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ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: The Bridge
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://billkonigsberg.com/
CITY:
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: SATA 326
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/book/openly-straight
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1970; married Chuck Cahoy, November 16, 2013.
EDUCATION:Columbia University, B.A., 1994; Arizona State University, M.F.A., 2005.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, sports journalist, editor, columnist, young-adult author, and educator. Arizona State University, Piper Center for Creative Writing, assistant professor of practice. ESPN.com, assistant editor, c. 2001; Associated Press, writer and editor, 2005-08. Worked for newspapers, magazines, online publications, and wire services.
AWARDS:GLAAD Media Award, Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination, 2002, for article “Sports World Still a Struggle for Gays”; Lambda Literary Award for Children/Young Adults, 2009, for Out of the Pocket; PEN Center USA Literary Award for Young Adult Literature, 2016, and Stonewall Book Award, both for The Porcupine of Truth; Sid Fleischmann Award for Humor, for Openly Straight.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Denver Post, Miami Herald, New York Daily News, New York Times, North Jersey Herald and News, Out, and San Francisco Chronicle, and to Outsports.com and ESPN.com. Author of weekly syndicated column about fantasy baseball.
The Music of What Happens has been optioned for film.
SIDELIGHTS
[open new]Bill Konigsberg is an author of young-adult novels with a focus on LGBTQ experiences as well as the mental and emotional challenges that life can bring. He was born and raised in New York City. His parents divorced when he was four, and his father remarried and started a new family. His father having a new son with this family contributed to feelings of isolation for Konigsberg, as did his burgeoning awareness of his natural sexual orientation. With the stigmatization of the AIDS crisis as a backdrop, Konigsberg felt starkly alone because there were no gay role models in television shows, movies, or mainstream literature at the time. A transformative experience came when he learned of a city bookstore named after gay playwright Oscar Wilde and soon found himself in a room full of books by and about people like him. Konigsberg told BookPeople Teen Press Corps interviewer Xander Christou, “ I really do think those first books I read saved my life, just beginning to understand that I wasn’t alone because I was sure I was the only person like me, and I wasn’t.”
Having wanted to be a writer for as long as he could remember, Konigsberg focused on the study of writing and literature in high school and especially college. He envisioned writing novels focused on gay and queer characters for the benefit of LGBTQ youth. When he lost faith that he could make a living as a writer, the talent lay mostly dormant while he worked a series of odd jobs. [suspend new]
Beginning his career in journalism in the mid-1990s, Konigsberg covered the sporting world for a variety of news outlets, including the Associated Press, the Denver Post, the Arizona Republic, and ESPN.com. Konigsberg first became known to sports fans when he used a computer program to calculate the theoretical outcome of Major League Baseball’s 1994 season after it was shortened by a player’s strike. In 2001, Konigsberg once again earned attention as the result of an article he wrote as assistant editor at ESPN.com. After publicly announcing his homosexuality, he discussed the absence of openly gay figures in professional athletics, a void Konigsberg had noticed even as a teen. As he shared on his website, “When I started to realize I was gay I thought it meant that I wasn’t supposed to be an athlete, because I didn’t know of a single role model who played sports and was gay.” He wrote of his first young-adult novel, Out of the Pocket, after learning of the suicide attempt of a former college football player who had been troubled by his inability to express himself as a homosexual in a rigidly defined heterosexual sports environment. Kongisberg told a Nerd Daily interviewer, “When I started writing books, it was exceedingly important to me to write books that told the truth about being gay.”
Published in 2008, Out of the Pocket follows the experiences of Bobby Framingham, a senior quarterback who hopes to transition from his California high school football team to a career in college and perhaps even the National Football League. An outstanding athlete, Bobby becomes known less for his success on the gridiron than for his sexual status after it is revealed that Bobby is gay. Suddenly, the teen is the subject of overwhelming attention, from gossipy fellow students to the national media. Bobby discovers how quickly his world has changed when several teammates stop speaking to him, his coach refuses to acknowledge his orientation, and opposing players target him with particularly vicious hits. Compounding his troubles at school, Bobby also watches his father’s health decline as the elder man battles cancer.
Calling Out of the Pocket “a thoughtful, powerful novel,” Booklist critic Todd Morning added that Konigsberg creates a narrator with an “authentic first-person voice.” In School Library Journal Megan Honig described Bobby as “a likable narrator” and considered the book “a thought-provoking, funny, and ultimately uplifting story of self-actualization.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted that Konigsberg’s message of “being who you are” comes through strongly in an “unusual hybrid that juxtaposes hard-hitting, play-by-play football action with scenes of psychological soul-searching.” In addition to finding Out of the Pocket “an amazing first novel,” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy writer James Blasingame maintained that Konigsberg does not compromise on either the sports-action elements of the book nor the complex emotions Bobby encounters during his journey as an openly gay athlete. “The author’s knowledge of sports is impeccable,” Blasingame wrote, “and his understanding of the social interaction of teenagers weaves the story together to make it funny, heartbreaking, and heartwarming.” Out of the Pocket won a Lambda Literary Award in 2009.
In Openly Straight Konigsberg deals with a well-adjusted, openly gay high-school senior who rejects the stereotypes that socially confine him. One of the first young-adult novels to feature a gay protagonist while not focusing on homophobia, Openly Straight finds seventeen-year-old Rafe Goldberg trading in his comfortable high-school experience in Boulder, Colorado, for a stint at an all-boys’ boarding school in Natick, Massachusetts. Christina Miller, reviewing the novel in Voice of Youth Advocates, remarked that “the story is realistic and believable and, refreshingly, not filled with the usual young adult tropes.” “For a thought-provoking, creative, twenty-first-century take on the coming-out story, look no further,” wrote Claire E. Gross in her appraisal of Konigsberg’s novel for Horn Book.
Honestly Ben is a sequel to Konigsberg’s acclaimed Openly Straight. The novel tells the further story of Rafe Goldberg and Ben Carver as they move on from the emotional events of the previous novel. The story is “told through Ben Carver’s perspective, narrating his struggles to deal with pressure at school, repression at home and being in love with two different people,” noted Ofelia Montelongo, writing in Phoenix.
Still a student at the posh Natick boarding school, the seventeen-year-old Ben is facing multiple pressures in his life. Academically, he does well in everything excerpt calculus. A poor grade in that class could ruin his GPA and cause him to lose a scholarship that he needs to pay for college. He has been named captain of the school’s baseball team, even though he is just a junior, and he has to make time to both play the game and fulfill the responsibilities of the captain.
In his personal life, Ben has met and fallen for Hannah, an intelligent and outspoken girl from a nearby school. Though his relationship with Hannah seems to be going well, it is made much more complicated by Ben’s former relationship with Rafe. Ben and Rafe are still good friends, though there are signs that they may again become much closer than mere friends. Ben, who has always thought of himself as straight, struggles to reconcile his feelings for Rafe and the prospect of being deeply love with a gay man while also being involved with a heterosexual woman. In his family, Ben also has to face the troubles caused by his father’s blatant homophobia and his mother’s tendency to label him in ways he does not agree with.
Honestly Ben addresses “serious issues of gender fluidity, emotional vulnerability, economic privilege and the inadequacy of labels,” noted BookPage writer Jill Ratzan. Voice of Youth Advocates reviewer Laura Panter called the book a “must-read for those questioning who they are and who they ultimately want to be.” Claire E. Gross, writing in Horn Book, found it to be a “multidimensional coming-of-age tale that celebrates individuality and interconnection.” With this novel, commented Booklist reviewer Michael Cart, Konigsberg has done a “remarkable job developing characters and inviting readers to consider the meaning of friendship with all its rewards and challenges.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded that Honestly Ben is a “refreshingly honest exploration of modern relationships and an understanding that love can take many shapes and forms.”
Konigsberg focuses on parental alienation in his novel The Porcupine of Truth. When Carson, a New York City teenager, visits Montana for the summer with his therapist mom, he meets homeless gay teenager Aisha. Becoming friends, they both struggle to piece together their respective families’ complicated backstories. Carson is in Montana because of a health crisis afflicting his dad, from whom he has been long estranged, and Aisha has been driven out of her home because of her father’s unflinching opposition to her status as an out-and-proud lesbian. As the two friends set off to locate Carson’s paternal grandfather, the plot moves into road-trip territory.
“A friendship between a straight boy and a lesbian is relatively rare in YA fiction and is … exceedingly welcome,” wrote Michael Cart in a Booklist review of The Porcupine of Truth. A Kirkus Reviews contributor recommended Konigsberg’s novel as “equal parts funny and profound” as well as a work that “tackles questions about religion, family, and intimacy with depth and grace.” In School Library Journal Tony Hirt reacted to the novel’s larger message, writing that “Konigsberg weaves together a masterful tale of uncovering the past, finding wisdom, and accepting others,” while in Publishers Weekly a reviewer recommended The Porcupine of Truth as a novel “that will leave readers thinking about inherited traits.”
[resume new]Konigsberg found the impetus for his next book when a friend visiting for dinner recited the Seamus Heaney poem “Song,” and the last line inspired both title and narrative. The Music of What Happens finds life taking a curious turn for teens Max and Jordan at a farmers’ market. A popular athlete with a closeted gay life, Max is dwelling on a traumatic experience from a date with a college boy while visiting the market with his mother. Jordan is trying to revive his deceased father’s food truck, Coq Au Vinny, to help lift his mother out of the doldrums of grief. When she has a breakdown and spontaneously suggests that Max become Jordan’s new partner, the teens are startled but roll with the idea. With inspectors, customers, and rivals to worry about, Max and Jordan find plenty of time for friendly bonding, which leads to something more.
Reviewing The Music of What Happens for School Library Journal, Jenni Frencham appreciated the book’s “easy, conversational tone.” She observed that the escapades of the two boys and their various friends, along with the romance, “provide much-needed relief from the intensity of … individual struggles,” especially Max’s reckoning with whether or not he was raped. In Voice of Youth Advocates, Kirsten Pickel affirmed that Konigsberg “weaves an engaging story that is equal parts laugh-out-loud funny and tender and thoughtful. … The multifaceted characters will make readers laugh, cry, and ultimately cheer.”
Shifting gears to another topic reflecting his personal experiences, Konigsberg aimed to take the stigma away from talking about suicide with The Bridge. Speaking with a PEN interviewer, he related, “I am someone who’s dealt with chronic depression since my childhood. And actually, when I was 27 years old, I did attempt suicide by taking pills.” Just as he hoped to inspire members of the gay community with his previous novels, Konigsberg hoped that this novel could lend courage to those struggling with mental-health issues.
The original narrative finds two teens, Aaron and Tillie, meeting on the George Washington Bridge while both on the verge of jumping. Aaron is white, Jewish, and comfortably gay but feeling terribly lonely and depressed. Tillie is an adopted Korean American whose parents had an unexpected biological child, leaving her feeling like the odd girl out. From this set-up, the book plays out four possible outcomes to the scenario—one or the other jumping, both jumping, or neither jumping—then played out in turn. The narrative takes both protagonists’ points of view as well as those of friends and family. Calling The Bridge “intriguing” and valuable for those who might need it, Amanda Borgia concluded in School Library Journal, “This book handles mental health and suicide well and offers readers a realistic look at how one’s choices impact others.”
