life and personal struggle. As he discusses in countless interviews and book discussions, he writes from a place of sadness and sees his writing as therapy for those traumatic, dark, depressing life experiences. He says, "I’m always writing from some difficult place and seeing how the character survives … or doesn’t. When I really want to be comforted myself what I look for is a story about how somebody could survive something really difficult" His third novel, They Both Die at the End leans more toward science fiction than his other two novels, but maintains the emotional charge characteristic of Silvera's other two novels and like, it's two predecessors, this novel also touches on teen angst in difficult circumstances. The two protagonists, Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio are called by Death-Cast who delivers the news that they’re going to die that day. Mateo and Rufus are complete strangers, who are looking to make a new friend on their End Day. Adam Silvera's novels incorporate self-reflection as well as current under-addressed issues in the LGBTQ community. His three YA novels all have elements of a love story through which he addresses social issues, mental health, sexuality, friendship and loss. These three novels are raw and real and come from a place of sadness and loss, but also discovery.

Multimedia
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdamSilvera Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamsilvera/ Website: http://www.adamsilvera.com YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjN5IUzLYi9LARl_pUieWLQ