Both Honey Girl and You Should See Me in a Crown have been featured staff picks here at PSB, and we're excited to introduce you to Jas Hammonds in advance of their book release next year! Close out Pride month on a proud note by joining this virtual talk, free and open to all and hosted on Crowdcast.

In Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers, straight-A high-achiever Grace Porter goes on a girls' trip to Vegas to celebrate her brand new PhD in Astronomy. She is not the kind of person who goes to Vegas and gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she doesn't know...until she does exactly that. This one moment of departure sparks a journey - both internally and cross country - but when reality comes crashing in, Grace must face what she's been running from all along--the fears that make us human, the family scars that need to heal and the longing for connection, especially when navigating the messiness of adulthood.

Leah Johnson's You Should See Me in a Crown features Liz Lighty, who has a plan that will get her out of Campbell, Indiana, forever - but in order to do so, she'll need to endure a gauntlet of social media trolls, catty competitors, and humiliating public events and compete for her school's scholarship for prom king and queen. Then there's the new girl in school, Mack - smart, funny, and also in the running for queen. Will falling for the competition keep Liz from her dreams . . . or make them come true? And be sure to preorder Rise to the Sun, publishing in July: a stunning and cinematic story about grief, love, and the remarkable power of music to heal and connect us all, set at a music festival.

Lambda Literary and MacDowell Fellow Jas Hammonds's We Deserve Monuments follows a queer, Black, biracial teen who moves to small-town Georgia to live with her estranged grandmother and becomes entangled in a web of family secrets, the town's racist history, and her growing feelings for the girl next door. The book is slated for publication in summer 2022 from Roaring Brook Press!

Morgan Rogers is a queer Black millennial. She writes books for queer girls who are looking for their place in the world. She lives in Maryland with her pets. Honey Girl is her debut novel.

Leah Johnson is a writer, editor and eternal Midwesterner. Her bestselling debut YA novel, You Should See Me in a Crown is a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book and Lambda Literary Finalist, was the inaugural Reese’s Book Club YA Pick, and was named a best book of the year by Cosmo, Marie Claire, Parents, BuzzFeed, and New York Public Library among others. When she’s not writing, you can usually find her teaching her creative writing students, or on Twitter at @byleahjohnson, ranting about pop culture and politics. Her sophomore novel, Rise to the Sun is forthcoming from Scholastic in July 2021. Visit her at byleahjohnson.com.

Jas Hammonds (they/she) was raised in many cities and in-between the pages of many books. They have received support for their writing from Lambda Literary, Sundress Academy of the Arts, and the Highlights Foundation. They are also a grateful recipient of a 2020 MacDowell James Baldwin Fellowship. Their debut novel, WE DESERVE MONUMENTS, is forthcoming Summer 2022 from Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan. When she's not writing, Jas can be found binging fiction podcasts, piecing together a jigsaw puzzle, or eating all the sweets in the house (but preferably all three).

Click here to register for the event on Crowdcast: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/psbpride