Konigsberg received the honor of a lifetime in 2018 when the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) founded an award in his name: the Bill Konigsberg Award for Acts and Activism for Equity and Inclusion through Young Adult Literature. Writing for the Huffington Post, Curtis M. Wong called the author “a virtuoso of crafting LGBTQ-inclusive narratives for young readers.”[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 1, 2008, Todd Morning, review of Out of the Pocket, p. 110; June 1, 2013, Michael Cart, review of Openly Straight, p. 76; March 1, 2015, Michael Cart, review of The Porcupine of Truth, p. 59; February 1, 2017, Michael Cart, review of Honestly Ben, p. 37.
BookPage, June, 2015, Kimberly Giarratano, review of The Porcupine of Truth, p. 28; April, 2017, Jill Ratzan, review of Honestly Ben, p. 28.
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, October, 2015, Deborah Stevenson, review of The Porcupine of Truth, p. 96.
Entertainment Weekly, March 28, 2017, Krystina Moran, “Honestly Ben‘s Bill Konigsberg on Writing the Sequel He’d Never Planned,” interview with Bill Konigsberg.
Horn Book, May-June, 2013, Claire E. Gross, review of Openly Straight, p. 85; March-April, 2017, Claire E. Gross, review of Honestly Ben, p. 93.
Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, October, 2008, James Blasingame, review of Out of the Pocket, p. 170.
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2008, review of Out of the Pocket; May 1, 2013, review of Openly Straight; March 1, 2015, review of The Porcupine of Truth; December 15, 2016, review of Honestly Ben.
Phoenix, March, 2017, Ofelia Montelongo, “Q&A with Honestly Ben YA Valley Author Bill Konigsberg.”
Publishers Weekly, April 6, 2015, review of The Porcupine of Truth, p. 63; January 2, 2017, review of Honestly Ben, p. 59.
School Library Journal, September, 2008, Megan Honig, review of Out of the Pocket, p. 188; March, 2015, Tony Hirt, review of The Porcupine of Truth, p. 158; May 26, 2015, Amanda MacGregor, review of The Porcupine of Truth; November, 2018, Jenni Frencham, review of The Music of What Happens, p. 77; September, 2020, Amanda Borgia, review of The Bridge, p. 91.
Voice of Youth Advocates, August 1, 2013, Christina Miller, review of Openly Straight, p. 62; April, 2017, Laura Panter, review of Honestly Ben, p. 62; December, 2018, Kirsten Pickel, review of The Music of What Happens, p. 68.
ONLINE
Bill Konigsberg website, http://www.billkonigsberg.com (April 27, 2021).
BookPeople Teen Press Corps, https://bookpeopleteens.wordpress.com/ (October 29, 2019), Xander Christou, “Interview: Bill Konigsberg at TTBF.”
Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (January 2, 2020), Curtis M. Wong, “Bill Konigsberg Aims to Spark Dialogue about Mental Health with Young Adult Novel”; (April 27, 2021), author profile.
Kid Lit 411, http://www.kidlit411.com/ (September 22, 2017), “Author Spotlight: Bill Konigsberg.”
Lambda Literary, http://www.lambdaliterary.org/ (October 21, 2017), Parrish Turner, review of Honestly Ben.
Mackin Community, https://www.mackincommunity.com/ (October 21, 2020), Lisa Bullard, “Bill Konigsberg: Bringing Suicide and Depression into the Light.”
Nerd Daily, https://www.thenerddaily.com/ (September 23, 2020), author Q&A.
PEN America website, http://www.penusa.org/ (December 31, 2017), “Writers Respond: Bill Konigsberg”; (October 6, 2020), “The PEN Pod: On Knowing We’re Not Alone with Bill Konigsberg.”
Publishers Weekly Online, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (August 27, 2020), Martha Schulman, “Four Questions for Bill Konigsberg.”
TeenReads, http://www.teenreads.com/ (December 31, 2017), author profile.
Tucson Tales, http://www.tucsontalespublication.com/ (April 28, 2017), Christy Duprey, “An Interview with Bill Konigsberg.”
Short Bio:
Bill Konigsberg is the award-winning author of six young adult novels. THE PORCUPINE OF TRUTH won the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Stonewall Book Award in 2016. OPENLY STRAIGHT won the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor, was a finalist for the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award and Lambda Literary Award in 2014 and has been translated into five languages. His debut novel, OUT OF THE POCKET, won the Lambda Literary Award in 2009. THE MUSIC OF WHAT HAPPENS, released in 2019, received two starred reviews, and has been optioned for a film. His latest novel, THE BRIDGE, was released in the fall of 2020. It has received two starred reviews. In 2018, The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)’s Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) established the Bill Konigsberg Award for Acts and Activism for Equity and Inclusion through Young Adult Literature.
Prior to turning his attention to writing books for teens, Bill was a sports writer and editor for The Associated Press and ESPN.com. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with his husband, Chuck, and their Australian Labradoodles, Mabel and Buford.
Long Bio:
Bill Konigsberg was born in 1970 in New York City. Expectations were high from birth – at least in terms of athletics. His parents figured he’d be a great soccer player, based on his spirited kicking from inside the womb. As it turned out, the highlight of his soccer career was at Camp Greylock in 1978, when he was chosen for the Camp’s “D” team. There were only four levels. Bill played alongside the likes of the kid who always showered alone, the chronic nose-bleeder, and the guy with recurrent poison ivy.
A B- student and adequate junior varsity athlete throughout high school, Bill was voted Most Likely to Avoid Doing Any Real Work In His Life by a panel of his disinterested peers. He proved them wrong with a series of strange-but-true jobs in his 20s – driver recruiter for a truck driving school, sales consultant for a phone company, and temp at Otis Elevators.
He worked at ESPN and ESPN.com from 1999-2002, where he developed a penchant for sharing too much information about himself. That character flaw earned him a GLAAD Media Award in 2002, for his column “Sports World Still a Struggle for Gays.”
While working as a sports writer and editor for The Associated Press in New York from 2005-08, Bill once called his husband, who was at the time working a desk job, from the New York Mets dugout before a game. “I’m so bored,” Bill whined. He slept on the couch for a week after making that call.
He wrote a novel called Audibles while in the M.F.A. program for creative writing at Arizona State University, and sold that novel to Penguin in 2007. His editor asked him to change the title so that it would appeal to people other than “football players who read.” The resulting novel, Out of the Pocket, received strong reviews from his mother, father, significant other and one girl who had a vague crush on him in high school. It won the Lambda Literary Award in 2009.
His second novel, Openly Straight, hit the bookshelves in late May of 2013. He describes the novel as “Twilight-like, only without vampires and wolves and angsty teenage girls. Also, set in an all-boys boarding school in Massachusetts. Otherwise, it’s like an exact replica.” That novel won the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor, which made him an unbearable dinner companion for months thereafter at least. Some might say to this day.
His third novel, The Porcupine of Truth, was released in May of 2015. He chose to put a porcupine in the title because this is America, and no one here knows what a platypus is. The novel won the Stonewall Book Award and PEN Center USA Literary Award. Many readers consider this Bill’s finest work to date, but it suffers from the lack of a really good sales pitch. When people ask what it’s about, Bill sighs and says, “how many hours do you have?” This has not turned out to be an effective elevator pitch.
Next came Honestly Ben, a companion book to Openly Straight. He wrote it so people would stop yelling at him about Openly Straight‘s ending. Honestly Ben received three starred reviews and made lots of people swoon over Ben some more, which irks Bill to no end as Ben is loosely based on his husband, Chuck. No one seems to swoon over Rafe, who is loosely based on Bill. Harrumph, says Bill.
The Music of What Happens arrived in February of 2019, and it’s a romance between two boys, and it includes a food truck that makes cloud eggs. Bill has an egg phobia.
In the fall of 2020, Bill will release his sixth book, The Bridge. About 30 percent of the hair Bill had at the start of writing The Bridge is now gone, never to return. He hopes the book winds up being worth the baldness.
Bill currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Every Uber driver Bill has ever had while on the road, upon hearing where he’s from, says, “It’s hot there, huh?” Bill has never hit anyone over the head with something large and heavy for saying this. He hopes to one day receive a lifetime achievement award for this, as it is his greatest achievement.
In 2018, The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)’s Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) established the Bill Konigsberg Award for Acts and Activism for Equity and Inclusion through Young Adult Literature. When Bill heard about this, there was about a five second period in which he thought, “Wait, am I dead?” He was not. Nothing has ever surprised Bill more than having an award named after him. He is waiting for the day when he’ll receive a phone call that starts, “I’m sorry, but there’s been a terrible mistake.”
Bill lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with his husband, Chuck, who hasn’t yet realized he’s too good for Bill, and their two Australian Labradoodles, Mabel and Buford, who complete him.
QUEER VOICES 01/02/2020 02:11 pm ET Updated Jan 03, 2020
Bill Konigsberg Aims To Spark Dialogue About Mental Health With Young Adult Novel
HuffPost has a first look at the cover for “The Bridge,” due out in September.
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By Curtis M. Wong
In the 12 years since the release of his debut novel, “Out of the Pocket,” Bill Konigsberg has proven himself a virtuoso of crafting LGBTQ-inclusive narratives for young readers.
For his latest book, however, the author said he aimed to encourage his audience to “come out of the closet” with regard to another complex and deeply personal subject.
HuffPost got an exclusive first look at the cover art for “The Bridge,” viewable below. Due out in September, the book follows two teenagers, Aaron and Tillie, who meet on New York’s George Washington Bridge as they are contemplating suicide. Four different outcomes to the scenario, and the aftermath each would create, are then explored.
Bill Konigsberg's "The Bridge" is due out Sept. 1.
SCHOLASTIC
Bill Konigsberg’s “The Bridge” is due out Sept. 1.
“The whole point of this is to really open up a discussion about suicide that we haven’t really had in this country or in this world,” Konigsberg told HuffPost. “I don’t know anybody who hasn’t met somebody who is either dealing with suicidal depression or dealt with it themselves. I think we have to take the taboo away from this.”
“The Bridge” marks a considerable departure for the Stonewall-, GLAAD Media- and Lambda Literary Award-winning author, whose 2019 novel, “The Music of What Happens,” was a gay-themed romance for young adults. Earlier books, including 2013’s “Openly Straight” and its 2017 follow-up, “Honestly Ben,” have emphasized other aspects of the LGBTQ youth experience.
Though one of the protagonists identifies as gay, Konigsberg wanted “The Bridge” to highlight the universal impact of mental health and suicide outside of the LGBTQ community. Though his book shares themes with the Netflix drama series “13 Reasons Why,” he sees his take as considerably less glossy.
“Honestly, I’ve had an easier time in my life talking about being gay than I have about my own issues with mental health, which have really hugely impacted my life,” the Arizona-based scribe said. “My calling is to go deeper and deeper into truth with every book.”
