12 Authors Discuss Teen Pregnancy, Body Image, and More in April’s YA Open Mic

YA Open Mic is a monthly series in which YA authors share personal stories on topics of their choice. The aim of the series, above all, is to peel away the formality of bios and offer authors a platform to talk about something readers won’t necessarily find on their websites.
This month, twelve authors discuss everything from teen pregnancy to body image to college bands. All have YA books releasing this month or in March.
YA Open Mic runs on the first Thursday of each month. Check out previous posts here.

Kristy Acevedo, author of Consider

I was eighteen and a freshman on full scholarship at Mount Holyoke, an all-women’s college in Massachusetts, when I found out I was pregnant.
I’ll let the irony sink in for a moment.
During the first ultrasound, they discovered the baby had a major birth defect, gastroschisis. Her intestines had developed outside her body, and she’d need two major surgeries at birth. I remember the doctor discussing my “options” and immediately going into protective parent mode. My baby was already struggling and in need of help, and I was determined to do whatever I could to give her a fair shot at life.
Unfortunately, my water broke two months early, and she was born prematurely at 32 weeks on top of needing surgeries. She spent over two months in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
I was nineteen. I dropped out of college.
People told me I would never go back. What a waste. Babies having babies. I became a statistic, and it fueled me. I looked at this tiny, helpless girl and knew she needed a mother lion. My life had new purpose.
A year later, after getting an apartment and attending endless Early Intervention appointments, I transferred to Bridgewater State University. I maxed out my schedule, graduating summa cum laude in only two more years. Even though I wanted to write fiction, I knew I had to stabilize our life first. I began teaching high school English and never looked back.
Now my daughter is nineteen, the same age I was when I had her, and she’s excelling in college while I have a debut YA novel coming out, something I dreamed of since I was little.
And maybe I wouldn’t have fought so hard for it if it wasn’t for her.

Anna Breslaw, author of Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here

When I was sixteen, I moved up the ladder from one strata of popularity to another, slightly higher rung: Prettier girls than me with bigger houses than mine. We spent a lot of time watching the matching set of guys in our clique do stuff: Play Halo, jam on acoustic guitars. They mostly ignored me. I hadn’t anticipated feeling like the chubby, anxious sexless sidekick of the group.
I decided being skinnier would fix this problem. Then, at some point, I decided that it would fix all my problems.
For months I ran on Diet Coke and hardboiled eggs, snuck into the GMC in the mall and got diet pills to stash in my locker and at home. The weight melted off. I remember feeling floaty as I walked through the halls, my anxiety melting away, everything in front of me feeling increasingly less immediate. A therapist explained to me later that this feeling was a “hunger high,” the sense of euphoria you sometimes get when you starve yourself.
My friends staged a well-intentioned, hilarious-in-retrospect “intervention,” setting out a feast at a sleepover and performatively eating it in front of me as we watched Little Women. (“Don’t you love Oreos?” “They’re soooo good.”) But this was no Mean Girls. They were cool, caring, and smart, just ill-equipped to deal with something like this. In retrospect, I should have told them I felt like the DUFF of our group instead of taking it out on my metabolic system.
My mom found the diet pills eventually and sent me off to therapy. Even now, well into my twenties, I’d be lying if I said I had a totally normal relationship with food. There are some things you have to spend a lifetime working on.

Amalie Howard, author of The Fallen Prince

When I was a teenager, I was short and had a huge nose. I also wore braces for four years. My friends called me metal-mouth, midget, and Gargamel. I was also an A student, which meant I got a whole new slew of nicknames like bookie, nerd, and bookworm. Back then, I thought my so-called friends were right because they were beautiful, sophisticated, and had boyfriends. I became my own worst enemy.
In college, that insecure bully voice inside of me decided to stage a comeback with a vengeance. Colby was a predominantly white school, and I felt like an ugly outsider. I wasn’t white. I wasn’t thin. I wasn’t blonde. I was invisible. I fell prey to anorexia and bulimia, all the while struggling to figure out who I was. But how could I, when I couldn’t even stand up to myself?
Eventually, I understood I had to get rid of my inner bully and silence that harmful voice inside of me for good. But to do that, I needed help. And so, I put my fear and shame to the side, and asked for it. Asking for help is hard, but I did it. I didn’t allow my terrible, ugly, worthless secrets to suffocate me. I didn’t give in to the voices that said I wasn’t good enough. And for that I am grateful. If I had, I wouldn’t have bungee-jumped 800 feet off the Macau Tower in China or learned to ride a motorcycle. I wouldn’t be an author. I wouldn’t be here.
Over the years, I’ve come to understand that I’m just me…no more and no less. I am different—I’m brown, I’m not thin, I have a big nose, and my brain is a pretty good one. And I’ve come to appreciate those differences. The message here is that being different sucks sometimes, but it’s not always going to suck. One day, you’re going to be psyched that you’re the exception and not the rule. Just give yourself the chance to get there, and you will.

