Creative Writing (MFA)
Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton, both 2012 graduates of The New School’s
MFA Creative Writing Program
, hit it off from the start. They met on the first day of their Writing for Children and Young Adults class and ever since
have been side by side, writing, publishing, and working to make the literary world a more diverse and inclusive place.
“We hit it off right off the bat because we were both very chatty,” says Charaipotra. “So we started trading pages, hanging out, meeting for pizza and cupcakes, and we quickly became critique partners.”
From their co-authored young adult novels featuring diverse characters to the literary development company they co-founded,
Cake Literary
, they’ve put the plans they made while students at The New School into action and have since
taken the literary world by storm.
“We’ve always been on the same page,” Clayton says about her relationship with Charaipotra. “We’ve always collaborated well because we’re not precious about any of it. It’s about the work and it’s about
the kids. We have a higher calling. Our work isn’t about egos; it’s all in the service of children.”
During their time in the Creative Writing Program, Clayton and Charaipotra began brainstorming ways to bring their shared passion for creating
inclusive books to life. From those conversations came the idea for Cake Literary, a book packaging company bringing handcrafted, high-concept books to middle grade, teen, and women’s fiction audiences. Now in its fifth year, Cake Literary is continuing
to grow and in 2019 alone saw six of its books published.
“We decided we would focus specifically on diverse books that were fun and delicious,” Charaipotra says. “We felt there weren’t enough books like that, books that really featured
diversity, but ones in which diversity isn’t the only part of the story.”
It was also during their time in the MFA program that they came up with the idea for their first co-authored young adult novel,
Tiny Pretty Things
(HarperTeen, 2015),
which is currently being adapted into a ten-episode drama series for Netflix.
“When we first met, Dhonielle told me that she had taught at a ballet conservatory and she wanted to do something with that world at some point,”
Charaipotra says. “I was excited because I was a dancer as a child. We began talking about writing something that’s like
Pretty Little Liars
with the mystery element, but at a ballet academy, and we collaborated on that. That idea became
Tiny
Pretty Things
.”
Following the publication of
Tiny Pretty Things
, Clayton and Charaipotra produced a sequel,
Shiny Broken Pieces
(HarperTeen, 2016). Their next book,
Rumor Game
, is scheduled to be published in 2020.
Beyond their
work together, the two writers are involved in projects of their own. Clayton is the author of the New York Times bestselling young adult series The Belles (Freeform, 2018) and the COO of
We Need Diverse Books
, a nonprofit that advocates for change in the publishing industry while helping
produce and promote literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people. Formerly a celebrity reporter at
People
magazine, Charaipotra has published a young adult novel,
Symptoms of a Heartbreak
(Imprint, 2019), and is currently editor
of the Barnes & Noble teen blog.
“We’ve always wanted to do this work for a larger calling,” Clayton says, “so that little kids of color could walk into a book store and walk into their classroom libraries and find something they could read.”