New Voices: Roseanne A. Brown & Diana Ma on Creating Characters That Mirrored Themselves

By Stephani Martinell Eaton

I’m excited to introduce our readers to Roseanne A. Brown, author of A Song of Wraiths and Ruin (Balzar + Bray, 2020), and Diana Ma, author of Heiress Apparently (Abrams, 2020). While these two YA debut novels may seem different in genre and tone, their authors both realized the goal of creating characters that validated themselves.

Roseanne A. Brown

What was your initial inspiration for writing this book?

I first got the idea for A Song of Wraiths and Ruin in 2016....