David Levithan talks with Gayle Forman on the Fully Booked Takeover.
On this week’s Fully Booked Takeover, special guest host David Levithan celebrates the publication of Wide Awake Now with friend and fellow co-founder Gayle Forman.
The Fully Booked Takeover invites a beloved bestselling author to become our special guest host for one episode. They choose another author whose work they admire for an in-depth conversation, writer to writer. The questions they ask and the topics they explore are all up to them.
Levithan is the bestselling author, co-author, or editor of dozens of books for young readers focusing on love, friendship, and standing up for what you believe. Highlights include: Boy Meets Boy, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (with Rachel Cohn), the Every Day series, Two Boys Kissing, andThe Full Spectrum: A New Generation Writing About Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and Other Identities (with Billy Merrill). He is the founding editor of Scholastic Press’s YA imprint, PUSH, and co-founder of Authors Against Book Bans, an advocacy group organizing in support of the freedom to read.
His latest novel, Wide Awake Now (Knopf, April 16), reimagines Wide Awake, the political, forward-looking love story he published in 2006: “In Wide Awake (2006), Levithan imagined a political gaytopia in a divided nation roughly 20 years in the future; now he reimagines this world during the election of the first gay Jewish president of the U.S. in 2024,” Kirkus writes in a starred review. “Emotionally charged, boldly confrontational, and brilliantly executed.”
He is joined in conversation by award-winning novelist and journalist Gayle Forman, the bestselling author of If I Stay, I Have Lost My Way, Frankie & Bug, and others titles—for readers of all ages—focusing on love, friendship, and standing up for what you believe in. Her essays and nonfiction have appeared in the New York Times, Elle, the Nation and Time.
Then Laura Simeon, Mahnaz Dar, and Laurie Muchnick share their top picks in books for the week.
EDITORS’ PICKS:
Just Another Epic Love Poem by Parisa Akhbari (Dial Books)
The Walk of the Field Mouse by Nadine Robert, illus. by Valerio Vidali (Milky Way Picture Books)
Funny Story by Emily Henry (Berkley)
THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:
Crazy Hawk by R.J. Stewart
Children of the Sun by Harry Allen
Hollis and Gray by J.P. Zeigler
Four Reasons To Die by K.P. Gresham
Of Vital Interest by Frank Demith
Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.
