Leaf Journal: On Writing for Young People

Welcome to the fourth volume of Leaf Journal. This issue has six articles, looking at a variety of areas in writing for young people. Elizabeth Train-Brown asks what role inexperience plays in crafting a young adult voice. George Purves offers some creative techniques to write realistically (and possibly transformationally) about the subject of emetophobia. Noah Weisz considers what makes some books so re-readable with a close look at Frances Hardinge’s Cuckoo Song. Ruth Moore examines the term ‘time-slip’, asking how writers in this genre shape young readers’ understanding of the past. Edward Owen Davies asks how the mantra ‘nothing about us without us’ applies to the verse novel. Jo Baker’s paper looks at two recent YA works with queer antagonists, exploring how the writers avoided their villain’s queerness becoming a signifier for evil. 

We would like to thank Lancaster University for additional financial support this year which allowed us to employ an editor to support the production of the volume. Our greatest thanks and admiration to that editor, Dr Kristien Potgieter, whose brilliant editing, proofreading and typesetting made the production so seamless. We remain ever-grateful to our College of Reviewers for their thoughtful input in making the work we publish robust, and to our Editorial Board for their support.