Thank you to the following educators, who range in subject from my kindergarten teacher to my theater director to the advisor of my honors thesis in college: Michele Kotowicz, Cynthia Page-Bogen, Molly Sykes Crankshaw, Jim Melby, Constance Corwin, Linda S. Hoadley, Tracy Anderson, Ellen Stone, Judith DeWoskin, Marion Evashevski, Michelle Mountain, Loretta Grimes, and Lyn Di Iorio. Thank you for sharing your gifts with me.

Mom and Dad, thank you for always caring about what I think and respecting my intellect even when my academics faltered. Mom, I’m in awe of your personal quest for education and the immense hardships you had to endure in order to learn. What a heroine you are. Dad, your lifelong passion for learning, your enormous consumption of books of all kinds, and your devotion to the field of history have long inspired me. You set a formative example of curiosity and the importance of always diving deeper into a story. Also, I’m sorry you had to put up with our math tutoring sessions for all those years.

To Margery and David Ross, grandparents extraordinaire, I can never thank you enough for the hours and hours of writing time you gave me during an incredibly difficult year. I simply could not have completed this book without you both. Thank you for your love and for such tireless and affectionate grandparenting and parenting.

Thank you to my siblings and their better halves for the support system. Michael, Lauren, Ian, Lizzie, Tom … You are my forever people.

Claudia Maschio, my darling niece, thank you for reading an early excerpt of Bright and giving me your very honest opinion. Your sharp insights delight me. And to my lovely nephews, Jacob and Oliver Young, thank you for so generously answering my random, sporadic text-messaged questions about young people!

Thank you, Jonathan, for your heart and your brilliance.

Thank you to Simone and Ingrid for being the people you are. I love every bit of you.

Lastly, thank you to every young reader who has ever written to me or chatted with me. Your lives and stories are fascinating, life-affirming, and essential.

Also by Brigit Young

The Prettiest

Worth a Thousand Words

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brigit Young was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and now lives on the East Coast with her husband and daughters. She is a proud graduate of the City College of New York and has taught creative writing to kids of all ages, in settings ranging from workshops at Writopia Lab to bedsides at a pediatric hospital. Brigit has published poetry and short fiction in numerous literary journals, as well as the middle grade novels Worth a Thousand Words and The Prettiest.

Visit her online at brigityoung.com, or sign up for email updates here.

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