Calling “The Bridge” the “deepest book I’ve written,” Konigsberg hopes readers will come away from the novel with “a sense of hopefulness, because that’s what carried me through.”
“Sometimes life is just incredibly hard,” he added, “but what we’re called to do is hold on another day, as Wilson Phillips would tell us.”
“The Bridge” is due out Sept. 1.
INTERVIEW, UNCATEGORIZED
Interview: Bill Konigsberg at TTBF
Date: October 29, 2019
Author: teenpresscorps
0 Comments
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Interview by: Xander
Xander Christou: Hello, I’m here with Bill Konigsberg. The first question is who do you write for? Why do you write?
Bill Konigsberg: The nice answer is that I write for LGBTQ youth, and and that’s a nice side perk of what I do. But really, I can’t write for anybody, I have to just write for myself. I try to write the truth and whoever gets it, that’s a good thing. I write because I am always trying to figure stuff out about my life and about life in general. The way that I do it is through writing. For me, the topic is almost always about figuring out how to be myself or how a person is themselves, so it’s always about authenticity; that’s my thing. Every book, it seems, one way or another is about that.
XC: So like an exploration of yourself.
BK: Yeah. And going back to the teen years because I think that was the time that was most confusing, so I like to write about that time period.
XC: Why is LGBTQ+ representation important for you?
BK: It’s everything to me. You know, when I was a kid, and I was beginning to understand that I was gay, I had just about nothing to go by. This was an era in which there were no gay characters on TV or in movies, almost ever. And book-wise, just wasn’t a thing. And so, when I finally heard that there was such a as a gay bookstore called the Oscar Wilde bookstore in New York City where I grew up, and I walked in there and saw a whole room full of books about people like me, it was one of the most powerful moments of my life. I really do think those first books I read saved my life, just beginning to understand that I wasn’t alone because I was sure I was the only person like me, and I wasn’t. I want to give that gift to other people; that has been a life goal and it’s been a beautiful thing.
XC: What book have you read recently that you loved?
BK: I’ve read a bunch of books that I love. I’ve read Darius the Great is Not Okay, that was a great book. I Wish You All the Best was a really great book. It’s funny because I always think I better remember the books I read recently so I don’t forget when somebody asks me live. This is Kind of an Epic Love Story by Kacen Callender, that was good one, and James Brandon’s book, Ziggy, Stardust and Me, was a really terrific one.
XC: What would you say are your biggest strengths and weaknesses when writing?
BK: My biggest strength is that I’m very good with voice. I’m somebody who hears well, so I hear dialogue. I actually hear voices sometimes, so I’m very good at catching how things should sound. But the flip side of that is what I’m probably least good at, and I have to work really hard to mask it so that people don’t know. I’m not very good at setting. I’m not very good at seeing things, so when I right a scene I have to work really, really hard to make sure that I spend the adequate time on setting so that nobody knows my flaw. Oops, cat’s out of the bag!
XC: How did you come up with the title for The Music of What Happens?
BK: The Music of What Happens is actually the last line of a Seamus Heaney poem called “Song.” I had never heard of that poem, and my husband and I had a pastor and his wife9781338215502 over for dinner, a liberal pastor. Over dinner he just happened to say, I’d really like to share a poem with you. And he just started to recite a poem. I’ve never had anybody recite a poem to me before at dinner. I was like, “What is this?” but the poem really grabbed me, and when he said that line about the music of what happens… I’m a scavenger as a writer. I’m always looking for things and in some ways, I’m looking to take things from my life and organically find the right things. At that moment, I thought, “okay, that’s the title of the book. I don’t know why, but I bet I’ll figure it out.” And I did. It was exactly what I needed to hear.
XC: That’s amazing. Does he know?
BK: Yes, he does.
XC: Has he read the book?
BK: He has read the book.
XC: Were you always planning on writing Honestly, Ben or did the fans kind of push you?
BK: The fans made me. Openly Straight was just a one-off book. It was just a standalone book. I was trying to figure out what my next book would be, and I was actually in the office of my editor in New York at Scholastic, pitching something I wanted to write. And she was okay with it, she was listening and I just interrupted myself and I just said, not even having thought about it, “You don’t want a second Openly Straight from Ben’s perspective…” and she jumped out of her chair. She was like, “Yes! Write that!” This was early enough in my career that I just wanted to sell a book, so this was a moment where I just nodded my head and I said “yes.” I just sort of backed out of the room. I walked away thinking “how am I going to do that? I have to create a whole new story.” So that was a different kind of process.
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XC: Did the novella come before or after that?
BK: “Openly, Honestly” was something they asked me to write after I finished writing Honestly Ben, they wanted something that would be like a teaser to remind people about Openly Straight, and to get people excited about Honestly Ben. I just wanted to write something that happens right before Honestly Ben. It’s funny because people now say, “Oh, that’s a book.” It’s not, It’s like a little chapter. But I guess people consider it a novella or whatever. I like that story. Sometimes people read it on their own, and they’re like, “There’s nothing that happens in this book.” I’m like, “Well, no, not supposed to.
XC: What kind of music do you listen to?
BK: My favorite music is 80s music, because that’s when I was a teenager. And there’s a lot of 80s music in The Music of What Happens and that’s really just directly from my life. In fact, one of the characters Jordan, his room is decorated as an 80s bordello, which I don’t even think that’s really a thing, I don’t think there is such a thing as an 80s bordello. But I made it up and I was just like, that was how he’s going to design his room, it’s sort of tacky and has all of these 80s records all over the place. But that is my generation. I will say, for a guy who’s about to be 49, I am not that out of it. There is new music I love. I could not be any more in love with Lizzo than I am right now. And I listen to all sorts of stuff, but when I’m wanting to rock out, it’s always 80s.
XC: Are you going to see her on Sunday? She’s going to be in town!
BK: No, I had a chance to buy tickets before she was really big. She was coming to Phoenix and there were available tickets. I already liked her and I was like, maybe I should buy tickets. I’m so mad at myself. Because now she’s a huge success.
XC: What is one of your hidden talents?
BK: I’m a very good parallel parker. Even if my husband is driving and we have to do a parallel park, he will get out of the car and I will do it in one take. It’s always one take, that’s one thing I’m good at.
XC: That’s a good talent to have.
BK: It’s a good talent. Yeah, I mean except now they’re making those cars that are automated that will do it for you. It’s fake and it’s taking away my one talent.
XC: I read about your many interesting jobs that you had before you became a writer. Can you tell me what was an interesting experience from that time and what made you become a writer?
BK: I always wanted to be a writer. And in high school and college, especially college, I was studying writing and I just wanted to write and I wanted to write books. But somebody told me that you can’t make money writing books, so I just kind of dropped it and just tried to find other things to do. And I found some jobs where I could write in journalism, but I’m not a journalist, that’s not really what I’m supposed to be doing. A lot of times I was just finding things to do because I didn’t know what else to do. I worked at a truck driving school as a recruiter for truck drivers, I worked for the phone company, I worked for Otis elevators, it was just me searching for myself and missing, like a huge swing and miss, I wasn’t even close. But those are good experiences because I think that the more a writer does stuff, the more they’ll be able to pull on later. At some point I’ll be able to write a book in which I talk a lot about trucks, and people will be like “How do you know that?”
XC: I think you should write a book about elevators.
BK: I think that would be a great book. Everybody loves elevators.
XC: What is one of the most important things you’ve learned along the way as a writer?
BK: I would say to write through the dry spells, which means just because I can’t write, like nothing’s coming, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t write. I actually have to keep writing in order to get unstuck, so that that means keep sitting in the chair, even when I want to go out and do something else because I’m stuck, and not be afraid to write poorly, and not be afraid that it’s garbage and just keep going.
XC: If you go anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?
BK: Georgetown, Texas. *laughs* I would probably go to New Zealand, I’d really like to go to New Zealand. That would be the coolest. It’s supposed to be one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, and it just sounds so different than anything I’ve ever seen, so I would like to do that.
XC: What’s your favorite Halloween candy?
BK: It would either be Whoppers, Sweet Tarts or Sour Patch Kids. I love those things. By the way, not a good idea to be an adult who loves candy.
XC: Are they a good writing snack?
BK: Unfortunately. I could put a bowl of candy an write, and the bowl would be empty in 20 minutes. It doesn’t matter how big the bowl is.
XC: Wow. That’s another talent! You could do that while you’re parallel parking. Every time you parallel park perfectly: Whoppers.
BK: That’s a really good idea.
XC: Awesome, thank you so much.
BK: You’re so welcome, thank you, that was fun.
Bill Konigsberg was born in 1970 in New York City. Expectations were high from birth -- at least in terms of athletics. His parents figured he'd be a great soccer player, based on his spirited kicking from inside the womb. As it turned out, the highlight of his soccer career was at Camp Greylock in 1978, when he was chosen for the Camp's "D" team. There were only four levels. Bill played alongside the likes of the kid who always showered alone, the chronic nosebleeder and the guy with recurrent poison ivy.
A B- student and adequate junior varsity athlete throughout high school, Bill was voted Most Likely to Avoid Doing Any Real Work In His Life by a panel of his disinterested peers. He proved them wrong with a series of strange-but-true jobs in his 20s - driver recruiter for a truck driving school, sales consultant for a phone company, and temp at Otis Elevators.
He worked at ESPN and ESPN.com from 1999-2002, where he developed a penchant for sharing too much information about himself. That character flaw earned him a GLAAD Media Award in 2002, for his column "Sports World Still a Struggle for Gays."
As a sports writer and editor for The Associated Press in New York from 2005-08, Bill once called his husband, who was at the time working a desk job, from the New York Mets dugout before a game. "I'm so bored," Bill whined. He slept on the couch for a week.
He wrote a novel called Audibles at Arizona State, and sold that novel to Penguin in 2007. His editor asked him to change the title so that it would appeal to people other than "football players who read." The resulting novel, Out of the Pocket, received strong reviews from his mother, father, significant other and one girl who had a crush on him in high school. It won the Lambda Literary Award in 2009.
His second novel, Openly Straight, hit the bookshelves in late May of 2013. He describes the novel as "Twilight-like, only without vampires and wolves and angsty teenage girls. Also, set in an all-boys boarding school in Massachusetts. Otherwise, it's like an exact replica." That novel won the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor, which made him an unbearable dinner companion for months thereafter.
His third novel, The Porcupine of Truth, was released in May of 2015. He chose to put a porcupine in the title because this is America, and no one here knows what a platypus is. The novel won the Stonewall Book Award and PEN Center USA Literary Award.
Next came Honestly Ben, a companion book to Openly Straight. He wrote it so people would stop yelling at him about Openly Straight's ending. Honestly Ben received three starred reviews and made lots of people swoon over Ben some more, which irks Bill to no end as Ben is loosely based on his husband, Chuck. No one seems to swoon over Rafe, who is loosely based on Bill. Harrumph, says Bill.
