Sitomer’s worst enemy was all-too- familiar. “I wrote what I should have said, could have said.”Īlan Sitomer, California’s 2007 Teacher of the Year, said, “Part of growing up is dealing with people who aren’t nice to you.” “I should move through that sometime.”Īva Dellaira, who recently finished the screenplay for her novel Love Letters To The Dead, found that writing the book helped her process her mother’s death: “I definitely use writing as a form of emotional exploration.”īest-selling ghostwriter and editor Greg Boose, author of The Red Bishop, was bullied in eighth grade. I’m writing books for the girl who doesn’t have anyone to talk to.”īenway shudders at the thought of re-living her middle grade years because they were “so horrible.” Ironically, the girl who made fun of her now works for a local anti-bullying program. “When I write boy characters now, they’re really nice. She used the woman’s personality traits in one of her novels, and cringed years later when the mother emailed her to apologize and say, “I bought all your books!”Įmmy & Oliver author Robin Benway went the opposite way, using qualities of people she knew for a best-friend character. Noel was severely bullied from third to eighth grades she also remembers a boyfriend’s mother being mean to her. “It’s certainly really cathartic for me.” “ Definitely,” said Alyson Noel, author of more than 20 novels, including Art Geeks & Prom Queens. Moderator Tahereh Mafi, author of the Shatter Me series, started with the question, “Sometimes bullies are in our brain…Do you use writing as a cathartic process?”

The panel consisted of Ava Dellaira, Love Letters To The Dead Daniel Ehrenhaft, YA editor and ghost writer Alyson Noel, Evermore Greg Boose, The Red Bishop Alan Sitomer, Caged Warrior, and Robin Benway, Emmy & Oliver. So when I read about the 2015 YALLWEST book festival session, “Revenge: Bullies & Brats,” I attended to hear how others dealt with bullies during their teen years. I had been bullied.īy my high school boyfriend. When bullying made headlines recently, I thought to myself, “I’m lucky I didn’t get bullied in school.”īut after digging deeper, I realized I was kidding myself. In honor of the annual YALLWEST young adult book festival in California tomorrow (!!!), here’s a post I wrote three years ago but didn’t have the courage to publish.

The After Life by Daniel Ehrenhaft