Lauren Myracle

About Lauren Myracle

Lauren Myracle was born on August 29, 1969, in California. She earned a BA in English from UC Santa Barbara and later an MFA from Vermont College. She has published more than thirty books for children and young adults, spanning picture books, middle-grade fiction, and YA novels. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Myracle came to widespread attention with the Internet Girls series — beginning with ttyl (2004), a novel written entirely in instant message format. The format was novel and the content bracingly honest about the social pressures, romantic feelings, and friendship dynamics of teenage girls. The series was a major commercial success and established Myracle as a significant voice in YA fiction.

Her Approach to Teenage Life

What distinguishes Myracle's work is her refusal to simplify the experience of being a teenage girl. Her characters gossip, lie, hurt each other, fall in love badly, experiment with substances, encounter sexual coercion, and navigate families that are not always safe. She does not resolve these situations with life lessons or neat redemptions. She presents them as part of the complicated, often painful texture of growing up female in America.

Shine (2011), a mystery-thriller set in a small Southern town, is among her most critically acclaimed works, using the conventions of genre fiction to examine complicity, silence, and anti-gay hate crime. The book won strong reviews and national recognition from library organizations.

Book Bans and Challenges

Myracle has been one of the most banned authors in American school libraries since the mid-2000s. The American Library Association has placed her books — particularly ttyl, Shine, and others — on its annual most challenged list many times over. Challenges cite sexual content, language, drug and alcohol use, and in the case of Shine, the book's depiction of anti-gay violence.

Her books have been banned or challenged in more than 150 school districts across multiple states. Defenders note that the same qualities that attract challenges — her honesty about what teenage girls experience — are what make her work valuable. She writes books for readers who have not found their lives reflected in sanitized YA fiction, and those readers often have the most to lose when those books are removed.