David Yoon & Brendan Slocumb: A Conversation

Brendan Nicholaus Slocumb was raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and holds a degree in music education with concentrations in violin and viola from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is a public and private school music educator and has performed with orchestras throughout Northern Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. In The Violin Conspiracy (Anchor), growing up Black in rural North Carolina means Ray McMillian’s life is already mapped out. But he’s determined to become a world-class violinist and nothing will stand in his way. Not his mother, who wants him to stop making such a racket; not the fact that he can’t afford a violin suitable to his talents; not even the racism running rampant in classical music. When Ray discovers that his beat-up family fiddle is a priceless Stradivarius, his dreams suddenly seem within reach. But on the eve of the Tchaikovsky Competition, the violin is stolen, and there’s a ransom note for $5 million to return it. Without it, Ray feels like he’s lost a piece of himself. Now he must not only reclaim his precious violin, but prove to himself – and the world – that no matter the outcome, there has always been a great musician within him.

David Yoon is the New York Times bestselling author of YA novels Frankly in Love and Super Fake Love Song, and for adult readers, Version Zero and City of Orange: A Novel (G.P. Putnam’s Sons). He is a William C. Morris Award finalist and an Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature honor recipient. He’s also a co-publisher of Joy Revolution, a Random House YA imprint dedicated to love stories starring people of color, and co-founder of Yooniverse Media. In the end-of-the-world story City of Orange, a man wakes up in an unknown landscape, injured and alone. He used to live in a place called California. How did he wind up here with a head wound and a bottle of pills in his pocket? He navigates his surroundings. Here lies a pipe, and here is a reed that could be carved into a weapon. He could swear his daughter’s name began with a “J,” but what was it, exactly? Then he encounters an old man, a crow, and a boy, and realizes that nothing is what he thought it was, neither the present nor the past. He can’t even recall the features of his own face and wonders: Who am I?

James Meader is vice president and associate publisher of Vintage Backlist, working with the estates of many legendary authors, as well as with the teams overseeing Vintage Classics, Vintage Shorts, Everyman’s Library, and media tie-ins. Before joining the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group in 2019, he worked for 17 years at Picador, first in publicity and eventually as the imprint’s associate publisher, also acquiring and editing a number of books. Since beginning his publishing career in 2002, he has had the good fortune of working with a vast number of remarkable authors. A native of Maine, he studied comparative literature and Chinese at Middlebury College. He now lives in New Jersey with his wife and son.