Karis Rogerson

Leigh Bardugo gained acclaim and a fandom through her Young Adult fantasy creation The Grishaverse, an expansive world with magic, heists, and characters that seem to leap off the page and straight into her readers’ hearts. John Picacio is a World Fantasy and Hugo Award-winning illustrator who also spearheads a creative publishing imprint. Together, Leigh’s fantasy worlds and John’s gorgeous illustrations came together to bring us The Invisible Parade, the duo’s debut picture book, released S...

I recently sent off a draft of my ninth novel — this one a YA novel-in-verse — to a beta reader. I’m also about halfway through a draft of what will, hopefully, be my 10th completed book — an adult speculative romance. I’m excited about both of these projects, and over the past 12 years during which I’ve taken nine books from concept to shiny product, I’ve developed what I think is a pretty great system!
Today, I’m going to walk you through the six steps that guide my novel-writing process. H...

As I sit down to write this piece, I’m reeling from the news that the Supreme Court might hear a case whose sole purpose is to undo the right to marriage that queer activists fought so hard for. I have a family who thinks I will burn in hell for being gay. I have been told that my queer YA romances will harm teens. The seemingly best candidate for a Democratic presidential run in 2028, Gavin Newsom, has thrown trans people under the bus of fascism.
And threaded through the fear of all of the ...

Early this spring, I realized that every time I opened my book’s document, my depression spiked. I’d find myself blinking back tears as I tried to put words on the page; when I sat down to revise, my mind rebelled and next thing I knew I was deep in the throes of a depressive spiral.
I’ve lived with depression pretty much my whole life, but this — this was different. Because normally, writing is my respite from the mental illness that keeps me down. I’ve written and revised nine novels, hundr...

Karis Rogerson has had a life full of travel and diverse education that have helped shape her unique voice that shines through in her novels, poems, and journal articles with a focus on the life experiences of queer writers and readers. She was born in South Carolina, raised in Italy, went to school in Germany and Kentucky, and now lives in Brooklyn.

I spent a year writing the book. Three months querying, and another month revising before sub. Then, on July 5, 2023, with the highest of hopes ...

By Karis Rogerson

April 3, 2025

Writing a compelling Young Adult book can be a challenge—a fun challenge, but a tricky one nonetheless! Every year, more than 35 million YA novels are sold. These books are geared toward tweens and teens, an audience who deserve to see themselves accurately reflected in the books they pick up.

So, how do you make your teenage characters feel authentic? There are a lot of ways to answer that question. You could probably write an entire book and just talk about t...

Learn from my mistakes, friends! I spent nearly nine years querying five different projects, sending hundreds of individual requests over the years. I queried esteemed agents who’d been at their agencies for decades and I queried brand-new agents who’d just opened their inboxes. I received rejections within minutes and I received rejections after over a year in the slush pile.
Over the course of those nine years, I made plenty of mistakes. At the end of the day, I still wound up with 13 full ...

I have written and revised seven novels, and for the majority of them, I was either a full-time student, working full-time, or doing school while working full-time. I’ve written my books in the wee hours of the night, early mornings, and during the breaks between other commitments.
Whether you’re juggling undergrad, pursuing a Master’s degree, working a demanding 9-5 — or some combination of the above — you’ll know that it’s incredibly hard to find the time to write novels in the midst of eve...

By Karis Rogerson
Karis Rogerson is a writer and reader who’s been writing novels and trying to get them published for over a decade. In this column, she’ll be taking you along with her, starting at the beginning of her writing journey, as she continues working on new projects in the hopes that someday, you can hold them in your hands!
It’s been nearly 25 years since I was an elementary school student who looked at my teacher and said, with all the ambition and faith in the world, that I was ...

Almost five whole days passed between the moment To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before dropped on Netflix (Friday, August 17, at 3 a.m. EST/12 a.m. PST, a glorious date and time indeed) and the moment I finally clicked “play.”
It’s not that I didn’t want to watch it the second it came out; I have been waiting, breathlessly, for the movie’s release for what feels like eons (technically only three years, but still), and I knew it was going to be good, because the promos and trailers had floored me ...

It took me a long time to come out, even to myself. After growing up extremely evangelical and in an incredible heteronormative culture, it took ages to realize that maybe I wasn’t straight, actually; I was just socialized that way. Along the way, queer stories brought me light, love, and comfort. It wasn’t until much later that I started to realize these stories comforted me because I saw myself in them. And since coming out, to myself and to the world (Twitter), I’ve continued to find joy a...

There’s something about knowing you’re not alone on the journey that makes it a million times easier.
By journey, I mean life in the grander scheme, but also publishing, book-loving-and-writing, blogging...that journey as well.
For a long time after graduating undergrad, I felt alone in my writing. I had writer friends, but they were journalist writer friends. I had left all my novelists behind when I donned my cap and gown to receive my diploma, and it was hard to find them again.
Ultimately...

Original photo by Rahul Pandit
I wasn’t always a book lover. In fact, when my mom first started teaching me to read, I went down kicking and screaming — metaphorically, of course. I have this clear memory of sitting in my bedroom in our apartment when the door opened and she walked in with one of those learn-to-read books, and I just pitched the mother of all fits. She says I didn’t pitch a fit, but I remember it that way and hey, this is my story.
But after I learned, it’s like some sort of ...

Header image via Nataliya Vaitkevich
It’s the first days of December and you’re celebrating, because in November you accomplished something truly stupendous — you wrote 50,000 words (or more!!! a hero) of a novel in thirty days.
The first thing I’d say you ought to do after winning NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is take a beat and simply celebrate your accomplishment. It’s possible that while you were in the weeds of drafting in a mad dash, surrounded by the NaNo community and all t...

Happy National Encourage a Young Writer Day!
What a fun holiday to celebrate.
I knew I wanted to be a writer before I started middle school. I was always obsessed with stories—I remember being a kid begging my parents to tell me my favorite ones over and over and over again—and as soon as I learned to read, I became obsessed with imbibing them through books. It wasn’t long before I realized that I wanted to tell stories that way, too. I decided on writing books as a career early in life, and ...