adam silvera the first to die at the end

But it was not always easy, Silvera said, facing rejection by publishers who wanted him to whitewash his stories or who simply were not interested in the intersectionality of ethnicity and queerness. Now, ten years later, he has authored at least half a dozen more. Part of what kept Silvera going, he said, was his desire to see more people like himself - a queer Latino - represented in literature. I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, which is not something I talk about very often, but I went through dialectical behavior therapy to help treat that.' 'Death and fear and disease and mental illnesses,' he explained, touching on his own history with suicidal ideation. 'I was educated on the fact that someone can be here one day and totally gone the next with absolutely no warning.'ĭarkness, he says, became a theme - and a way for Silvera to write out his anxiety.

It was such a concentrated period,' he added. Then, two months later, my favorite uncle died in a plane crash. 'I was 11 years old in New York City when 9/11 happened. 'There was a point where my mom was admitted into the hospital 13 times within a single year and that was really frightening, ' Silver said. He was close to his mother and the fear of her dying haunted him. He grew up in the South Bronx, a gay Puerto Rican kid, who was in high school when his father walked out. One fled from Arizona to New York to escape his homophobic parents, where he falls in love with a native New Yorker with a serious heart condition.Īdam Silvera's mom suffered from a heart condition. 'It allowed me to bring back the main characters who did indeed die at the end,' Silvera said. 'The First to Die at the End' takes readers back into an earlier version of that world.

Because the main characters do not survive, Silvera had to come up with a prequel. The problem with writing a smash hit where both heroes die is how to follow up. HarperCollins Publishers The cover of Adam Silvera's new novel.

Adam silvera the first to die at the end