At the time, I thought that Scatter was finished, but I couldn’t turn down the chance to work on it again. Then I had the idea for Last Night at the Telegraph Club, and when Andrew offered to buy that novel, he also offered to buy A Scatter of Light. Although I wasn’t able to sell A Scatter of Light in 2014, I did find an editor who wanted to work with me (Andrew Karre at Dutton), and I wrote a psychological thriller called A Line in the Dark. 2013 was a different time for LGBTQ YA, and while some editors complimented my writing, they were also very uncomfortable with the queer sexuality on the page. But when it went on submission in 2014, it was rejected by almost two dozen editors, and I couldn’t get it published. It came to me before Last Night at the Telegraph Club, and it was supposed to be a contemporary novel.

Malinda Lo: I actually started writing A Scatter of Light in 2013, so that’s why it’s set in that year. What inspired you to move from a historical novel to one set much closer to present day? A Scatter of Light is another queer story set in the Bay Area, but this time it takes place in the modern era. Sarah Arnold: Last Night at the Telegraph Club was an immediate staff favorite, and we certainly weren’t alone in our love for it! It won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, a Stonewall Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Youth Literature, and a Printz Honor (!!!). Musing editor Sarah Arnold chatted with Malinda ahead of her Southern Fest event! Adults and teens alike won’t want to miss this gorgeous coming-of-age story or the chance to hear about it from the author herself at the Southern Festival of Books on October 15 at 12:30pm. Lo’s new novel, A Scatter of Light, is a companion novel to Last Night at the Telegraph Club but leaves 1950s San Francisco for the more modern setting of the summer of 2013, when the Supreme Court first made major decisions in support of same-sex marriage. In addition to her novels, she has done meticulous research about LGBTQ+ representation in YA books, and her statistics have been widely circulated and cited as part of the effort to raise awareness about the lack of representation of queer folks in YA literature.

The magnitude of her contributions to the young adult queer literary canon cannot be overstated - her 2021 novel Last Night at the Telegraph Club was the first LGBTQ+ YA winner of the National Book Award, as well as the first F/F winner of that honor. Since 2009, she has been writing unapologetically queer stories and forging a path for other queer authors, particularly queer authors of color, in traditional publishing. Malinda Lo is nothing short of a trailblazer.

A Line in the Dark by Malinda Lo