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Author Biographies

Kia Jane Richmond, Ph.D., is a professor of English at Northern Michigan University. She received NMU’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2014) and the MCTE Charles Carpenter Fries Award for Excellence in Teaching/Mentoring (2015). She is the author of Mental Illness in Young Adult Literature: Exploring Real Struggles through Fictional Characters (ABC-CLIO, 2019).

Abstract

Jennifer Anne Moses’s (2018) young adult novel, The Book of Joshua: A Novel, begins with a letter from eighteen-year-old protagonist Joshua Cushing; he is writing in response to a college admissions essay prompt about overcoming a challenge or experience that shaped his life. For Josh, that experience began with his awakening in a New Jersey psychiatric hospital; he was missing his left eye and his girlfriend, Sophie, and could not remember losing either one. Moses’s book unravels the mystery for the reader, explaining how Josh lost his left eye, what happened to Sophie, and how mental illness fits into the mix. Readers learn a great deal about how Josh’s schizophrenia affects his daily life as well as the lives of his parents and his younger brother Nate, and friends and classmates.

Publication Date

5-2020

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