Roshani Chokshi, author of The Star-Touched Queen

I have a peg lateral tooth. But you can’t tell thanks to the porcelain veneer. It is a runty gargoyle of a thing. Not sharp enough to be mistaken for a vampiric canine. Not dull enough to blend in meekly.
I’ve always been self-conscious about my smile. It seems weirdly uneven. For example, I have dimples in both cheeks, but one is deeper than the other (my mother says this is because I only slept on one side and so the fairies who drilled holes in my cheeks couldn’t easily get to my left…my fool cousin said it meant that one day my face would collapse in on itself…)
In college, I went to a neon black-light party (at their best, college parties are fairy revels straight out of a Holly Black novel; at their worst, they are what I imagine toddlers high on antifreeze consider hell). ANYWAY. My runty tooth—safely encased in its porcelain sarcophagus—did not show up under the black light. When I grinned, there was a void in my smile.
Dear Reader: I wanted to set myself on fire.
Now, I laugh. I have embraced my strange little tooth. I think my smile is beautiful, even though my dimples are uneven and one of my teeth refuses to show up in certain lights. Own the things that make you who you are. In other words, grin like a fiend wherever you are. Even if one of your teeth becomes casually invisible as a result.

Kate Evangelista, author of No Love Allowed

Tattoos are an extremely personal experience for me. Tat on a whim is not my thing. When my body is inked, there better be a pretty damn good reason why.
I got my first tattoo when I was eighteen, but that wasn’t when I first started fantasizing, even lusting for one.
At thirteen the decision was made. Only I didn’t know what it would be. All I knew was I would get one.
In college, the design came to me while writing a paper. It had to be a unicorn. Not the My Little Pony kind of unicorn. There was nothing cute about this. It was a straightforward outline of the mythical beast that now lives on my left shoulder blade.
Unicorns are the purest of mythical beasts. Why do you think they only show themselves to virgins? Then again there are some dark stories about these horned equines. Google it.
The tattoo artist who inked the design told me it wouldn’t be my last. I scoffed. Sure. Like I would get another one. Achievement unlocked. I was done.
Lo and behold, over a decade later, I’m back at a tattoo studio getting two more. I need to send that guy a gift or something.
On my left wrist is the number eleven, which I call my life number. It’s my birthday. My birth year ’83 is eleven. The first letter of my name (K) is the eleventh letter. My class number was eleven. My jersey number was eleven. I could go on and on.
And on my right arm is Action before Inspiration stylized to look like the infinity symbol with a small butterfly over the last N. This is a quote from Robert Rodriguez. It basically means don’t wait for inspiration to come. Act first.
Will I get another one? Who knows?

Ami Allen-Vath, author of Liars and Losers Like Us

As a teen, it always felt like everyone had more than I did. We were always broke. Sometimes our phone was disconnected because there wasn’t enough money to pay the bill. Sometimes the electricity got cut off. It seemed like we were always “Oh my god, there’s nothing to eat!” At the grocery store, my stomach would churn with shame when my mom would pull food stamps out of her wallet instead of “real money.” I was resentful on days she’d walk through the door with bags of groceries from the food shelf.
One day when I was sixteen, my friends came to our apartment to pick me up. I was mortified when they knocked on the door and swooped in before I could rush outside to hop in their car. I wish I could say they were really cool about where I lived. They weren’t. My boyfriend’s friend laughed and called it the ghetto. They made a big deal about what little food we had but still ate watermelon from the fridge. I rolled my eyes but my cheeks burned with embarrassment and my stomach twisted in knots as my heart raced to the beat of “let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”
I always thought my mom did a horrible job at keeping a roof over our heads. Once we lived in a pretty nice townhouse but we were evicted because my stepdad left and my mom couldn’t afford it on her own. We lived in rundown apartments, other people’s basements, and a couple motels. But we were never on the streets. Now that I’m an adult, I know that money doesn’t come easy. My mom did what she could with what she had. And I was a jerk about it. I wish my gratitude wouldn’t have come so late.

