Karen M. McManus (Boston, 1969) is “more excited than nervous” to visit Barcelona. “I was here and in Madrid many years ago, during my university days, but never before as an author,” she confesses to La Vanguardia. She is surprising, since she is one of the most popular youth literature writers of the moment.
Her book Someone is lying (Alfaguara) and its sequels, Someone is next and Someone has returned, have turned her into an icon, as evidenced by the long lines of readers – young and not so young – who wait to meet her when she announces book signings. The saga, which made the jump to Netflix during the pandemic in view of its success, is based on the death of Simon Kelleger, a student who leaked the most intimate secrets of his classmates through an application. Four students are suspects, but the author warns: “I love plot twists, so the reader will not have an easy time finding the truth.”
Beyond its busy schedule, one of the reasons why its visit has been sought after is the lack of large-format festivals dedicated exclusively to literature for the youngest. In the United States, however, “there are many more and I have been able to go to more than a dozen.” For this reason, he was happy when he found out that a new initiative was being born in Barcelona, ??the Crush Fest, which will be held on Saturday and Sunday at the University of Barcelona, ??on the Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, and that, in the words of Tomás Casals, director of Bookish and main promoter of this event, “wants to become the Primavera Sound of literature.”
McManus regrets that many times critics are not interested in adolescent readings but, he insists, “it is something that I try not to give too much importance to. I only focus on the readers, who are my life and who I work for. But you only have to look at the figures. “No one can stop youth literature anymore.” In Spain, the section with the largest reading population is the one between the ages of 14 and 24, according to the Barometer of Reading and Book Purchasing Habits in Spain 2023. “Whoever doesn’t want to see it, don’t do it.”
Even today, McManus pinches himself from time to time to make sure he’s not dreaming. He had always been interested in writing and in college he began writing fiction, “but it wasn’t until, years later, I read The Hunger Games, and decided to give it a serious try.” He proposed a plot similar to that of Suzanne Collins, “but it wasn’t very good, and no one wanted to publish it for me. To this day, I am grateful that it was that way.” Then he got to work on another “somewhat better” story, but he didn’t catch the attention of any editor either. Far from giving up, he decided to try his luck with another genre, the youth mystery, and Someone is Lying (2017) was born, which he completed in just four months. The rest is history.
The Boston writer admits that “I never imagined that success, much less that readers would ask for more and it would end up being a trilogy. I wrote this book as an independent work and the idea came to me while I was driving home and the song The breakfast club was playing. I turned up the volume and started thinking about how I could force a meeting between stereotypical characters and make them realize that they weren’t really that different.”
Assimilating fame was something progressive. “It wasn’t an immediate bestseller. It made The New York Times list a month later. Every week sales were going up, and my editor called me often, because this is not common. We were very excited. She would pick me up and look at him, convinced that this was going to be the day she would come down. But it didn’t happen like that, it grew over the course of a year and I think it was word of mouth that made it work. After that time, I took the plunge and decided to quit my job to focus on my writing. It’s risky, but it’s not something I regret.”
Time, experience and all the people he has met since then prove him right. “I still remember my first fan. I hosted an event near my sister’s house in Massachusetts, and a woman came from Florida. That is, from very far away. She told me that she loved the book and, for the first time, I thought, ‘Oh my God, I have fans who travel to meet me!’ If I was already amazed by that, imagine now, knowing that they read me from more distant places, like Spain.”
The fact that the recognition came early has not demotivated her when it comes to taking on new challenges. Next up, screenwriting. “I will soon publish my next novel and, in parallel, I have written another text thinking about audiovisuals, which we will see if it comes to fruition. I will always continue with new goals and my purpose will be to achieve them. Nothing and no one can stop me.”
