Trang Thanh Tran and Sarah Underwood

Join us for a special event with two very exciting debut voices in Young Adult Fiction as they chat about the curses haunting their novels, the inspiration of folklore and myth, and writing romance novels with a dark twist.

Trang Thanh Tran's debut novel, She Is a Haunting, is an eerie and gothic mystery that explores complex family dynamics and an exhilarating romance. Jade Nguyen spends a summer with her estranged father in Vietnam - just five weeks of ignoring the quietly decaying French colonial house he’s fixing up, then college and freedom are hers. However, everything is not as it seems as she begins to receive cryptic warnings from ghosts. It is a book that will thrill fans of Kalynn Bayron and Wilder Girls by Rory Power.

Sarah Underwood introduces her immersive debut novel Lies We Sing to the Sea, a sapphic epic inspired by Greek mythology. In the cursed kingdom of Ithaca, each spring brings the hanging of twelve maidens, a gift to the vengeful Poseidon. But when Leto awakens from her death on the shore of a long-forgotten island, its enigmatic keeper Melantho tells her that there’s only one way the curse can be broken. Leto must kill the last prince of Ithaca. Be transported to the cursed shores of Ithaca with this tale of love and fate, grief and sacrifice, and, ultimately, the power we must find within.

The event will be chaired by Caden Armstrong (@athousandbookstoread). So come along and join us for a great discussion from some wonderful up and coming YA authors!

Trang Thanh Tran writes speculative stories with big emotions about food, belonging and the Vietnamese diaspora. They grew up in a big family in Philadelphia, then abandoned degrees in sociology and public health to tell stories in Georgia.

Sarah Underwood grew up in Devon, England and studied Computational Bioengineering for her undergraduate degree at the Imperial College in London.