Siobhan Vivian, author of The Last Boy and Girl in the World

I once got suspended for fighting. It was my sophomore year.
I’d been teasing a friend who wasn’t really a friend anymore that she owed me five bucks for gas. I’d known her since kindergarten. She sat in front of me in Spanish class. Every few minutes, I leaned forward and whispered in her ear.
Five bucks. Hey, can I get my five bucks? Cinco dólares, por favor, muchas gracias.
I didn’t actually care about the money. I was doing it to be annoying and to make the people around me laugh.
In high school, I would do practically anything for a laugh.
The bell rang and I grabbed my books. About five steps into the hallway, I felt a hand on my shoulder.
You going to keep running your mouth, Siobhan?
I don’t think I answered her. Maybe just laughed.
Then she spun me around and punched me square in the face.
It was a real mess after that. I tossed my books over my shoulder and lunged for her. We were punching and kicking and screaming, a tangled girl mess on the floor. I had never been in a fight before, but I guess animal instinct took over. The vice principal appeared and got his arms around my waist. He and another teacher pulled the two of us apart.
Everyone applauded and cheered. It was exactly the kind of praise I sought by being the funny girl. I even gave the crowd a dumb little wave.
But when I got to the principal’s office, I was shaking like a leaf. And when they brought the girl in and sat her next to me, I burst into tears. I hadn’t wanted things to escalate the way they did. It was just a stupid joke. I was mortified and full of regret.
I never once thought of myself as a bully. More like a jokester, a class clown. But on that day, I had to face the hard truth. That’s exactly what I was.

Maggie Stiefvater, author of The Raven King

In college, I had a band. Not a cool punk band. A traditional Celtic band. We gigged, recorded an album, played in electrical storms and made enough money to impress ourselves. Back then I didn’t just want to be a songwriter, though—I also wanted to be a writer and an artist. So I juggled all these things plus college and three part-time jobs, and in the meantime the band lasted long enough for me to grow bitter with the growing gap between what it did with music and what I actually wanted to be doing with music. Maybe, I thought, I will put this down and focus on my writing and art. Maybe the universe is telling me to compromise. Be realistic. I didn’t like being realistic.
One St. Patrick’s Day near the end, we were playing a gig in a bar serving green beer and noise. After, as I irritably lugged my bagpipes and my harp out to the cars, a woman caught my attention to say that we had played really well. “You in particular.” Thanking her, I started to go, but she stopped me to insist, “You should never give up music. Never.” Until that moment, it had just been an ordinary compliment. But now the urgency of her words charged them with eternal life—I have never forgotten that conversation. Later, I asked the other band members if they’d talked to her. They hadn’t even seen her. Look, I’m not saying that she wasn’t human, but there’s no proof that she was, either.
So here I am, more than a decade later. Still playing music and writing and painting, and stuffing the magic of moments like that conversation into books like The Raven Boys. I hope she’s happy, whatever she is.

Emery Lord, author of When We Collided

He’s my first dog. I adopted him on the tail-end of the worst year of my life. You’re not supposed to make big decisions within six months of grieving, but I saw his face on a rescue website, and I’d never felt such immediate familiarity in my life. He was already mine.
I’m lucky to have people in my life who love me at my worst, but Winston doesn’t even notice that it’s my worst. As long as I’m around, he’s happy. So on my roughest days, if the only thing I can do is cuddle him and get him outside for a walk…that’s not nothing.
He had a difficult start in the world, and if the only thing I ever accomplish with my own life is giving him a great one…I’m good with that.

