Blackout

Blackout is a collection of stories written by six African American young adult novelists. Tiffany D. Jackson, the author of “The Long Walk,” is the author of NYT bestselling YA novels that include Monday’s Not Coming, Allegedly, Let Me Hear A Rhyme, and Grown. A native Brooklynite, Jackson is the winner of the Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe New Talent Award and a recent NAACP Image Award nominee. Jackson’s work spans across genres, including mystery and horror.

Nic Stone, the author of “Mask Off,” writes young adult and middle grade fiction. Stone began writing young adult fiction in 2017, after being inspired by Veronica Roth’s Divergent series. Stone is best known for her debut novel, Dear Martin, which deals largely with police brutality and anti-Blackness in America.

Ashley Woodfolk, author of “Made to Fit,” is the author of young adult novels that include The Beauty That Remains and When You Were Everything. Woodfolk worked in marketing at a children’s book publisher before writing her first novel.

Dhonielle Clayton, author of “All the Great Love Stories…and Dust,” is a writer and the chief operating officer of We Need Diverse Books, a nonprofit created to promote and encourage diversity and representation of marginalized groups in children’s literature.

Angie Thomas, author of “No Sleep Till Brooklyn,” writes largely young adult literature. Thomas is best known for her novel The Hate U Give, a NYT bestseller and the source material for the film adaptation starring actress and activist Amandla Stenberg.

Author of “Seymour and Grace”, Nicola Yoon is best known for her young adult novel Everything, Everything, a NYT bestseller that was adapted for the screen in 2017. Yoon spent two decades working as a programmer for investment management before writing her first novel. Yoon’s sophomore novel, The Sun is Also a Star, was a 2016 National Book Award finalist and was adapted for the screen in 2019.

According to a 2021 NPR review, the idea to produce a young adult story collection first came about during the height of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. With the knowledge that the novel’s authors are all young adult novelists with prior experience writing about the Black coming-of-age experience, Blackout was born. While each story is written by a different author and follows the lives of its own characters, all the stories in Blackout are inherently connected via their characters who have relationships to characters that exist in other stories, as well as events, such as Twig’s block party in Brooklyn and the city-wide blackout itself.

Writing with intentions of centering Black love stories, in an interview with CBS News, the authors of Blackout also discuss a collective desire to create a work of “love” and “light” amid the darkness of the pandemic and the protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Importantly, Thomas asserts that Blackout affirms to Black children that “your lives matter, your dreams matter, your love matters, your hope matters, all of it” (“Authors of ‘Blackout’ Share Message for Young Black Adults: ‘You can be the center of the love story.’” CBS News, 23 June 2021).