YA Authors With Deep Backlists

When the teens I worked with as a librarian came to me proclaiming that I simply HAD to read Scythe, I was a little surprised to learn that many of them had never encountered dystopian fiction before that book. That felt especially ironic considering Neal Shusterman’s Unwind was my first dystopian YA read as a teen nearly fifteen years earlier. Shusterman has written a whole slew of speculative fiction, from the Unwind series, the Arc of the Scythe series, the Skinjacker trilogy, National Book Award winner Challenger Deep, as well as many other series and novels spanning from the late 80’s to today! He’s even co-written the books Dry and Roxy with his son, Jarrod Shusterman. Check out our deep dive into Shusterman’s work and how he’s evolved as a writer over the decades.

Jennifer Lynn Barnes is topping bestseller lists with her newest trilogy, The Inheritance Games and sequels, but she’s been writing YA books since 2006 and has over 20 books to her name. Some of her earlier mystery and thriller series include The Squad series, The Naturals and sequels, as well as The Debutantes series. She’s also the author of the paranormal series Raised by Wolves, the standalone The Lovely and the Lost, and political thriller series The Fixer.

Marie Lu came onto the scene in 2011 with the publication of Legend, the first in a dystopian trilogy (now series) about two enemies who find they have more in common with each other than they realized. Since then, Lu has published over ten more sci-fi, dystopian, and fantasy novels, as well as three graphic novel spin-offs of Legend. Check out her Young Elites series for a fantasy adventure and villain origin story, the Warcross series for a tech thrill ride, and The Kingdom of Back for a standalone historical novel! Her latest release is Steelstriker, sequel to Skyhunter!

Deb Caletti has been publishing YA books for 20 years. She made her debut in 2002 with The Queen of Everything (I can still remember checking it out from my local library when I was a teen in the mid aughts!) and has followed it with many contemporary YA novels about complicated issues of family and love and being a young woman in the world ever since. Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, her second book, was a National Book Award finalist. Twelve more books for teens and a couple of adult books and one middle grade novel followed, and Caletti’s A Heart in a Body in the World received the Printz Honor is 2018. Her most recent release is One Great Lie, and her new YA novel The Epic Story of Every Living Thing will be out in September.

David Levithan is like the godfather of queer YA lit! Not only is he a prolific author, but he’s also worked for many years as an editor at Scholastic where he founded the imprint PUSH. Although he penned many franchise books, his novel Boy Meets Boy released in 2003 and received a Lambda Literary Award, and he followed it up with many other books including Love is the Higher Law, Every Day and sequels, Two Boys Kissing, and more. He’s also co-written YA novels with other established YA authors, including Rachel Cohn (with whom he wrote Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist), Andrea Cremer, Nina LaCour, John Green, and Jennifer Niven.

Taherah Mafi is the author of the bestselling speculative novel Shatter Me, which was released in 2011 and sparked multiple sequels set in the same world, as well as novellas and short stories. While she might be best known for her Shatter Me characters, she’s also written two realistic YA novels: A Very Large Expanse of the Sea (which was longlisted for the National Book Award) and An Emotion of Great Delight. Her newest YA release is This Woven Kingdom, the first in a new fantasy series, and she’s also written middle grade novels.