Megan Shepherd
Megan Shepherd has been many things, including a professional exchange student, park ranger in Montana, and LOST enthusiast, but what she best known for now is her writing.
Megan grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, raised behind the counter of her parents’ independent bookstore, Highland Books in Brevard. Despite being surrounded by books, she never thought being an author could be a real career. Megan's passion was always travel and cultures, so she studied International Studies and foreign languages. She then joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in Senegal, living in a mud hut with no electricity or running water, and teaching environmental education to school children.
It wasn't until a chance acquaintance read Megan's Peace Corps blog and said, "you're a good writer. Have you ever considered writing professionally?" that something clicked and she realised it was possible. With her husband's encouragement, she fell head-over-heels in love with writing, and children's literature in particular. She started out writing articles, which have appeared in Faces, Appleseeds, and Calliope magazines, and stories for younger children though Megan soon realised she wasn’t sweet enough to write fiction for that age and found herself writing young adult literature instead, which doesn’t require nearly as many tender moments and includes a lot more cursing.
When she's not writing, Megan can usually be found horseback riding, daydreaming at coffee shops, or gardening at her farm in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
Author's Comment
I wonder if we are doing YA a disservice by insisting it isn't a genre. These books--the quirky romances and the dystopian thrillers--DO have a lot in common. There's a reason they're together on a bookshelf that goes beyond the protagonist's age or the reader's age. Publishers create imprints for YA because they clearly see strong commonalities. People come to YA festivals because they love the feel of YA books, regardless of those books' subgenres. And what creates a genre, if not the love and dedication of readers?
So I wonder, why do people insist so strongly that YA isn't a genre? Why are the common traits of YA not "enough" for it to stand as its own genre? Genre-blending happens a lot in YA, which is one of the reasons I love both reading and writing it, but it happens in all genres. I've heard the Madman's Daughter series called all of these genres, or a mix: thriller, historical, sci-fi, romance, horror. And I think the reason why it's hard to put it into a clear category is because it ISN'T any one (or two) of those. Its genre is YA. And in YA, it can be all of those things at once.