My copy of GIRL by Blake Nelson from 1994, with pages all worn & the inside cover signed by every girl in the 8th/9th grade who I forced to read it. Easily the most formative book of my life, and a perfect example of everything I love about coming-of-age fiction (Paranoid Park is another fantastic read by him of this genre).

I’m pretty excited to get my hands on GIRL’s college-age sequel, Dream School, which released just this week. For more on that, check out the interview with Blake Nelson in Rookie.