"I know publishing is aiming towards a box and I understand that they’re trying to sell a product. But teenagers don’t fit into a box. Same as women don’t. Same as — none of us. We don’t."

From an interview with A.S. King at BookRiot:

So when I reread Paul Zindel’s work: wow. People always say to me, “Oh, you have all these adult characters and they’re really well-formed.” Well, yeah. Because my whole life was run by adults. I was the youngest in my family, so my sisters were even adults by the time I was a teenager. And then the coaches and the teachers — all these people were adults! So I couldn’t understand why there weren’t more books for teens that had adult characters. So it was great to go back to Zindel. Because he never flinched when it came to it. And I’ve always had adult characters in my books, even the unpublished ones, they’ve always been there. And I didn’t remember that in Zindel, but as I’m reading these books now I’m seeing just how much of his work influenced me long long long ago.

It's an EXCELLENT, meaty interview—they hit on SO many topics—and it's got me thinking: as much as I want to get caught up on all of the NEW stuff that's coming out, I also want to revisit Paul Zindel and M.E. Kerr and Richard Peck and Virginia Hamilton and Paula Danzinger and Mildred Taylor and and and and and...