Q&A with Dahlia Adler, author of "Going Bicoastal"

Welcome to the interview 🙋

What a delight it is to chat again with an author I adore! Last July, I interviewed Dahlia Adler and wrote a feature of her for my blog. This year, since she has a new book out, I wanted to have another conversation with Dahlia. If you don’t know Dahlia, she’s not just the author of some of my favorite sapphic YAs (Cool for the Summer and Home Field Advantage), she’s also the genius behind LGBTQReads, a truly momentous project.

This year Dahlia is celebrating the release (on June 13, 2023) of Going Bicoastal, an exceedingly bisexual book that sees our main character Natalya experiencing two plotlines and living out two potential summers: one in LA with her estranged mom, and one in NYC with her dad. I haven’t read the book yet but it’s on my list for next semester and I’m so absolutely stoked to get to it! Without further rambling: the Q&A!

How do you feel about the landscape of queer YA in 2023?

I feel really good about a lot of it. I feel like we are finally getting a lot more trans rep, nonbinary rep, books by authors of color. I definitely still see gaping holes and I’m like, why do we have such gaping holes. I used to talk about the massive gaping holes in sapphic romcoms. Now there are a ton, but we still don’t have a trans girl book. It’s wild to me how we can fix some gaps so well and still…I hope we fix in future years. It’s tough. Change has to come from pretty high up in the publishing industry…authors are doing what they can.

I also really like that because there’s a lot more to choose from, we get messier rep than we used to. Which doesn’t mean people won’t criticize it in supremely annoying fashion. It’s something that I like to see, cause I’ve seen some books that I liked get torn apart and I think that part of why they were getting torn apart, is they were the only one, and it wasn’t the sort of rep people wanted the only one to have. We’re getting more flexibility there. Publishers are allowing for a little bit more creativity. We could use tons more queer & trans books by people of color.

What is the most exciting thing to you about diverse kidlit at this point in time?

For me, it’s really getting more varied kinds of rep — I don’t just mean bisexual and pansexual, you can really have different experiences in books now. They’re not always used as selling points, sometimes they’re just there.

Everything doesn’t have to be representation now, people can be messy with their queerness, non-linear gender identity journeys. More not-necessarily point A to point B journeys…I really love seeing that in YA.

Let’s talk about Going Bicoastal! What inspired this story?

I read a book in maybe 2015 called Two Summers by Aimee Friedman and I saw the movie Sliding Doors. I loved that the element was spending summer in two different places. I thought I really want to do something like this. But different gender love interests. [At the time I] was just realizing I was bi, wasn’t fully there. Everything I wanted to do was this but queer. I knew I wanted to do summer sliding doors but queer.

What was the most thrilling thing about writing this book?

Half the book is set in NYC and I went to high school in NYC so I spent a lot of time there and it was really really fun to pull things from my experiences, even in really subtle ways. A lot of moments and events [exist] in the New York timeline of the book that are in my head very direct references to things that I did when I was in high school or college. I loved getting to relive by slipping those in. Even if there’s very little reference to the original event…it all feels very special.

Then the other thing was the incredibly self fan-service thing of inserting old characters of mine in. I could use Going Bicoastal to tie every single one of my books together. It was really fun. There are references to…Lara and Jasmine from Cool for the Summer directly appear, but there are also nods to Home Field Advantage, to Under the Lights. There’s a little nod to Out on Good Behavior. The New York love interest works in a Poe-themed cafe, which is obviously a reference to His Hideous Heart, there’s just Poe puns, which was really fun.

Is there anything (non-spoilery) about the book that you think has the potential to surprise readers?

Natalya’s bi and Jewish, but she’s the most observant queer character I’ve written, the most observant queer girl that I have seen in YA. Shabbat plays a big role in the book, there’s talk of shiva, various Jewish elements in the book. Natalya talks about how she reconciles/doesn’t feel the need to reconcile being both bi & Jewish. I really hope that the readers who need that scene will find that and love it. There’s a lot of queer Jewish lit, but this is, I think, the one where I’ve seen the main character address that intersection in that kind of way and so…I think and hope it’s a good surprise.

How did you maintain a consistent characterization of Natalya while having her make different choices and exist in two different timelines?

My characters are very much people to me to like a weird degree. One thing I don’t struggle with is keeping them consistent. You are a person, and here’s what you as a person would do. She has a lot in common with me except that she’s artistic and extroverted. With my characters more than any other element of story writing for me I know who they are.

Part of the story is that she does not deeply change based on which path she took. That part is intentional, she is the same person, different things happen and she makes different choices but she was gonna be the same person. That’s the driving point of the book. The changes you make are significant but not monumental, not a right choice or a wrong choice.

You said on Twitter that Going Bicoastal is a queer joy book, can you share why that is important to you to show in books?

I went through my queer journey pretty publicly, and you can see different stages of it through my books. In Going Bicoastal she’s out, she’s happy, there’s no queer angst. This was a no queer angst book and that’s very new for me. Part of that is the settings: two extremely queer-friendly settings, New York & LA. So there are, you know, queer characters and trans characters and nobody has angst about it and nobody feels the need to be closeted. For the purposes of this story, I had everybody out and angst-free. It was such a special delight for me. Natalya has this friend group in NYC where two of them are queer, special group chat with them. Even within a greater friend group the queer people flock together. There’s a lot of joy and a lack of angst.

Do you have 1-3 books you’ve read & loved recently that you’d like to recommend?

One I read recently that was really fun with a great messy gender and a fun mystery: Bianca Torre Is Afraid Of Everything by Justine Pucella Winans. This is already out!

A cute one that’s coming up — The Borrow a Boyfriend Club by Page Powars. That’s a cute and fun romance that will delight some people, especially people who need cute and fun trans romance cause we don’t have a ton of that.

A graphic novel that I loved recenlty was The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich by Deya Muniz — it’s really fun & really sweet and cozy and full of cheese puns. If you liked Mooncakes then you’ll love this one, too. Similar cozy vibes, not similar plot.

And that’s all for the interview, which was edited and condensed for the newsletter. If you’re interested in more about the world of Going Bicoastal, including its playlist, check it out on Dahlia’s website!

Some words from Karis

I hope you enjoyed the Q&A with Dahlia! I love her work and so enjoyed getting to catch up with her on the phone (and then to meet her in person at her launch at Books of Wonder last Tuesday!)

In other, personal / professional news, I…made an announcement this week.

It’s ridiculously surreal, but true: I signed with Eric Smith at P.S. Literary Agency! I’ve been working toward signing with an agent for 10 years and now…I have? Idk, doesn’t feel real! But I’ll be writing about it more in-depth in next week’s email, so keep your eyes peeled for that!