Thank goodness for The Black Flamingo (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins, May 26), the fierce, heart-rending YA novel in verse about a black gay boy’s turbulent coming-of-age that it turns out we all needed. Letting us in on Michael Brown’s journey from a boy wishing for a Barbie but receiving a Ninja Turtle instead to a young man discovering authentic self-expression trying out drag in college, The Black Flamingo serves up a bildungsroman of a beautiful outsider in epic poetic form. British writer Dean Atta talked to Kirkus about creating his fabulous drag artist in the making and how the world has changed for Michael (or kids like him) today.

First of all, The Black Flamingo must be one of the all-time great titles. Where did it come from?

It came from seeing a black flamingo while visiting family in Cyprus among all the pink flamingos on the salt lake and feeling like that was how I felt so often in my life: being the odd one out, standing out from the crowd. But it was also kind of cool. That looked so awesome. It made me think about how being different could be a really cool thing as well.

How does writing in verse help capture the voice of a young character and how he remembers key moments in his life?

I think approaching [Michael’s story] one poem at a time was a good way to check in and ask, “How old is he? What words would he use? How can I lay it out on the page to reflect his age? I let the language reflect how he was thinking and how he would speak. In terms of memory, poems are good at zooming in on certain details and moments rather than necessarily filling in the whole picture and scene. You get a focal point of what was really important, and usually, that’s the emotion more than anything.

I think this is the first YA origin story of a drag queen I’ve ever read. How did your own experiences with drag inspire the novel?

I didn’t do drag until I was 30, so the moment I did it, I was like, “I’ve been missing out for so many years!” But it was also difficult in lots of ways. Doing makeup is really hard. But it’s not the walking in heels or wearing the dress that’s empowering for me—it’s how it changes how you feel about yourself. When you take it off, there can be a sense of loss of that empowerment, but the more you do it, the more you learn to carry it with you even when you’re not wearing it. So that’s something that came to me: the origin story of how Michael would get to feel empowered and how that would transform him, give him a lot more confidence and fierceness. I wanted to show how that happened.

How has it felt to see your ideal audience discover this book?

I wouldn’t even say there’s an ideal audience. You can read it to see yourself in it, whether you’re black or queer, or you could read it to understand and to be empathetic. I know so many young people who are showing it to their families to help them better understand them, but I also know there are aunts, uncles, parents who are going out of their way to get this book to understand their child or niece or nephew.

Michael has to go through so much bullying in school for being different, especially for being queer. Have you seen this change in schools now?

Oh, definitely. Schools in the U.K. are doing an amazing job around LGBTQ+ inclusion, and many of the schools I visited have LGBT groups for students to meet at lunchtime and after school. I’ve been invited to do whole-school assemblies as well as to talk about my poetry and my writing. The whole time I was at school, our government had stopped that from happening. There was something in place called Clause 28, which meant that schools were not allowed to talk about LGBT people or same-sex relationships. It’s so different now. My book is in school libraries and being taught. There’s so much visibility—badges and posters and flags. It just makes such a difference. I mention in the book the rainbow laces that the sports teacher wears. Those kinds of things make a student feel so much safer and accepted. I’m seeing that happening, and it’s great.

Stephan Lee is a writer in New York.