I was ecstatic to feature A.J. Sass’s middle grade books Ana on the Edge and Ellen Outside the Lines, as well as Nicole Melleby’s How to Become a Planet. When I found out that the upcoming MG novel Camp QUILTBAG was penned by them both, I couldn’t wait to spread word. The book is set to debut on March 21, 2023.
Twelve-year-old Abigail (she/her/hers) is so excited to spend her summer at Camp QUILTBAG, an inclusive retreat for queer and trans kids. She can’t wait to find a community where she can be herself—and, she hopes, admit her crush on Laura Dern to kids who will understand.
Thirteen-year-old Kai (e/em/eir) is not as excited. E just wants to hang out with eir best friend and eir parkour team. And e definitely does not want to think about the incident that left eir arm in a sling—the incident that also made Kai’s parents determined to send em somewhere e can feel like emself.
After a bit of a rocky start at camp, Abigail and Kai make a pact to help each other find their footing, all while navigating crushes, their queer identities, and a competition pitting cabin against cabin.
What was the most enjoyable part of your collaboration on this project? Do you envision any future collaborations together?
A.J.: I personally loved all our back-and-forth exchanges over texts. Since Nicole and I live on opposite sides of the country, we were in frequent contact while drafting and revising Camp QUILTBAG. There are two main characters, Abigail and Kai, and their story unfolds in alternating chapters. Nicole took the lead on Abigail’s chapters, as well as the development of the other kids in Abigail’s cabin and I did the same for Kai. If I ever got stuck on a point that related to her characters, I could reach out and get Nicole’s input. It was a complete joy to write alongside someone who knew just as much about the story as I did, who was equally as invested in the plot and our characters as I was.
And I sure hope we get to collaborate again! Working together on Camp QUILTBAG was so much fun. It was a different way to be creative, and I love that we got to share in all the happy moments of the process, from the sale of the manuscript to completing our first draft to seeing the cover art for the first time, and so on.
Nicole: Ditto everything A.J. said! I think that writing can sometimes feel like such a lonely endeavor–for all of its ups and downs. But with a project like this, Andrew and I were in it together, from start to finish. And there’s something special about that, about creating a world and characters together with someone I consider a best friend. We had fun. And, honestly, nothing beats that feeling of just really enjoying yourself as you work on a book together.
So true! I love how Camp QUILTBAG captures the feeling of trying to find your own identity within a new group. How did you each draw inspiration for the characters you wrote?
Nicole: Abigail is too relatable to me, I think. While I didn’t know my sexuality at the same age that she did, I always had crushes growing up, on teachers, on my friend’s moms, on older actresses like Laura Dern…except unlike Abigail, I didn’t really understand that they were crushes. Now I do know, but it made me want to explore a character who was aware, and felt ashamed of it. Abigail has nothing to be ashamed of, but she’s so awkward and anxious and embarrassed by it, and I wanted to give voice to that kind of kid and let her know that she isn’t alone, and she’s certainly got nothing to be ashamed of. I also wanted to give her that Catholic school background that I grew up with. It’s an important part of where she comes from, shapes who she is and how she feels. There’s this conversation between Abigail and another camper, Oren, who is Jewish, about their faith and their queerness within it, and it’s a conversation that I would never have been able to have when I was twelve, but I love that we were able to give these characters the space to do it here.
A.J.: At the start of Camp QUILTBAG, my character, Kai, has recently found a new group of friends back home in the form of eir parkour teammates. E doesn’t particularly want to be at camp and this belief is reinforced when Kai discovers the three other campers in eir cabin already know one another because they all attended camp together the year before. My family moved around a lot due to my dad’s job when I was growing up, so I definitely pulled from the feeling I had in my own life as a kid that I didn’t really want to be ‘here’ (whether that was a new school in Minnesota, or Nebraska, Georgia, or elsewhere) and explored it through Kai’s perspective. The wonderful thing about this camp though is that every kid who attends identifies on the queer spectrum. Even though Kai’s parkour friends are supportive, getting to be fully emself around other kids who are attuned to things like nonbinary identities and neopronouns from the start gave me the opportunity to show young readers that this is how it could be (and, in my opinion, should be) in every area of your life when you come out to someone. So in that sense, developing Kai’s emotional arc allowed me to envision a world of automatic understanding and acceptance, one that I wish my younger self could’ve experienced and one that I hope we’re getting closer and closer to for kids who are coming out today.
