I am at work on my first middle grade novel.

Georgie Blue Fish and the Not So Simple Summer is set on Cape Cod, where eleven-year-old Georgie Fish counts on her grandparents' house on Oyster Road to stay the same every summer. This year it doesn't — and neither does she.

A story about belonging, unexpected alliances, and friendships you counted on that aren't as simple as they used to be — because the best summers aren't always the easiest ones, and the people who surprise you most might be exactly who you needed all along.

I grew up spending summers on Cape Cod at my grandmother's house, and the landscape of this book — the particular feeling of a place that holds still while you grow — comes directly from those days.

I've been thinking about what it means to write for children after years of writing poetry, and find the two forms aren't far apart. Like many of my poems, Georgie Blue Fish and the Not So Simple Summer is anchored in a place — Cape Cod — and the way a familiar landscape can hold you steady while everything else shifts.