Summer Reading 2013: My Most Excellent Year (Romance)

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Three bright and funny Brookline, MA, eleventh graders look back on their most excellent year--ninth grade--for a school report. Told in alternating chapters by each of them, this enchanting, life-affirming coming-of-age story unfolds through instant messages, emails, memos, diary entries, and letters to celebrity divas and to a deceased mom. T.C. (Anthony Conigliaro) Keller, whose mother died when he was six, is in love with baseball and Alejandra (Alé) Perez. She and Augie Hwong, who is gay and in love with Andy Wexler, are passionate about the stage and screen, and Augie and T.C. have been "brothers" since they were six. The teens mount a fabulous talent show, launch a couple of grassroots political movements, and bring hope and love to a deaf, six-year-old foster child. What's more, Augie and T.C. have a refreshingly positive relationship with their parents. (Novelist)

   I'm an author and playwright from Baltimore, Maryland, who grew up with only two heroes: Tom Seaver and Ethel Merman. I've also pursued a somewhat weird path as a civil rights advocate, campaigning for a Save Fenway Park initiative (which qualifies as a civil right if you're a Red Sox fan), counseling gay teenagers, and—on behalf of Japanese American internment redress—lobbying the Department of the Interior to restore the baseball diamond at the Manzanar National Historic Site. Meanwhile, I donate half my spare time to organizations such as Lambda Legal Defense, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN), and Models of Pride, and give the rest of it to my nieces and nephews—the nine kids who own my heart.
   My novels include Changing Pitches (1984), Last Days of Summer (1998), Almost Like Being in Love (2004), and My Most Excellent Year (2008). For the stage, so far, I've written: Bullpen (1984), a Boston Red Sox comedy (not a redundancy); Cafe '50s (1988), a "medium-rare comedy with a shake"; Pilots of the Purple Twilight (1989), a comedy-drama set onboard the Titanic (before it became trendy); and the romantic comedy After Dark (2001).
   I also published a World War II history entitled Yank (1990) that only 12 people read, and am a regular contributor to newspapers such as USA Today and The Boston Globe. (Author Webpage)