Today, 2–3 p.m. Kwame Alexander will sign in the
Autographing Area.
Despite our differences and our indi- vidual struggles and successes in life, music is the universal lan- guage,” says Kwame Alexander. “It can be the thread that connects us all.” Music is the catalyst for Alex-
ander’s new YA novel-in-verse, Solo (Harper/Blink,
Aug.), cowritten with his close friend, collaborator,
and poet, Mary Rand Hess. “It’s a love letter to rock
and roll music,” he explains. “It’s a tribute, an ode
to my teenage years and how music was the thing
that sort of helped me stay sane and really got me on
a journey to understanding myself a little better.”;
Blade, the teenage protagonist of Solo, is on a path
to self-acceptance, too. He’s a talented musician in
his own right, but is living in the shadow of his
famous rock star dad, who is battling addiction. The
other curveballs in Blade’s life include the loss of his
mother several years earlier, a recent romantic heart-
break, and a newly revealed family secret. “He’s in
an uphill battle trying to find himself,” says Alex-
ander, “and the journey he’s on takes him from Hol-
lywood across the world to Ghana, to a whole other
culture where he’s able to begin to understand his
place in the world.”
Alexander says he wanted to include Ghana in Solo because
the country is near to his heart. He has been traveling there
for the past five years to work on a literacy initiative he
cofounded to help students and teachers, and to build a library
in the village of Konko, in the eastern region of the country.
“I have spent so much time there, I wanted to write about that
experience,” he adds.
Alexander shares his passion for Blade’s story with Hess.
The pair had previously teamed up for a picture book (Animal
Ark, National Geographic) and are in the same writing group.
“We are both hopeful romantics who are in love with love, and
we consider ourselves to be huge poetry enthusiasts,” says
Alexander.
Alexander and Hess recently finished a first draft of their
second YA novel, Swing, which will also be published by
Blink. “We pay homage to jazz and baseball—two of the
greatest things ever created by Americans,” says Alexander.
“Swing is a hybrid of verse, poems, epistolary, and some
prose—and it moves between a contemporary setting and the
1930s.” Alexander has also completed Rebound, a prequel
novel-in-verse to his Newbery-winning The Crossover (HMH,
April 2018).
Alexander and his writing group colleagues are headed to
Ghana for a summer retreat. “It’s interesting that during the
last week of July, we’ll be in Ghana cutting the ribbon on the
new library and brainstorming ideas for our future projects,
and when we return from doing all that, Solo will be published,” Alexander says. “It’s a wonderful time for the book
and for us.” And the author is in the process of building a
writing studio, which, he explains, “I’ve built to the specifications that will allow all of us to be able to be in there, have
our space, and enjoy our writing group in the truest sense of
the word.”