Experiencing automatic understanding and acceptance is indeed a beautiful thing. Can either of you speak to marketing to an upper middle grade age group? Specifically, do you have thoughts about the marketing gap between middle grade and young adult readers?
A.J.: Books geared toward middle schoolers that feature slightly older characters have the ability to be really accessible to a wide variety of readers. You have your younger kids who are reading up, the middle schoolers who are the same age as your book’s characters, and then an older readership. The latter may be younger high school-age readers or even adults who are interested in the storyline or the representation offered in stories like these. I can’t speak much to how publishers or booksellers market upper middle grade, but I do think this is a unique space in the larger middle-grade landscape with a lot of opportunities to explore a variety of topics and narratives in unique ways. It’s why I’m personally drawn to the space, writing characters in the 12-14 year old age range. Some middle schoolers aren’t ready to read YA with 18 or 19 year-old main characters in them but don’t want to read stories about 9 or 10 year olds either. I’m not sure what the solution is from a publishing-side standpoint. All I can do on my end is continue writing stories that center characters who are a little bit older, perhaps wrapping up their middle school years or preparing to enter high school.
I’m glad. And it’s definitely a space with possibilities! What are two books besides Camp QUILTBAG that your readers would enjoy and why?
A.J.: I can’t recommend enough Mariama J. Lockington’s In The Key Of Us (it was also recently named a Stonewall Honor Book!). It has wonderful queer rep and also a camp setting. I’ve also recently read and loved The Otherwoods by Justine Pucella Winans. That one hasn’t released yet (look for it in the fall!), but it’s a contemporary fantasy that stars a nonbinary main character named River who’s dealing with a lot of anxiety associated with their ability to see monsters. When their crush gets kidnapped and whisked away to a world of spirits and monsters, it’s up to River to overcome their fears and save her. The fantasy aspect of the story is wonderful and engaging, but what I really love about the story is River’s journey to embracing their genuine self (oh, and they have the best sidekick ever: a cat named Mr. Fluffy Pancakes!).
Nicole: I’m going to name two upcoming books that readers of Camp QUILTBAG would enjoy, if not only because they are stories about identity and coming into understanding who you are, and being proud of it, in ways that I think our readers can relate. The first is Dear Mothman by Robin Gow, out in March, about a young trans boy dealing with the loss of his friend by writing to his favorite cryptid, Mothman, and the second is the upcoming The Jake Show by Josh Levy, which releases in May, about a Jewish seventh grade boy caught between the worlds of his divorced parents–an orthodox mother and secular father.
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A. J. Sass (he/they) is an author whose narrative interests lie at the intersection of identity, neurodiversity, and allyship. Ana on the Edge, his debut novel, was an ALA 2021 Rainbow Book List Top 10 Title, a Bank Street College of Education Best Book of 2021, and a 2020 Booklist Editors’ Choice. He is also the author of Ellen Outside the Lines, which is a 2023 Sydney Taylor Honor Book and was named a Best Book of 2022 by School Library Journal, a Booklist Editors’ Choice, and won a Nerdy Book Club Award. His upcoming novel, Camp QUILTBAG, is a co-written project with Nicole Melleby that releases on March 21, 2023. All three titles are Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selections. A. J. has also contributed to the This Is Our Rainbow and Allies anthologies. He grew up in the Midwestern US, came of age in the South, and currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his partner.
Nicole Melleby, a Jersey native, is the author of highly praised middle-grade books, including the Lambda Literary finalist Hurricane Season and ALA Notable Children’s book How to Become a Planet. She lives with her wife and their cat, whose need for attention oddly aligns with Nicole’s writing schedule.
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