The Music of What Happens arrived in February of 2019. The Bridge came in September of 2020. Both of these novels are so Konigsbergian that someone other than him used the term "Konigsbergian" to describe them.
Bill currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona, which may well be the most underrated city in America. He has a husband who is clearly too good for him, and two Labradoodles, Mabel and Buford, who complete him.
Ankara C·Writers Corner·September 23, 2020·5 min read
Q&A: Bill Konigsberg, Author of ‘The Bridge’
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Released on September 1st, The Bridge is Bill Konigsberg’s sixth novel. As a result of this work, Bill says on his “about” page that “…30 percent of the hair [he] had at the start of writing The Bridge is now gone, never to return.”
Being such an influence on his scalp health, we had no other option but to chat with him about the novel, to unravel every little detail about such an astounding piece of literature!
We ask about his influences, his writing process, and, of course, the best ways to approach a difficult topic, such as suicide is. He says he “hopes the book winds up being worth the baldness” and we are more than sure it definitely is.
Congratulations on your new novel, Bill. Could you start by telling us a little bit about yourself?
Thank you, and sure! I guess I’d say I’m a writer who cares deeply about being authentic. That when I started writing books, it was exceedingly important to me to write books that told the truth about being gay, and that every time I start a book, the question is always, “Who am I, and what is it that I have to say?” The Bridge is a departure in that instead of focusing on LGBTQIA+ issues, I set out to write a book that spoke the truth about chronic depression, of which I suffer, and suicidal ideation, which has be a struggle multiple times in my life. It’s funny, because I seem to have this idea that I’m supposed to express the deepest truths about myself in my novels, and I’m not sure that’s something that other human beings find to be an important or compelling goal.
If you could describe The Bridge with just three adjectives, which ones would they be?
Real. Gut-wrenching. Hopeful.
Who are your main influences when writing? And were you inspired by any other literary work or piece of media when writing The Bridge?
My biggest writing influences are Toni Morrison, Armistead Maupin, and David B. Feinberg. Morrison because she is/was a powerful truth teller who can make me shiver with a sentence. Maupin because of the heart he puts into his books. And Feinberg, a writer who died during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, because he was able to see the savagely funny in the tragic, and that he was able to make me laugh and cry simultaneously without being the least bit maudlin.
I was very aware of 13 Reasons Why, the book and TV show, while writing this book. I liked that book and show, but I didn’t think they were good conversation starters about suicide. I don’t think the author meant for them to be. I really wanted to write something that could be a book of record on the subject, something that could be an important part of a national or even international discussion about mental health and suicide.
In The Bridge, Aaron and Tillie don’t make a life-changing decision; they make four. Why did you decide to give your story four different outcomes? And how did you plan the novel out?
I felt that covering all the possible outcomes up on that bridge was the only way to expose the lie that my brain tells me when I’m depressed, one that I understand many other people hear from their brains, too: that it wouldn’t matter if I was no longer here. It’s a very dangerous lie, and what I wanted to show was what happens when each character gives in to that lie, and what might happen when they don’t. I wanted to show not just what happens to the people closest to them, but also people they don’t even know and who don’t know them, which is why I wrote the part about when they both decide to jump.
Loneliness, family ties, shattered expectations, forgiveness, self-acceptance, and the steep path towards recovery are some of the main topics that follow Aaron and Tillie’s story and revolve around the broader topic of suicide and depression. If you could have paid more attention to any of those recurrent topics, which one would it be and why?
Great question! If I could turn back time, I think perhaps I would have focused more on self-acceptance because it’s so important. As a nearly fifty-year-old person, I am sometimes amazed at how little the exterior stuff matters if and when I don’t love or accept myself. That has to be where it starts, and while I did focus there, I think even more focus might be useful.
Of course, suicide, suicidal thoughts, and depression are delicate topics to write about, especially when you have suffered from them yourself. What would be your advice for someone who wants to write about these topics and raise awareness about them?
My advice would be to take care of yourself! To have a plan for getting help, because it’s pretty hard to write about these issues while staying above them. I had to go pretty deep in while writing this book, and it was sometimes challenging, at the end of a writing day, to pull myself out. For that reason, I had plans in place, people who I knew I could talk to if necessary. Beyond that, I’d just say it’s important to sit in the feelings. It can be hard to commit to feeling those feelings, but that’s what writers do. We sit in the chair and feel what our characters feel, even when it’s unpleasant.
Suicide and mental illnesses tend to be either heavily romanticised in media or approached in such a way that leave people suffering from them feeling guilty. Where you worried about unconsciously leaning into these two approaches? How did you work around them?
I really started leaning heavily away from those, so I guess I’d say it was never far from my mind. I wanted this to be a book that pulled no punches, that was as real as I could be about mental illness and suicide, and there is simply nothing sexy or romantic about either. I guess because I was feeling so avoidant of them, I didn’t really notice working around them? Not sure if that makes sense, but it never came up.
On a hopeful note, where do you see Aaron and Tillie in 20 years?
Hmm… Tillie will be working with kids, especially kids who struggle with being bullied online or kids who struggle to speak up for themselves. No doubt. She will be a very powerful woman. Aaron will probably be a bit like me: someone who still struggles with wanting people to love and admire him. As such, his life will be up and down. He will have battled depression and prevailed many times, and he will lead with his heart. But because he has not mastered self-acceptance, he will still have dark times. Wow. Heavy answer, no?
And on a less serious note, if Aaron and Tillie could each recommend a book, which ones would they be?
The Bridge. Kidding! Aaron would recommend the new book K-pop Confidential by Stephan Lee, because it touches on his desire to be a famous musical idol. Tillie would recommend Faith: Taking Flight by Julie Murphy, which is about a kick-ass, plus-sized superhero.
Finally, what are your plans for the future? Are you working on any other novel at the moment?
I’m currently working on my next novel, Destination Unknown, which is about two boys who meet in 1987 in New York City, with the AIDS epidemic as the backdrop. That’s when and where I grew up, so I’m finally trying to write the story of what that was like.
Will you be picking up The Bridge? Tell us in the comments below!
THE PEN POD: ON KNOWING WE’RE NOT ALONE WITH BILL KONIGSBERG
October 6, 2020
Bill Konigsberg headshot
Bill Konigsberg is the award-winning author of six young adult novels, including The Porcupine of Truth, which won the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Stonewall Book Award in 2016, and Openly Straight, which won the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor and was a finalist for the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award and Lambda Literary Award in 2014. He joined us on The PEN Pod to discuss the hidden mental illness epidemic, especially amidst the ongoing pandemic; how we can promote a more sensitive and comprehensive national conversation about mental health; and the necessity of more LGBTQIA+ representation in young adult literature.
Content warning: This interview includes discussions of suicide and suicidal ideation.
The Bridge, your new novel, deals very frankly with mental health issues, in particular depression and suicide. These issues are obviously extremely important at all times, but for me it feels especially timely now, given the toll that this moment is having for so many of us—not just on our physical well-being with fears about the virus, but also our mental health, perhaps especially so for young people who are coming of age right now. How did this story emerge from your own experiences with mental health?
I am someone who’s dealt with chronic depression since my childhood. And actually, when I was 27 years old, I did attempt suicide by taking pills. For so much of my professional life, I’ve been writing and talking about being gay, and right around the time I was searching for my next book idea, after The Music of What Happens—which was my last book—I saw this epidemic of suicide all around me, especially in young people, so I decided it was time to write about it. And now, it kind of feels like a second coming out almost—in some ways talking about mental health is more challenging for me than even talking about sexual orientation. And maybe that’s because it’s new. As for this moment, yes. I hear so many people struggling, and I myself have been struggling with severe depression recently. One thing that’s helping is knowing that I’m not alone. I am certain that a lot of young people are struggling, and boy, do I hope this book helps them.
“Now, it kind of feels like a second coming out almost—in some ways talking about mental health is more challenging for me than even talking about sexual orientation. And maybe that’s because it’s new. As for this moment, yes. I hear so many people struggling, and I myself have been struggling with severe depression recently. One thing that’s helping is knowing that I’m not alone. I am certain that a lot of young people are struggling, and boy, do I hope this book helps them.”
Another guest we’ve had on the pod, Andrew Solomon, who is the author of The Noonday Demon and is a former president of PEN America has spoken very frankly about the hidden mental health epidemic that’s happening at the same time as the very visible one that we’re seeing now.
Yes, I saw that Michelle Obama recently spoke about dealing with sort of a low-grade depression. I just think that we’re learning that we need to talk about this, that this has been a taboo for so long, and we’re finally as a society coming to talk about mental health.
You mentioned earlier that it feels in a way like a second coming out for you, talking about depression and mental health. I found it really interesting that the two main characters of the novel—Aaron, who is white and gay, and Tillie, who is a Korean American adoptee—are both from marginalized groups in which perhaps it’s even harder to talk about the struggles that they’re facing. How did you decide to tell this story from these two dual perspectives?
I think I typically identify with characters from marginalized groups, and that’s probably because I grew up gay during the 1980s, when it was particularly challenging. In terms of these specific characters, my process is I generally allow my imagination to play, and the characters begin to come to me through their voices. I hear their voices. And with Aaron and Tillie, I heard them quite clearly. So, I just went and figured out the answer about why it would come. And I think it did—Aaron is very much like I was as a teen; he’s scared, he’s lonely, he has depression and doesn’t understand that. I certainly didn’t. Most importantly, he wants more than anything to be admired.
I also have just a strong connection really with Tillie, but I would say it’s more metaphorical. Growing up, my parents divorced when I was four, and my father got remarried and started a new family. And I guess just like Tillie, I felt like a misfit in my own home—like their new son was my father’s real son and that he wished he never had me, which probably wasn’t true, but it’s certainly how I felt. Tillie was adopted by wealthy white people who couldn’t have a biological child, and then about seven years later, they got pregnant. So she feels like she doesn’t belong, like an outcast, and I totally get that. She’s also a big girl. A reviewer wrote, “She’s a big girl in a skinny family,” and that is definitely something I can relate to metaphorically.
“I think the misfits have stories to tell. People who feel that way have more of a need to read in some ways, so I think it’s a perfect marriage.”
When I was a young adult and reading YA books, a lot of the experiences that I was drawn to—even if the experiences of the characters were very different from my own lived experiences—were of characters who felt like outcasts or were misfits, as you said. I think it’s just something that’s so needed, especially for younger readers.
Absolutely. I think the misfits have stories to tell. People who feel that way have more of a need to read in some ways, so I think it’s a perfect marriage.
Do you foresee us as a nation taking more positive steps towards recognizing the need for and providing proper resources for mental health?
Well, I certainly hope we will. I don’t think we will before November 2nd, but my hope is that there’s this groundswell for conversation about mental health issues. Whenever I’ve spoken about this book, either online or in person, I have to say that the excitement for the topic is unparalleled for me in my career. Everybody is looking for this conversation. And I do think given the right administration—an administration that has maybe a more caring regard for its citizens or more holistic one—positive steps are achievable. We just have to elect the right people and realize that money spent on mental health will actually greatly improve our society. I really hope that this is a new revolution. That would be a really good thing for us.
