The William C. Morris YA Debut Award honors a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens and celebrates impressive new voices in young adult literature.

2012 Winner:

WHERE THINGS COME BACK: A NOVEL
by John Corey Whaley
Seventeen-year-old Cullen's summer in Lily, Arkansas, is marked by his cousin's death by overdose, an alleged spotting of a woodpecker thought to be extinct, failed romances, and his younger brother's sudden disappearance.

2012 Finalists:

THE GIRL OF FIRE AND THORNS
by Rae Carson
A fearful sixteen-year-old princess discovers her heroic destiny after being married off to the king of a neighboring country in turmoil and pursued by enemies seething with dark magic.

PAPER COVERS ROCK
by Jenny Hubbard
In 1982 Buncombe County, North Carolina, sixteen-year-old Alex Stromm writes of the aftermath of the accidental drowning of a friend. His English teacher reaches out to him while he and a fellow boarding school student try to cover things up.

UNDER THE MESQUITE
by Guadalupe Garcia McCall
Throughout her high school years, as her mother battles cancer, Lupita takes on more responsibility for her house and seven younger siblings, while finding refuge in acting and writing poetry.

BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY
by Ruta Sepetys
In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia, where her father is sentenced to death in a prison camp while she fights for her life, vowing to honor her family and the thousands like hers by burying her story in a jar on Lithuanian soil. Based on the author's family.

For more information, please visit the William C. Morris Award website.