Register to attend IN-PERSON or WATCH ONLINE. The video link for the livestreamed event will be emailed to all registrants on the day of the lecture. The captioned video will be available to view for one week, expiring on February 29, 2024.

In her new book Attack of the Black Rectangles, Amy takes on censorship and intolerance in a novel she was born to write.

When Mac first opens his classroom copy of Jane Yolen’s The Devil’s Arithmetic and finds some words blacked out, he thinks it must be a mistake. But then when he and his friends discover what the missing words are, he’s outraged. Someone in his school is trying to prevent kids from reading the full story. But who? Even though his unreliable dad tells him to not get so emotional about a book (or anything else), Mac has been raised by his mom and grandad to call out things that are wrong. He and his friends head to the principal’s office to protest the censorship… but her response doesn’t take them seriously. So many adults want Mac to keep his words to himself. Mac’s about to see the power of letting them out.

A.S. King has been called “One of the best Y.A. writers working today” by the New York Times Book Review and in 2022 received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature. King is the author of highly-acclaimed novels including 2021’s SW/TCH, 2020 Michael L. Printz Award winner and LA Times Book Prize finalist DIG, 2016’s Still Life with Tornado, 2015’s surrealist I Crawl Through It, Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future, Reality Boy, the 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner Ask the Passengers, Everybody Sees the Ants, 2011 Michael L. Printz Honor Book Please Ignore Vera Dietz among others. She also writes acclaimed and bestselling Middle Grade Fiction as Amy Sarig King.

She is a faculty member of the Writing for Children and Young Adults MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and travels the country speaking to high school and university students, educators, and humans who care about the mental health of young people. After more than a decade living self-sufficiently and teaching literacy to adults in Ireland, she now lives in Pennsylvania.

Copies of Attack of the Black Rectangles and other A.S. King books are available from City of Asylum Bookstore. A personalized book signing will follow the program.