One important consideration in discussing or portraying difficult topics like suicide or self harm is, how to talk about it without glamorizing it. In recent years, there’s been increasing conversation and perhaps criticism leveled at shows like Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why. Was that something that you were considering while you were writing The Bridge? How can we as a society talk about these issues in an open, but still sensitive and mindful fashion?
That question hits the nail on the head. Those were the main things that I was thinking about when I wrote this book. I was and still am extremely concerned about media that glamorizes suicide, and I see a lot of it. When I think of 13 Reasons Why, I do think it’s a very smart story, and I think it’s well told—both book and movie, or TV show. But I think that there can be an impact to books and movies that go on to something like a post-suicide, revenge fantasy without actually exploring the repercussions of the actual suicide, especially for a teen audience.
In part of my research, I went up to the top of the George Washington Bridge where this book starts. I did that for research, and it showed me the brutal reality of that place, how dreadful and unhappy it is. My heart breaks, thinking of the people whose lives ended there, and I couldn’t leave soon enough. So I was very clear as I was writing about it that I wanted to make sure it was clear how brutal and awful that experience was. I didn’t want anyone thinking, “I should check that out,” and of course, by writing the book the way I did by exploring, as I do in this book, every possible permutation.
“The inclusion of joy is a huge shift that I’m sure is having a big impact on young people. I think what we have to do now is simply grow, find the unheard voices and have those stories told—preferably by their own voices, because that sort of representation was elemental to my own survival, as a young gay. I know how valuable and lifesaving it can be.”
So two kids meet on top of the George Washington Bridge. They both are there to jump. They interrupt each other. Then basically, we explore all four things that could happen: either of the teens jumping, both of them jumping, neither jumping. My hope is by doing that, the novel will be thought-provoking for young readers who are struggling with suicidal ideation, about what their choices are—, even when it feels like they have none, which is definitely how a deeply depressed person feels, and I know that. I wanted young readers to have a safe place to explore the ramifications of suicide and how far-reaching they are. I’ve been calling the inclusion of these topics a more complete discussion of suicide. And my hope is, as a nation and as a world, we start having more complete conversation.
How have media representations of LGBTQIA+ youth and the way that mental health particularly impacts the community changed over the last decade or so? And what do you think are some steps that we can take towards more accurate and well-rounded representations and stories?
Especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ plus youth, I think that the most incredible thing is just how media representations of LGBTQ+ youth have changed so dramatically in such a short time. When I published my first book Out of the Pocket, which was 2008, there were maybe 30 books that year in the young adult canon that had LGBTQ+ protagonists. I believe now it’s something like 300 to 400, the last I heard. But within that, there was this painful lack of novels with trans characters, people of color, and there were lack of novels with characters dealing with something other than coming out as the main issue. I mean, when I think about it, really, the inclusion of joy is a huge shift that I’m sure is having a big impact on young people. I think what we have to do now is simply grow, find the unheard voices and have those stories told—, preferably by their own voices, because that sort of representation was elemental to my own survival, as a young gay. I know how valuable and lifesaving it can be.
I feel like the answer to the question of how we can responsibly depict different stories always comes back to this idea of more. We just need to really open those gates and allow for stories about, for example, coming out or traumatic things, but also, talking about joy and what day-to-day life looks like for a character that would fit into any one of these intersections of identity. That’s something I absolutely agree with, and I’m hopeful that we do move in that direction overall.
I’m cautiously optimistic when I see some of the titles that are coming out. I think, “Okay, this is new. So let’s hope there’s more coming.”
Bill Konigsberg: Bringing Suicide and Depression into the Light
Lisa Bullard
By Lisa Bullard
October 21, 2020
Bill Konigsberg at NCTE in Houston in November 2018, right after his Papa Bear speech
Young adult author Bill Konigsberg is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Stonewall Book Award, the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor, the Lambda Literary Award, and many appearances on the YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults list. He’s also the inspiration for an ALAN award named the Bill Konigsberg Award for Acts and Activism for Equity and Inclusion through Young Adult Literature.
Konigsberg’s sixth novel, The Bridge, was released this September and it has already received strong reviews, including a starred review by Booklist that says, “This thought-provoking examination of depression, loneliness, suicide, family, friendship, and hope is both uplifting and terrifying…. This is a poignant, sincere look at the many ways mental illness affects young people.” The book follows two teens, Aaron and Tillie, who are strangers to each other until they decide to jump from the same bridge at the same time. Here, Konigsberg talks with Lisa Bullard about his riveting new novel.
Bill, congratulations on the positive reception for The Bridge. The book is not only a powerful read, but has the potential to be a critical resource for educators and others who works with teens. That being said, I’m glad that Booklist included the words “uplifting” and “hope” in their review, because those elements are also in the novel. I certainly found it life-affirming. What led you to write about depression and suicide?
Thank you so much! I do hope that people find the book life-affirming, as that is the most important thing to me in writing a book like this. I so dearly want people to find reasons to “stay another day.”
I wrote about suicide and depression because it was the next story I had to tell. I’ve had a lot to say about LGBTQ issues, and I said a lot about that in my first five novels. Dealing with suicidal ideation and severe depression has been just as big a part of my life, and it was time for me to explore that. These topics are so necessary for young people these days, because there’s an epidemic of suicide in our country, and indeed in the world.
You provide an opening note to The Bridge in which you talk about your struggles with depression and your suicide attempt. This created a powerful feeling of authenticity for me as I read the book. Did you also do additional research?
The truth is that for me, it all comes from within. When I start writing a character, I start with a part of me and I build out. In that way, Tillie and Aaron do have a fair amount of me in them. As for research, I think of life as research. Yes, I did do some research for this book, for things that are out of my understanding—what’s it like to be a parent and lose a child to suicide? What’s it like to be adopted and of a different ethnic background than your family? But it has to start from a place of lived experience for me to even begin to build a character. Research is something that happens along the way as I come to situations and experiences I haven’t faced. But for the kind of writer I am, it has to connect to the pre-research me in some way.
“I so dearly want people to find reasons to ‘stay another day.’”
You say that the characters have a fair amount of you in them. Aaron writes songs and hopes to gain fame through his music. Were you like that as a teenager?
Aaron’s desire to be famous and his songs come directly from my life. Directly. The lyrics are lyrics I wrote as a teenager. I was part of a duo with Rhonda Ross, the daughter of Diana Ross, and yes, I craved praise and acknowledgment. I think in short it was a desire to be seen, and a feeling of unworthiness that drove those desires, and I built Aaron around those desires and feelings. In fact, becoming a well-known author for young adults marries two of my greatest takeaways from my teen years: that ongoing need for notoriety, and the desire to help younger people feel seen and heard and represented.
Bill Konigsberg childhood photos
Your story makes it clear how devastating an impact someone’s suicide has on those around them. In one section, you even present glimpses of future consequences for individuals who are strangers to your main characters. What inspired you to include these “butterfly effect” moments in the story?
I loved writing that section and thinking about how the world outside of these two characters’ circles would be forever changed by their absences. I think from an “anti-suicide” perspective, this is a key aspect of the story. I know that at times when I’ve been depressed, I’ve thought that it wouldn’t matter if I disappeared from the world. That is so untrue, and it’s untrue for every single one of us.
As for including the butterfly effect, I actually started there. That was my first thought, and then, as I got deeper into the story, I found myself focusing more on the characters themselves and their families. That, after all, is the central aspect of the novel. First and foremost, we want to know how Tillie and Aaron and their families are impacted by these life-or-death choices.
“I know that at times when I’ve been depressed, I’ve thought that it wouldn’t matter if I disappeared from the world. That is so untrue, and it’s untrue for every single one of us.”
As you point out in the author’s note, LGBTQIA+ youth are at a much higher risk for suicide attempts. Your character Aaron is gay and out, but those don’t seem to be key factors in his suicide attempt. What shaped that decision for you?
My feeling was that we’ve read that story. There are plenty of stories out there that deal with coming out and the bullying of LGBTQ youth, and we’ve seen LGBTQ characters contemplate suicide. I’ve written some of those stories! I wanted this story to be its own thing, and so I put Aaron in a very liberal and LGBTQ-friendly school so we could focus more on depression itself. Another way of saying this is that there are people who die by suicide because they are LGBTQ, and those who die by suicide AND they are LGBTQ. When I had my suicide attempt at 27, mine was the latter. It doesn’t mean that being LGBTQ wasn’t related to my attempt, but it wasn’t at its center. Ditto for Aaron, I think. Being queer impacts everything about a person, but it doesn’t always have to be the central factor for everything that happens in a queer person’s life.
Bill Konisgberg with husband Chuck and dogs, Mabel and Buford
The view from Bill Konigsberg’s writing space in Central Phoenix
Bill Konigsberg hanging with his dogs Buford and Mabel and the Fierce Papa Bear stuffed animal gifted by Scholastic after his Fierce Papa Bear speech at NCTE in November of 2018.
You lead student discussions about suicide around the country. Some adults resist discussing this topic with young people because they worry about glamorizing suicide. Others stay silent because of the taboo nature of mental illness. Why is it so critical that we discuss suicide openly?
I wish that there had been a camera at some of these discussions with young people, because I do believe that it is critical to take suicide and depression out of the closet and bring it into the light so we can see it for what it is. I wish for the camera because then people could see how connected these young people felt with these discussions, and how much so many of them wanted—or needed—to share their feelings.
In these discussions, and by sharing my story of how I almost didn’t make it to 30, I am able to show how the world would be different had I not made it. And listening to kids tell their stories allows them to feel heard, and feeling seen and heard is critical for young people. It’s one of the cures for this suicide epidemic, I believe.
The key to these conversations, though, lies in a word you used: glamorizing. The worst, most damaging thing we can do to young people is to make suicide in any way alluring or glamorous. We need to see it for what it is, and that’s what I attempted to do by shining the light on the bridge in this book.
I like to imagine an author’s books sitting together on a shelf and forming a kind of musical ensemble. How will adding The Bridge enrich the music already being played by your body of work?
I apologize in advance for the narcissism involved in this answer, but the way I see it is that the bookshelf is me. It started thin, with a simple novel about coming out in the spotlight, which is metaphorically from my life, from when I came out while working at ESPN. With every book, the shelf became brighter and deeper and more representative of the authentic me, of the full picture of my life, with all its warts. Adding The Bridge brings in the reality of my lifelong struggle with severe depression.
“Listening to kids tell their stories allows them to feel heard, and feeling seen and heard is critical for young people. It’s one of the cures for this suicide epidemic, I believe.”
Your website, BillKonigsberg.com, has a fantastic Resources page for anyone with questions about suicide prevention. You’ve also shared resources on your Facebook page, including this post. Is your website the best way for readers to connect with you?
The contact information on my website is the best way to get in touch with me. On social media, I’m probably most active about posting updates on Facebook, though I am on Twitter and Instagram regularly, too.
Bill Konigsberg
Bill received his MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University in 2005. He currently lives in Brooklyn Heights with his significant other, Chuck Cahoy.
