AvantGuild: The Daily Show Producer’s YA Novel

We should be upfront here: We met Josh Lieb, the author of I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to be Your Class President, a few weeks ago, and we think this YA novel is maybe the most brilliant illustration of the Oedipus complex in the entirety of Western literature. And the promotional video at the book’s official website is pretty damn funny, too (including a ‘suprise’ guest star). So we were totally psyched to hear that Lieb had done an interview with Amanda Ernst for mediabistro.com’s “So What Do You Do?” series.

In it, he talks about his affection for the “power fantasy” element you’ll find in lots of great children’s fiction and reveals: “I really wrote the book not just for young adults but for people like you and me who continue to read young adult novels. I wrote it like the books that I really remember and love, the ones that really challenged me. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but they didn’t impede me, books that made me feel like I was being led into an adult conversation and I felt like that was what I would be talking about in five or 10 years.” (Hence the footnote jokes about Aaron Sorkin and Raymond Carver!)

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for $55 a year, and start reading those articles, receive discounts on mediabistro.com seminars and workshops, and get all sorts of other swell bonuses.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.