What is YA?

My photo of Garth Nix giving the “unicorn salute” (Zombies vs Unicorns) at the Aurealis Awards in 2011.

A discussion on Twitter yesterday saw a bunch of cool people weighing on on what defines YA (in the face of a new designation, New Adult, which I think is a bit blech, but anyway…!). Whenever I see this discussion take place, I’m reminded of my favourite definition of YA (Young Adult) fiction, which was penned by Aussie author Garth Nix as a comment on a blog post by editor Jonathan Strahan....