REVIEW: “Foreshadow: Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading and Writing YA.” Edited by Emily X. R. Pan and Nova Ren Suma

Ravynn Stringfield

Genre-defying, multi-functional pieces are easy to love, useful and infinitely satisfying objects of study. Emily X. R. Pan and Nova Ren Suma’s 2020 anthology, Foreshadow: Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading and Writing YA, is a particularly exceptional piece. The anthology brings together thirteen short stories from new voices in YA, each introduced by an established YA author—folks from Nicola Yoon and Jason Reynolds to Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli. While the stories themselves are the centerpieces of the collection, Foreshadow also includes essays on craft topics like voice and writing suspense from the editors, a number of writing prompts and a Q&A with the emerging authors on their work in the collection. 

As a scholar, fan and writer of YA fiction—and I imagine many academics drawn to this subfield are also some combination of scholar/fan/writer—I find that Foreshadow answers timely questions about what it means to write, study and love YA in this moment. Each story, regardless of genre, moves with a touch of magic that transports the reader. As editor Pan writes in the Introduction, “stories are the best kind of spell. There’s nothing like cracking open a book and being magicked away to a different time and place….” (xi) We are as immersed into the 1990s world centered at the Texas/Mexico border in Flor Salcedo’s “Pan Dulce” as we are Maya Prasad’s intergalactic story, “Princess.” The remaining short stories have one-word titles that invite readers to engage in the imaginative exercise of speculation: what will this story tell us about these seemingly docile words, like flight, risk, fools, and belly? Hence, they foreshadow. 

The stories in this anthology captivated me from the first line and lingered long after I closed the book. They experiment with form, as in Rachel Hylton’s “Risk,” written in first person plural (“We were there for Marnie Vega long before she became a lobster.” [26]); they reimagine myths and fairytales, as in Tanya Aydelott’s “Flight” or Linda Cheng’s “Sweetmeats;” they speak to a legacy of storytellers who have come before, as in Desiree S. Evans’ “Belly.” These writers have encouraged me, as a writer of YA fiction, to reconsider what is possible on the page. 

Pan and Suma also give the writer looking for technical aid questions to consider when creating their story (“Why must the world be like this? What are the causes and what are the consequences?” [174]) and reflect on how and why particular elements of the stories work. The introductions set the stage, the stories demonstrate techniques, and the prompts and craft essays help writers get to the mechanics of how such a story is made. In the Q&A that concludes the book, Pan and Suma take the readers and writers through one last important exercise—crowdsourcing knowledge and techniques for everything from editing to sharing the story of the “first seed” of ideas which became the narrative in the text. It offers a resource for new and established writers to provide insights which may be crucial for those just beginning to share their work. 

Foreshadow should be celebrated for its innovation, rigor, and investment in guiding writers and readers through the trenches of storytelling. The editors’ investment in producing a product which prioritizes not only the storytelling of new writers, but those from marginalized communities as well, without using their identities as a hook, is noted and appreciated. This delicious collection demonstrates that diverse stories are not only out in the world, but abundant, and that craft books are not limited to white cisgendered heterosexual male writers. I have no doubt that the work Pan, Suma and their thirteen storytellers have done to offer an entry way into YA writing and reading will become a classic, must-read in craft. 

Recommended

References

Pan, Emily X. R. & Nova Ren Suma, eds. Foreshadow: Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading and Writing YA. Algonquin Young Readers, 2020.