12 Feb 2021

Nicola Yoon

Black Authors post, Day 12

Black Authors post, Day 12

Today’s author is up-and-coming YA author Nicola Yoon.

Nicola was born in Jamaica in 1972. Her family moved to Brooklyn, New York when Nicola was 11 years old. She loved writing as a kid, but was encouraged to nurture her math nerd side.

She went to Cornell University and majored in electrical engineering. While at Cornell, she took a writing class as an elective and got “hooked on writing”. After graduating from Cornell, she attended the Master of Creative Writing program at Emerson College.

Nicola worked in an investment firm as a programmer for several years, and wrote on the side. After the birth of her daughter, the overprotectiveness she felt toward her daughter inspired her to write her first novel, Everything, Everything. The book was published in 2015, and debuted as number 1 on the The New York Times Best Seller List, spending 40 weeks on the list. A film adaptation of the book was released in 2017.

Nicola’s second book, The Sun Is Also a Star, was published in 2016, and was also a New York Times Best Seller. The book received several accolades, including the Steptoe Award for new talent, National Book Awards finalist, Printz Award Honor book, and appeared on several Best Of lists and had several starred reviews. A film adaptation of the book was released in 2019.

Nicola’s third book, Instructions for Dancing, will be published later this year.

Nicola lives in Los Angeles, CA, with her husband, author David Yoon, and their daughter.

Links to Nicola’s works:

A note: These Amazon links point to Amazon Smile, Amazon’s affiliate charity program. If you have not set up Amazon Smile, I encourage you to point it to an organization like Youthprise, which serves as a resource and support to youth-serving organizations in the Twin Cities

Some links:

Image from the Instagram post at https://www.instagram.com/p/BvAVr9CBDH_/