Genres: Young Adult Fiction
New Books
October 2020
(kindle)
Together, ApartSeptember 2021
(paperback)
The Bridge
Series
Openly Straight
1. Openly Straight (2013)
2. Honestly Ben (2017)
Openly, Honestly (2017)
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Novels
Out of the Pocket (2008)
The Porcupine of Truth (2015)
The Music of What Happens (2019)
The Bridge (2020)
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Collections
Together, Apart (2020) (with Erin A Craig, Auriane Desombre, Erin Hahn, Rachael Lippincott, Brittney Morris, Sanji Patel, Natasha Preston and Jennifer Yen)
Bill Konigsberg
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Bill Konigsberg
Konigsberg at the 2015 Texas Book Festival
Konigsberg at the 2015 Texas Book Festival
Born November 11, 1970 (age 50)
New York City
Occupation Author
Genre Young Adult, LGBT
Notable works Openly Straight, The Porcupine of Truth
Website
billkonigsberg.com
Bill Konigsberg is an award-winning American author, best known for his LGBT novels. He wrote Out of the Pocket, Openly Straight, The Porcupine of Truth, Honestly Ben, and The Music of What Happens. He lives with his husband outside of Phoenix, Arizona.
Contents
1 Work
2 Bibliography
3 References
4 External links
Work
Out of the Pocket won the 2008 Lambda Literary Award in the LGBT Children's/Young Adult category.[1] His second novel, Openly Straight, was released in June 2013.[2] It received a strongly positive review in The New York Times,[3] and starred reviews from Booklist and The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books. The novel won the Sid Fleischman Award for humor and was a finalist for the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award. It also made Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)'s Best Fiction for Young Adults list for 2014; the American Library Association Rainbow List; The Texas Library Association's Tayshas List (as a top ten title); and was nominated for the Georgia Peach Award. The novel has been translated into German, Vietnamese, and Portuguese. The Porcupine of Truth, which came out in June 2015, won the Stonewall Book Award and the PEN Center USA Literary Award, received starred reviews by Booklist and School Library Journal, made the Indie Next List, YALSA's Best Fiction for Young Adults list for 2016, Booklist Best of 2015, New York Public Library's Best Book for Teens 2015, Teenreads Favorites of 2015, the 2016 Rainbow List, and the Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) Choices 2016 List.[4]
In March 2016, Konigsberg released Honestly Ben, the sequel to Openly Straight. It received three starred reviews: from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and School Library Journal. Both novels in the series were released as audio books that month.[4]
Before becoming a fiction writer, Konigsberg was a sports writer. As a sports writer and editor for The Associated Press from 2005–08, he covered the New York Mets and his weekly fantasy baseball column appeared in newspapers across the country, from the New York Daily News to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In May 2001, while working for ESPN.com, he came out on the front page of the website in an article entitled "Sports World Still a Struggle for Gays".[5] That article won him a GLAAD Media Award the following year.
Since then, he has spoken at numerous venues across the country on what it is like to be a gay person in the world of sports. Some of the publications he has written for include The New York Times, North Jersey Herald-News and The Denver Post. His work has also appeared in Out Magazine. In 2011, his coming out was named the #64 moment in gay sports history by the website Outsports.com. His story was included as a chapter in the book Jocks 2: Coming Out to Play by Dan Woog.[6]
Konigsberg's coming-of-age novel The Music of What Happens was released on February 26, 2019. It was named "Best Fiction for Young Adults" in 2020 by YALSA.[7] It also entered the 2020 "Rainbow Book List" as a Top Ten Title.[8]
In September 2020, the young-adult book The Bridge was released. In December 2020, it was announced that the rights of the book were has acquired by Amazon and that it was to be adapted into a limited series, produced by Amazon Studios in association with PKM Productions. David Mandell is set to adapt the book for television and will write and executive produce, with Konigsberg being also executive producing along with Patrick Moran of PKM.
Bibliography
Out of the Pocket (2008)
Openly Straight (2013)
The Porcupine of Truth (2015)
Honestly Ben (2016)
The Music of What Happens (2019)
The Bridge (2020)
Four Questions for Bill Konigsberg
By Martha Schulman | Aug 27, 2020
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In Bill Konigsberg’s new YA novel The Bridge, main characters Aaron and Tillie meet by chance on the George Washington Bridge, having both gone there intending to jump. From that accident of timing, Konigsberg spins the story four ways: one where Aaron dies, one where Tillie does, one where they both do, and one where neither does and they join forces to confront their problems and make things better. Konigsberg spoke with PW about how talking helps fight depression and suicidal ideation, and what he hopes the book will do for readers.
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The things that make Tillie and Aaron suicidal aren’t catastrophic, per se. They’re more like last straws. Was that something you wanted to show about suicide?
Aaron suffers from chronic chemical depression, which is what I suffer from, and I think that things that don’t seem so bad on the outside can really cause challenges that don’t seem to make sense unless you’re living them. And that’s depression. For Tillie, I don’t think she’s depressed; I think she’s challenged. By that I guess I mean what is considered trauma doesn’t have to be a death in the family or something like that. Things impact us in personal ways that might not seem as if they’d be that impactful. What pushes Tillie to this point is a confluence of something that’s been going on for a long time that seems to be getting worse along with two events that were unexpected.
Aaron doesn’t know he’s depressed; he just thinks that’s how life is. Do you think that is typical among teens?
I think it is. It was certainly my experience. I was depressed as a kid, and you could never have told me that there was a word for what I was feeling. As a young person, you’re going through so many things, and it’s really tough when someone categorizes you. If someone had said something to me about depression, I’d have thought, that’s someone else, not me; you can’t put me in a box.
Aaron’s gay, and there have been findings that LGBTQ kids have a higher rate of suicide, but his identity isn’t depicted as a factor in his suicide attempt. What made you decide to handle his story in this way?
I wanted to avoid making the story about his identity. As a writer, I was discerning the difference between somebody wanting to kill himself because he’s gay and somebody wanting to kill himself and he’s gay. And it matters. I had a suicide attempt in my 20s, and I think it was that way. It was an and. It doesn’t mean that being gay didn’t impact me; it just wasn’t about that. This isn’t a problem novel. It’s not about what it feels like to be different, but being different has ripple effects. Similarly, Tillie’s being adopted affects everything about her, but it’s not the point of the story.
You write in your author’s note that a teacher once told you it was bad to talk to teens about suicide. Clearly you don’t agree. What are you hoping this book can do?
I think that this is the kind of book that, in the best of all worlds, teens will have someone they can talk with about it after reading it. Suicidal ideation and depression love quiet and darkness, so what I’m trying to do is get people talking and thinking about this. The point of the book, other than being a good story, is for people to not feel so alone in their struggles. The more that people can share this and say, “I read this book and the characters struggled and I related to it. Do you relate to it?” the more they’ll be able to build connections like the characters do in the fourth version of the story.
The Bridge by Bill Konigsberg. Scholastic Press, Sept. 1 $18.99 ISBN 978-1-338-32503-4
Ankara C·Writers Corner·September 23, 2020·5 min read
Q&A: Bill Konigsberg, Author of ‘The Bridge’
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Released on September 1st, The Bridge is Bill Konigsberg’s sixth novel. As a result of this work, Bill says on his “about” page that “…30 percent of the hair [he] had at the start of writing The Bridge is now gone, never to return.”
Being such an influence on his scalp health, we had no other option but to chat with him about the novel, to unravel every little detail about such an astounding piece of literature!
We ask about his influences, his writing process, and, of course, the best ways to approach a difficult topic, such as suicide is. He says he “hopes the book winds up being worth the baldness” and we are more than sure it definitely is.
Congratulations on your new novel, Bill. Could you start by telling us a little bit about yourself?
Thank you, and sure! I guess I’d say I’m a writer who cares deeply about being authentic. That when I started writing books, it was exceedingly important to me to write books that told the truth about being gay, and that every time I start a book, the question is always, “Who am I, and what is it that I have to say?” The Bridge is a departure in that instead of focusing on LGBTQIA+ issues, I set out to write a book that spoke the truth about chronic depression, of which I suffer, and suicidal ideation, which has be a struggle multiple times in my life. It’s funny, because I seem to have this idea that I’m supposed to express the deepest truths about myself in my novels, and I’m not sure that’s something that other human beings find to be an important or compelling goal.
If you could describe The Bridge with just three adjectives, which ones would they be?
Real. Gut-wrenching. Hopeful.
Who are your main influences when writing? And were you inspired by any other literary work or piece of media when writing The Bridge?
My biggest writing influences are Toni Morrison, Armistead Maupin, and David B. Feinberg. Morrison because she is/was a powerful truth teller who can make me shiver with a sentence. Maupin because of the heart he puts into his books. And Feinberg, a writer who died during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, because he was able to see the savagely funny in the tragic, and that he was able to make me laugh and cry simultaneously without being the least bit maudlin.
I was very aware of 13 Reasons Why, the book and TV show, while writing this book. I liked that book and show, but I didn’t think they were good conversation starters about suicide. I don’t think the author meant for them to be. I really wanted to write something that could be a book of record on the subject, something that could be an important part of a national or even international discussion about mental health and suicide.
In The Bridge, Aaron and Tillie don’t make a life-changing decision; they make four. Why did you decide to give your story four different outcomes? And how did you plan the novel out?
I felt that covering all the possible outcomes up on that bridge was the only way to expose the lie that my brain tells me when I’m depressed, one that I understand many other people hear from their brains, too: that it wouldn’t matter if I was no longer here. It’s a very dangerous lie, and what I wanted to show was what happens when each character gives in to that lie, and what might happen when they don’t. I wanted to show not just what happens to the people closest to them, but also people they don’t even know and who don’t know them, which is why I wrote the part about when they both decide to jump.
Loneliness, family ties, shattered expectations, forgiveness, self-acceptance, and the steep path towards recovery are some of the main topics that follow Aaron and Tillie’s story and revolve around the broader topic of suicide and depression. If you could have paid more attention to any of those recurrent topics, which one would it be and why?
Great question! If I could turn back time, I think perhaps I would have focused more on self-acceptance because it’s so important. As a nearly fifty-year-old person, I am sometimes amazed at how little the exterior stuff matters if and when I don’t love or accept myself. That has to be where it starts, and while I did focus there, I think even more focus might be useful.
Of course, suicide, suicidal thoughts, and depression are delicate topics to write about, especially when you have suffered from them yourself. What would be your advice for someone who wants to write about these topics and raise awareness about them?
My advice would be to take care of yourself! To have a plan for getting help, because it’s pretty hard to write about these issues while staying above them. I had to go pretty deep in while writing this book, and it was sometimes challenging, at the end of a writing day, to pull myself out. For that reason, I had plans in place, people who I knew I could talk to if necessary. Beyond that, I’d just say it’s important to sit in the feelings. It can be hard to commit to feeling those feelings, but that’s what writers do. We sit in the chair and feel what our characters feel, even when it’s unpleasant.