Julia Ember, author of Unicorn Tracks

When I was twelve, my local riding school put my best friend up for sale. I’d been riding Africa for about a year, even volunteering on Saturdays to spend extra time with him. I loved just standing inside his stall, petting him and talking to him, feeling like someone was actually listening to me.
At school, I usually didn’t feel that way. I was in seventh grade and overweight with bad skin. I had friends, but I’d started feeling less connected to them. They were experiencing things I wasn’t: boyfriends, girlfriends, invitations to parties. When we hung out, I felt like wallpaper. I was there but in the background. With Africa, I always had his attention.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. My dad had just lost the job that had brought us to England. We were in a foreign country and not sure where we would go next. Horses cost a lot of money, both to buy and to feed. At the time, my parents discussed moving as far away as Singapore—a place too hot and humid for a half-draft horse.
I remember being afraid of starting a new school, with nowhere to go on Saturdays. I was scared of having no one. My relationship with my parents in those days was rocky, thanks to me being the family’s first atheist. Most of all, I was afraid of telling Africa. Because how do you tell someone you love, who won’t understand, that you’re not coming back?
The photo at the top of this piece is me with Africa, fifteen years later. My dad got another job in England, we stayed, and a lot of things got better after that. Sometimes things have a way of working themselves out.

Jodi Meadows, author of The Mirror King

I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up.
Little did I know, astronaut-ing was not quite like I’d imagined. I watched a lot of Star Trek: TNG as a kid, and this seriously impacted my view of science and what was possible. This may have been before reality TV was a thing, but I was completely convinced that what I saw happening on the Enterprise was happening somewhere in real life. I was also pretty sure I could be Captain Picard or Data if I announced my intentions often enough. (The fact that Data was an android didn’t really affect my goals.)
Gradually, I learned about the difference between science and science fiction.
Dreams. Crushed.
It also turned out that I wasn’t very good at math—a prerequisite for the astronaut life—but by then I’d largely turned my ambitions toward writing: where everything could be as magical as I wanted. If I couldn’t actually visit other planets, by golly I’d write about it. (And yes, I realize that all my books are fantasy. All the ones you’ve seen, anyway.)
I still love astronomy (as followers of my Tumblr page know). A few years back I went to a rocket launch at NASA with another author. And then there was that time I sat on the bridge of the Enterprise.
Oh look, tiny Jodi who wanted to be an android: you can do anything you put your mind to.
Make it so.

Cecelia Ahern, author of Flawed

When I was nineteen years old I was on a bus on the way to college where I was studying a degree in Journalism & Media Communications, and suddenly an overwhelming fear overcame me and I felt the need to run, to escape, yet felt completely frozen in fear. I couldn’t breathe, I didn’t know what to do. I got off the bus and tried to gather myself. Feeling wobbly, I got a taxi the rest of the way. This happened a few more times. Then it happened in the taxi. Then it happened at college. Then it happened everywhere until I was in fear of leaving my house. I was only 19 years old yet after months of this, I felt like life had moved on without me, I couldn’t take part in it, everything was too complicated, too much hard work, so much greater than I could handle. I lived in my head, a fearful head. The joy went from my life and as my mom told me, I’d lost my spark.
At 21 I completed my degree, and still feeling wobbly, unhappy, fearful of so many simple things I was awake all night and hiding by day. I needed to start looking for a job. I needed to  gather myself, support myself, do something for myself. Writing has always been a form of therapy, ever since I was a child and so once again I put pen to paper to heal myself, to try to make some sense of my busy head. Those thoughts and fears became a story. The story became a novel  the novel was called P.S. I Love You. My mom encouraged me to send my chapters to an agent, and looking for guidance and advice, I did. What I got was a two-book deal with HarperCollins UK,  quickly followed by the US, quickly followed by almost 50 more countries and a film deal with Warner Bros and Wendy Finerman. That story touched hearts all over the world. It taught me so much about myself, it healed me, helped me and changed my life. It gave me a career, one that I continue to pour my heart and soul into, twelve books later.
I write about people who find themselves facing mountains, feeling the lowest and darkest they’ve ever felt, lost, alone and afraid, they rise to the challenge and find themselves stronger than they ever were before. I believe this is true because it is my experience. My first novel P.S. I Love You was about the strength of human spirit, Flawed continues this theme. No matter how low, how weak, fearful and lost we may feel, we can always find our spark again.