After getting disappointing news about yet another fellowship, I was thinking I ought to be done with poetry. Whatever I do, I can’t seem to hold it right for very long. I have all these thoughts and ideals about what I think Poetry should be. Sometimes I really do operate out of that ideal. I remember that poetry isn’t about making me somebody. It doesn’t exist to put me in a job or a book deal. I remember that poetry isn’t the goal at all, but a way to tune into the goal, a way to talk about the goal, re-think the goal. Poetry is supposed to serve humanity, to teach us about each other and ourselves, and to make us pay attention to the world. Poetry is supposed to (in my mind) cause us to forgive, to spur us, to quiet us, to jar us. Poetry should make us wonder…

Sweet Sixteener Marisa Reichardt recently spoke to Fearless Fifteener Jackie Lea Sommers about her YA contemporary debut novel, TRUEST (September 1, 2015 from HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books).

About the Author:

Jackie Lea Sommers lives and loves and writes in Minnesota, where the people are nice and the o’s are long. Like West, Jackie grew up in a small town with few secrets, but now she makes her home in the Twin Cities, where she lives more anonymously with all her book boyfriends. She is the 2013 winner of the Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult Writing. TRUEST is her first novel.

Find Jackie on her website, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr (author page), Tumblr (book page, after reading), Instagram, Pinterest, and Goodreads.

About TRUEST:

Silas Hart has seriously shaken up Westlin Beck’s small-town life. Brand new to town, Silas is different than the guys in Green Lake. He’s curious, poetic, philosophical, maddening– and really…