Ron Koertge's Summer Reading List

Ask Ron Koertge what he brings to the realm of young adult fiction, and the seasoned author responds matter-of-factly. "I write dialogue well, and I'm funny," he says--an assessment few would argue with. "I like iconoclasm and practice it in my fiction. I don't like pretense or hypocrisy. I'm almost always irreverent."

All of these factors appear in abundance in STONER & SPAZ, a funny, in-your-face tale of a teenage cinephile with cerebral palsy and the straight-shooting stoner who steals his heart. "My wife works with the disabled," says the film-loving author of his inspiration for the novel, which has quickly garnered critical acclaim. "One night she came home and told me about a young man she'd been working with. He had C.P. and a terrific sense of humor. Coincidentally, that day I had talked to a former student of mine who'd recently been in rehab for substance abuse. What would happen, I wondered, if those two knew each other?" Says PUBLISHERS WEEKLY in a starred review, "Perhaps not since HAROLD AND MAUDE has there been such a likable unlikely romance." Adds BOOKLIST, "This is vintage Koertge. . . . Buy several copies."

A faculty member for more than 35 years at Pasadena City College, where he has taught everything from Shakespeare to remedial writing, Ron Koertge is the author of several novels, most for young adults, many of them American Library Association choices for Best Books or Books for Reluctant Readers. He also writes poetry for adults and has been dubbed "the wisest, most entertaining wiseguy in American poetry" by poet-laureate Billy Collins. THE BRIMSTONE JOURNALS, Ron Koertge's first novel with Candlewick Press, was created entirely in free verse, with 15 different teenage characters "writing" four or five poems each, scattered throughout the book for maximum effect. "The book started to nag me a few months before the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, and I started to make notes in the form of poems," he says of the hauntingly prescient work. "BRIMSTONE needed to move at high velocity, and this form is perfect for that: no tail fins, no leather seats, no moon roof. Just get in and go."

Ron Koertge grew up in an agricultural area in an old mining town in Illinois, just across the Mississippi from St. Louis, Missouri. There he learned to "drive a tractor and buck hay bales, which are clearly useful skills in Los Angeles," he quips. He and his wife live in South Pasadena, California.