Suicide and mental illnesses tend to be either heavily romanticised in media or approached in such a way that leave people suffering from them feeling guilty. Where you worried about unconsciously leaning into these two approaches? How did you work around them?
I really started leaning heavily away from those, so I guess I’d say it was never far from my mind. I wanted this to be a book that pulled no punches, that was as real as I could be about mental illness and suicide, and there is simply nothing sexy or romantic about either. I guess because I was feeling so avoidant of them, I didn’t really notice working around them? Not sure if that makes sense, but it never came up.
On a hopeful note, where do you see Aaron and Tillie in 20 years?
Hmm… Tillie will be working with kids, especially kids who struggle with being bullied online or kids who struggle to speak up for themselves. No doubt. She will be a very powerful woman. Aaron will probably be a bit like me: someone who still struggles with wanting people to love and admire him. As such, his life will be up and down. He will have battled depression and prevailed many times, and he will lead with his heart. But because he has not mastered self-acceptance, he will still have dark times. Wow. Heavy answer, no?
And on a less serious note, if Aaron and Tillie could each recommend a book, which ones would they be?
The Bridge. Kidding! Aaron would recommend the new book K-pop Confidential by Stephan Lee, because it touches on his desire to be a famous musical idol. Tillie would recommend Faith: Taking Flight by Julie Murphy, which is about a kick-ass, plus-sized superhero.
Finally, what are your plans for the future? Are you working on any other novel at the moment?
I’m currently working on my next novel, Destination Unknown, which is about two boys who meet in 1987 in New York City, with the AIDS epidemic as the backdrop. That’s when and where I grew up, so I’m finally trying to write the story of what that was like.
Bill Konigsberg: Bringing Suicide and Depression into the Light
Lisa Bullard
By Lisa Bullard
October 21, 2020
Young adult author Bill Konigsberg is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Stonewall Book Award, the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor, the Lambda Literary Award, and many appearances on the YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults list. He’s also the inspiration for an ALAN award named the Bill Konigsberg Award for Acts and Activism for Equity and Inclusion through Young Adult Literature.
Konigsberg’s sixth novel, The Bridge, was released this September and it has already received strong reviews, including a starred review by Booklist that says, “This thought-provoking examination of depression, loneliness, suicide, family, friendship, and hope is both uplifting and terrifying…. This is a poignant, sincere look at the many ways mental illness affects young people.” The book follows two teens, Aaron and Tillie, who are strangers to each other until they decide to jump from the same bridge at the same time. Here, Konigsberg talks with Lisa Bullard about his riveting new novel.
Bill, congratulations on the positive reception for The Bridge. The book is not only a powerful read, but has the potential to be a critical resource for educators and others who works with teens. That being said, I’m glad that Booklist included the words “uplifting” and “hope” in their review, because those elements are also in the novel. I certainly found it life-affirming. What led you to write about depression and suicide?
Thank you so much! I do hope that people find the book life-affirming, as that is the most important thing to me in writing a book like this. I so dearly want people to find reasons to “stay another day.”
I wrote about suicide and depression because it was the next story I had to tell. I’ve had a lot to say about LGBTQ issues, and I said a lot about that in my first five novels. Dealing with suicidal ideation and severe depression has been just as big a part of my life, and it was time for me to explore that. These topics are so necessary for young people these days, because there’s an epidemic of suicide in our country, and indeed in the world.
You provide an opening note to The Bridge in which you talk about your struggles with depression and your suicide attempt. This created a powerful feeling of authenticity for me as I read the book. Did you also do additional research?
The truth is that for me, it all comes from within. When I start writing a character, I start with a part of me and I build out. In that way, Tillie and Aaron do have a fair amount of me in them. As for research, I think of life as research. Yes, I did do some research for this book, for things that are out of my understanding—what’s it like to be a parent and lose a child to suicide? What’s it like to be adopted and of a different ethnic background than your family? But it has to start from a place of lived experience for me to even begin to build a character. Research is something that happens along the way as I come to situations and experiences I haven’t faced. But for the kind of writer I am, it has to connect to the pre-research me in some way.
“I so dearly want people to find reasons to ‘stay another day.’”
You say that the characters have a fair amount of you in them. Aaron writes songs and hopes to gain fame through his music. Were you like that as a teenager?
Aaron’s desire to be famous and his songs come directly from my life. Directly. The lyrics are lyrics I wrote as a teenager. I was part of a duo with Rhonda Ross, the daughter of Diana Ross, and yes, I craved praise and acknowledgment. I think in short it was a desire to be seen, and a feeling of unworthiness that drove those desires, and I built Aaron around those desires and feelings. In fact, becoming a well-known author for young adults marries two of my greatest takeaways from my teen years: that ongoing need for notoriety, and the desire to help younger people feel seen and heard and represented.
Bill Konigsberg childhood photos
Your story makes it clear how devastating an impact someone’s suicide has on those around them. In one section, you even present glimpses of future consequences for individuals who are strangers to your main characters. What inspired you to include these “butterfly effect” moments in the story?
I loved writing that section and thinking about how the world outside of these two characters’ circles would be forever changed by their absences. I think from an “anti-suicide” perspective, this is a key aspect of the story. I know that at times when I’ve been depressed, I’ve thought that it wouldn’t matter if I disappeared from the world. That is so untrue, and it’s untrue for every single one of us.
As for including the butterfly effect, I actually started there. That was my first thought, and then, as I got deeper into the story, I found myself focusing more on the characters themselves and their families. That, after all, is the central aspect of the novel. First and foremost, we want to know how Tillie and Aaron and their families are impacted by these life-or-death choices.
“I know that at times when I’ve been depressed, I’ve thought that it wouldn’t matter if I disappeared from the world. That is so untrue, and it’s untrue for every single one of us.”
As you point out in the author’s note, LGBTQIA+ youth are at a much higher risk for suicide attempts. Your character Aaron is gay and out, but those don’t seem to be key factors in his suicide attempt. What shaped that decision for you?
My feeling was that we’ve read that story. There are plenty of stories out there that deal with coming out and the bullying of LGBTQ youth, and we’ve seen LGBTQ characters contemplate suicide. I’ve written some of those stories! I wanted this story to be its own thing, and so I put Aaron in a very liberal and LGBTQ-friendly school so we could focus more on depression itself. Another way of saying this is that there are people who die by suicide because they are LGBTQ, and those who die by suicide AND they are LGBTQ. When I had my suicide attempt at 27, mine was the latter. It doesn’t mean that being LGBTQ wasn’t related to my attempt, but it wasn’t at its center. Ditto for Aaron, I think. Being queer impacts everything about a person, but it doesn’t always have to be the central factor for everything that happens in a queer person’s life.
Bill Konisgberg with husband Chuck and dogs, Mabel and Buford
The view from Bill Konigsberg’s writing space in Central Phoenix
Bill Konigsberg hanging with his dogs Buford and Mabel and the Fierce Papa Bear stuffed animal gifted by Scholastic after his Fierce Papa Bear speech at NCTE in November of 2018.
You lead student discussions about suicide around the country. Some adults resist discussing this topic with young people because they worry about glamorizing suicide. Others stay silent because of the taboo nature of mental illness. Why is it so critical that we discuss suicide openly?
I wish that there had been a camera at some of these discussions with young people, because I do believe that it is critical to take suicide and depression out of the closet and bring it into the light so we can see it for what it is. I wish for the camera because then people could see how connected these young people felt with these discussions, and how much so many of them wanted—or needed—to share their feelings.
In these discussions, and by sharing my story of how I almost didn’t make it to 30, I am able to show how the world would be different had I not made it. And listening to kids tell their stories allows them to feel heard, and feeling seen and heard is critical for young people. It’s one of the cures for this suicide epidemic, I believe.
The key to these conversations, though, lies in a word you used: glamorizing. The worst, most damaging thing we can do to young people is to make suicide in any way alluring or glamorous. We need to see it for what it is, and that’s what I attempted to do by shining the light on the bridge in this book.
I like to imagine an author’s books sitting together on a shelf and forming a kind of musical ensemble. How will adding The Bridge enrich the music already being played by your body of work?
I apologize in advance for the narcissism involved in this answer, but the way I see it is that the bookshelf is me. It started thin, with a simple novel about coming out in the spotlight, which is metaphorically from my life, from when I came out while working at ESPN. With every book, the shelf became brighter and deeper and more representative of the authentic me, of the full picture of my life, with all its warts. Adding The Bridge brings in the reality of my lifelong struggle with severe depression.
“Listening to kids tell their stories allows them to feel heard, and feeling seen and heard is critical for young people. It’s one of the cures for this suicide epidemic, I believe.”
Your website, BillKonigsberg.com, has a fantastic Resources page for anyone with questions about suicide prevention. You’ve also shared resources on your Facebook page, including this post. Is your website the best way for readers to connect with you?
The contact information on my website is the best way to get in touch with me. On social media, I’m probably most active about posting updates on Facebook, though I am on Twitter and Instagram regularly, too.
THE PEN POD: ON KNOWING WE’RE NOT ALONE WITH BILL KONIGSBERG
October 6, 2020
Bill Konigsberg headshot
Bill Konigsberg is the award-winning author of six young adult novels, including The Porcupine of Truth, which won the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Stonewall Book Award in 2016, and Openly Straight, which won the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor and was a finalist for the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award and Lambda Literary Award in 2014. He joined us on The PEN Pod to discuss the hidden mental illness epidemic, especially amidst the ongoing pandemic; how we can promote a more sensitive and comprehensive national conversation about mental health; and the necessity of more LGBTQIA+ representation in young adult literature.
Content warning: This interview includes discussions of suicide and suicidal ideation.
The Bridge, your new novel, deals very frankly with mental health issues, in particular depression and suicide. These issues are obviously extremely important at all times, but for me it feels especially timely now, given the toll that this moment is having for so many of us—not just on our physical well-being with fears about the virus, but also our mental health, perhaps especially so for young people who are coming of age right now. How did this story emerge from your own experiences with mental health?
I am someone who’s dealt with chronic depression since my childhood. And actually, when I was 27 years old, I did attempt suicide by taking pills. For so much of my professional life, I’ve been writing and talking about being gay, and right around the time I was searching for my next book idea, after The Music of What Happens—which was my last book—I saw this epidemic of suicide all around me, especially in young people, so I decided it was time to write about it. And now, it kind of feels like a second coming out almost—in some ways talking about mental health is more challenging for me than even talking about sexual orientation. And maybe that’s because it’s new. As for this moment, yes. I hear so many people struggling, and I myself have been struggling with severe depression recently. One thing that’s helping is knowing that I’m not alone. I am certain that a lot of young people are struggling, and boy, do I hope this book helps them.
“Now, it kind of feels like a second coming out almost—in some ways talking about mental health is more challenging for me than even talking about sexual orientation. And maybe that’s because it’s new. As for this moment, yes. I hear so many people struggling, and I myself have been struggling with severe depression recently. One thing that’s helping is knowing that I’m not alone. I am certain that a lot of young people are struggling, and boy, do I hope this book helps them.”
