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Twenty boys, one writer:
Sarah Ockler turns teen trauma into YA fiction
By Julia Burke

Sarah Ockler photo by Rachel Lynn Miller.
Teen movies tend to portray prom night as the dramatic, romantic pinnacle of one’s high school experience, but local author Sarah Ockler skipped her prom for a Grateful Dead concert. “It was amazing. There were all these peace-loving, hug-giving hippies all over the place,” she recalls. After the show, however, she and her friends had their car towed and were forced to spend two hours collecting bottles and cans to earn the money to pick the car up at the impound. Reliving such memories, says the author of recently published young adult novel Twenty Boy Summer, is what makes writing for teens so much fun.

“It’s kind of like therapy for those tragic high school years,” Ockler says. “I think that everyone hangs on to that stuff, and it allows me to go back and revisit those things and retell them in a different way.” A graduate of Orchard Park High School, Ockler didn’t initially aspire to young adult writing, but a writing class in Denver a few years ago changed her mind. “There was a memoir and personal essay class, and one of the stories I submitted was about some trouble my friend and I got into when we were fifteen.” The instructor asked whether Ockler had ever considered writing for teens. After that, she says, “The clouds parted, and I totally found my voice.”

Ockler’s novel tells of a summer in California in which best friends Anna Reiley and Frankie Perino make a pact to meet twenty boys and thereby ensure at least one summer romance apiece. However, the death of Frankie’s brother the previous year casts a painful shadow over their vacation and ultimately threatens their friendship. Ockler explains that the delicate balance of fun and serious issues in young adult literature is crucial to success. The high school experience includes not just dances and homework, but drinking, sexuality, and, for some teens, the death of a loved one, and these issues cannot be ignored. The key, she says, is “being authentic without being preachy. There are some more mature issues in the book and some people find that to be promoting those behaviors. My viewpoint is that I’m not promoting anything and not condoning anything—I’m just telling a story.

“In some ways, I never left high school,” Ockler laughs—but that doesn’t mean writing in a young adult voice is easy. Ockler’s chief form of research is eavesdropping on teens in their natural habitats. “I go to coffee shops and try to listen to the dialogue, the inflections, the way they talk, the things they talk about.” She tries to accomplish this in a “nonstalker way,” which she says is “kind of difficult to pull off when you’re an adult.” For Twenty Boy Summer, Ockler was able to draw partially from personal experience. “The grief element came from a previous job I had working with donor families. It wasn’t research at the time, but it stayed with me.” The novel is Ockler’s way of thanking the families of organ donors, including the one that saved her brother Scott, who received a liver transplant at the age of four.

Ockler’s next book, Fixing Delilah Hannaford, deals with grief of another sort. “It’s about a sixteen-year-old girl who has some issues with her mom, who’s a workaholic. They get the call when her estranged grandmother, whom she hasn’t been allowed to speak about for eight years, dies. They have to go to Vermont and settle the estate, and while she’s there she uncovers all these tragic family secrets. She starts to understand her place in her family history.” Ockler says the book is centered on family relationships between women, but, she winks, “There’s a romance, too.”

Young adult authors whom Ockler looks up to include Sarah Dessen and Laurie Halse Anderson, as well as new writers Sarah MacLean, Michele Zink, and Lisa Mantchev. “I find that I don’t have a lot of patience for adult novels,” she remarks. “I think adults are more forgiving as readers; we’ll plod through when things that are dragging. Teens are not as forgiving. They’re more in the moment of the story, and discerning, I find.” As a result, she says, young adult novels are “written more tightly” and with a faster pace. Readers who agree have the opportunity to discuss Twenty Boy Summer and other teen reads with Ockler herself on her blog, which contains funny anecdotes from her life but also a wealth of information about up-and-coming young adult writers. To Ockler, her strong online presence is a way to network with other writers and to get feedback from her fans. “When I was a teen you couldn’t really connect with an author,” she recalls. “You had to write a letter to the publisher and maybe you’d get a form response back. [This way] they can see who I am and see what I’m about.”

The blog also allows her to trade notes and advice with other young adult writers. “It has been phenomenal,” she says. “The thing that surprised me was that when the advance reading copies were available, my publisher sent a lot of them out to other writers, and when the book came out many of them went out and bought it even though they had a free copy.” This mutual support, she says, allows new writers to benefit from the experience of their peers. “Getting a book out and getting it published is such a roller coaster, and being around other people that are going through the same ups and downs is really great.”

Twenty Boy Summer is published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. Information about Sarah Ockler’s current and upcoming projects can be found at her website: www.sarahockler.com.

Julia Burke coedited Spree’s 2009 WNY Performing Arts Guide.


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