![]() ![]() It has now sold more than 2m copies globally. It was a hit here too, and named overall winner of the 2018 Waterstones children’s book prize. THUG, published in early 2017, went straight into the bestseller chart in the US and stayed there for a year. The story speeds up now: the novel became The Hate U Give ( THUG), a YA sensation about a 16-year-old girl called Starr who witnesses her friend Khalil being shot by the police and turns to activism. Thomas’s break came when she cold-contacted a literary agent who was doing a Twitter Q&A. “Yeah, I had more than 150 rejections for that one,” says Thomas matter-of-factly. She had previously written a children’s book, but hadn’t had any interest from agents. At nights – and during quiet periods in the day, she furtively admits – she worked on a young adult novel inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. Really not very long ago, Angie Thomas was a secretary to a bishop at a megachurch in Jackson, Mississippi. I n book publishing, it seems, they still do fairytales. ![]()
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