Another guest we’ve had on the pod, Andrew Solomon, who is the author of The Noonday Demon and is a former president of PEN America has spoken very frankly about the hidden mental health epidemic that’s happening at the same time as the very visible one that we’re seeing now.
Yes, I saw that Michelle Obama recently spoke about dealing with sort of a low-grade depression. I just think that we’re learning that we need to talk about this, that this has been a taboo for so long, and we’re finally as a society coming to talk about mental health.
You mentioned earlier that it feels in a way like a second coming out for you, talking about depression and mental health. I found it really interesting that the two main characters of the novel—Aaron, who is white and gay, and Tillie, who is a Korean American adoptee—are both from marginalized groups in which perhaps it’s even harder to talk about the struggles that they’re facing. How did you decide to tell this story from these two dual perspectives?
I think I typically identify with characters from marginalized groups, and that’s probably because I grew up gay during the 1980s, when it was particularly challenging. In terms of these specific characters, my process is I generally allow my imagination to play, and the characters begin to come to me through their voices. I hear their voices. And with Aaron and Tillie, I heard them quite clearly. So, I just went and figured out the answer about why it would come. And I think it did—Aaron is very much like I was as a teen; he’s scared, he’s lonely, he has depression and doesn’t understand that. I certainly didn’t. Most importantly, he wants more than anything to be admired.
I also have just a strong connection really with Tillie, but I would say it’s more metaphorical. Growing up, my parents divorced when I was four, and my father got remarried and started a new family. And I guess just like Tillie, I felt like a misfit in my own home—like their new son was my father’s real son and that he wished he never had me, which probably wasn’t true, but it’s certainly how I felt. Tillie was adopted by wealthy white people who couldn’t have a biological child, and then about seven years later, they got pregnant. So she feels like she doesn’t belong, like an outcast, and I totally get that. She’s also a big girl. A reviewer wrote, “She’s a big girl in a skinny family,” and that is definitely something I can relate to metaphorically.
“I think the misfits have stories to tell. People who feel that way have more of a need to read in some ways, so I think it’s a perfect marriage.”
When I was a young adult and reading YA books, a lot of the experiences that I was drawn to—even if the experiences of the characters were very different from my own lived experiences—were of characters who felt like outcasts or were misfits, as you said. I think it’s just something that’s so needed, especially for younger readers.
Absolutely. I think the misfits have stories to tell. People who feel that way have more of a need to read in some ways, so I think it’s a perfect marriage.
Do you foresee us as a nation taking more positive steps towards recognizing the need for and providing proper resources for mental health?
Well, I certainly hope we will. I don’t think we will before November 2nd, but my hope is that there’s this groundswell for conversation about mental health issues. Whenever I’ve spoken about this book, either online or in person, I have to say that the excitement for the topic is unparalleled for me in my career. Everybody is looking for this conversation. And I do think given the right administration—an administration that has maybe a more caring regard for its citizens or more holistic one—positive steps are achievable. We just have to elect the right people and realize that money spent on mental health will actually greatly improve our society. I really hope that this is a new revolution. That would be a really good thing for us.
One important consideration in discussing or portraying difficult topics like suicide or self harm is, how to talk about it without glamorizing it. In recent years, there’s been increasing conversation and perhaps criticism leveled at shows like Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why. Was that something that you were considering while you were writing The Bridge? How can we as a society talk about these issues in an open, but still sensitive and mindful fashion?
That question hits the nail on the head. Those were the main things that I was thinking about when I wrote this book. I was and still am extremely concerned about media that glamorizes suicide, and I see a lot of it. When I think of 13 Reasons Why, I do think it’s a very smart story, and I think it’s well told—both book and movie, or TV show. But I think that there can be an impact to books and movies that go on to something like a post-suicide, revenge fantasy without actually exploring the repercussions of the actual suicide, especially for a teen audience.
In part of my research, I went up to the top of the George Washington Bridge where this book starts. I did that for research, and it showed me the brutal reality of that place, how dreadful and unhappy it is. My heart breaks, thinking of the people whose lives ended there, and I couldn’t leave soon enough. So I was very clear as I was writing about it that I wanted to make sure it was clear how brutal and awful that experience was. I didn’t want anyone thinking, “I should check that out,” and of course, by writing the book the way I did by exploring, as I do in this book, every possible permutation.
“The inclusion of joy is a huge shift that I’m sure is having a big impact on young people. I think what we have to do now is simply grow, find the unheard voices and have those stories told—preferably by their own voices, because that sort of representation was elemental to my own survival, as a young gay. I know how valuable and lifesaving it can be.”
So two kids meet on top of the George Washington Bridge. They both are there to jump. They interrupt each other. Then basically, we explore all four things that could happen: either of the teens jumping, both of them jumping, neither jumping. My hope is by doing that, the novel will be thought-provoking for young readers who are struggling with suicidal ideation, about what their choices are—, even when it feels like they have none, which is definitely how a deeply depressed person feels, and I know that. I wanted young readers to have a safe place to explore the ramifications of suicide and how far-reaching they are. I’ve been calling the inclusion of these topics a more complete discussion of suicide. And my hope is, as a nation and as a world, we start having more complete conversation.
How have media representations of LGBTQIA+ youth and the way that mental health particularly impacts the community changed over the last decade or so? And what do you think are some steps that we can take towards more accurate and well-rounded representations and stories?
Especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ plus youth, I think that the most incredible thing is just how media representations of LGBTQ+ youth have changed so dramatically in such a short time. When I published my first book Out of the Pocket, which was 2008, there were maybe 30 books that year in the young adult canon that had LGBTQ+ protagonists. I believe now it’s something like 300 to 400, the last I heard. But within that, there was this painful lack of novels with trans characters, people of color, and there were lack of novels with characters dealing with something other than coming out as the main issue. I mean, when I think about it, really, the inclusion of joy is a huge shift that I’m sure is having a big impact on young people. I think what we have to do now is simply grow, find the unheard voices and have those stories told—, preferably by their own voices, because that sort of representation was elemental to my own survival, as a young gay. I know how valuable and lifesaving it can be.
I feel like the answer to the question of how we can responsibly depict different stories always comes back to this idea of more. We just need to really open those gates and allow for stories about, for example, coming out or traumatic things, but also, talking about joy and what day-to-day life looks like for a character that would fit into any one of these intersections of identity. That’s something I absolutely agree with, and I’m hopeful that we do move in that direction overall.
I’m cautiously optimistic when I see some of the titles that are coming out. I think, “Okay, this is new. So let’s hope there’s more coming.”
KONIGSBERG, Bill. The Music of What Happens. 352p. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine. Jan. 2019. Tr $17.99. ISBN 9781338215502.
Gr 10 Up--Max is a popular high school athlete who spends most of his free time with his two best friends, playing video games and joking around. Max has a secret, though, that he hasn't told anyone, not even his buddies, and he's trying to be the fighter his father raised him to be. Jordan is attempting to help his mom with their food truck. Jordan hires Max to work the food truck with him, and two boys who thought they had nothing in common find that they are more alike than they thought. This story has an easy, conversational tone, and the high jinks of the two boys and their separate groups of friends, in addition to their budding romance, provide much-needed relief from the intensity of the scenes in which each of them is dealing with his individual struggles. Some readers may be turned off by Max and his buddies and their "locker room talk," occasionally resorting to homophobic slurs. Max grapples with understanding whether he has actually been raped and what he should do about it; the consequences of the rape also cause him to question the lessons his father taught him as a young child. While the author makes clear what happened to Max, the assault is not described in graphic detail. In spite of this novel's focus on heavier topics, its readability and relatability will make it popular among most teens. Give to fans of Benjamin Alire Saenz's Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak. VERDICT A first purchase for public and high school libraries.--Jenni Frencham, formerly at Columbus Public Library, W1
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Frencham, Jenni. "KONIGSBERG, Bill. The Music of What Happens." School Library Journal, vol. 64, no. 11, 2018, p. 77. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A561449371/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=bbce5f4f. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Konigsberg, Bill. The Music of What Happens. Arthur A. Levine, February 2019. 338p. $17.99. 978-1-338-21550-2.
5Q * 5P * S (a)
When Max agrees to go to the farmers' market with his mother, he is trying to forget a sexual encounter with a college guy the previous night. He is pleasantly surprised when he sees the cute, quiet guy from his AP Literature class working on a food truck with his mother. Jordan has brought his deceased fathers truck, Coq Au Vinny, out of retirement in an effort to give his grieving mother a fresh start. He also hopes they can earn enough money to keep their home. Jordan is embarrassed when confident, popular Max witnesses his mother have a meltdown and is mortified when she suggests Max take her place on the truck for the summer. Max is taken aback by the offer, but he senses that shy, awkward Jordan could use some help. The guys jump into their new business venture and soon realize that they have a steep learning curve ahead of them. They must deal with food inspectors, demanding customers, and rival food truck proprietors. As Max and Jordan navigate Coq Au Vinny through the sweltering Arizona heat, they form a fast friendship, beginning to trust each other with their greatest fears and secrets. Somewhere along the line, their mutual attraction and friendship lead to something more.
Konigsberg weaves an engaging story that is equal parts laugh-out-loud funny and tender and thoughtful. He addresses issues of date rape and parental neglect with sensitivity. The multifaceted characters will make readers laugh, cry, and ultimately cheer.--Kirsten Pickel.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
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Pickel, Kirsten. "Konigsberg, Bill. The Music of What Happens." Voice of Youth Advocates, vol. 41, no. 5, Dec. 2018, p. 68+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A571836486/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8cd41465. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
KONIGSBERG, Bill. The Bridge. 400p. Scholastic. Sept. 2020. Tr $18.99. ISBN 9781338325034. POP
Gr 9 Up--Aaron and Tillie don't know each other, but on the same day, at the same time, they both find themselves on the edge of the George Washington Bridge, with the same intentions. Aaron, who is white and Jewish, is comfortable being gay, but he struggles with depression and loneliness. Tillie, who is Korean American, doesn't feel like she can ever be good enough, and it doesn't help when people remind her. The day at the bridge has four possible outcomes: Tillie jumps and Aaron doesn't, Aaron jumps but not Tillie, they both jump, or they both decide to get down from that ledge and walk away. An intriguing book that captures not just different possible outcomes of a situation but also how it affects others. Told in the third person, this book moves among multiple character's perspectives, not just Tillie and Aaron's. The book is divided into four parts that explore each of the outcomes and how the characters handle what happened. While three of the sections are done well, the section in which they both jump is lacking--Konigsberg spends just a couple pages directly following their deaths and the narrative makes multiple awkward and confusing time jumps. In the end, though, this book handles mental health and suicide well and offers readers a realistic look at how one's choices impact others. VERDICT While not for every reader, those who need this book will find value in it.--Amanda Borgia, Uniondale P.L., NY
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Borgia, Amanda. "KONIGSBERG, Bill. The Bridge." School Library Journal, vol. 66, no. 9, 2020, p. 91+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A634532087/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3c64f0ae. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.