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Bio
Ava Dellaira is the author of a new novel for adults, Exposure, and the critically acclaimed young adult novels In Search of Us and Love Letters to the Dead, which was named Best Book of the Year by Apple, Google, BuzzFeed, the New York Public Library and the Chicago Public Library. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow, and the University of Chicago. She grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and now lives in Altadena, California with her husband and their two young children.
More from Ava
As an author with more than fifteen years of experience in the publishing world, I am thrilled to be able to offer consultation and editing services for your manuscript. From overall manuscript feedback to detailed line editing, I can help you to prepare your book for submission to agents, editors, or for self-publication. I can also work with you on your film or television script. Please contact me via my website for more details or to discuss your project!
Books
Title: Exposure
Publisher: Zibby Books (2024)
Genre: Literary Fiction, Women’s Fiction
The shocking, unforgettable novel that Junot Díaz called “searingly brilliant.”
GRIEF IS LIKE THIS . . .
Falling in love with your best friend, only to lose her to a mysterious death.
Working for decades to achieve a dream, and just when it’s within reach, watching it threaten to go up in flames.
Spending the first sleepless months in the throes of new motherhood alone, as your husband struggles to save his career.
Befriending the woman who should be your enemy, because you are that lonely . . .
Annie, Jesse, Noah, and Juliette are tied together by their experiences of grief; they are separated by their own versions of the truth of what happened on a single night twelve years ago when two lonely souls found each other. Spanning decades, this complex, captivating story pulls back the curtains of cancel culture to explore ambition, empathy, art, desire, consent, motherhood, and what it really means to lose everything.
Available for Sale
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Title: In Search of Us
Publisher: Macmillan (2018)
Genre: YA, Cross Over, Literary Fiction
To seventeen-year-old Angie, who is mixed-race, Marilyn is her hardworking, devoted white single mother. But Marilyn was once young, too. When she was seventeen, Marilyn fell in love with Angie’s father, James, who was African-American. But Angie’s never met him, and Marilyn has always told her he died before she was born.
When Angie discovers evidence of an uncle she’s never met, she starts to wonder: What if her dad is still alive, too?
So she sets off on a journey to find him, hitching a ride to Los Angeles from her home in New Mexico with her ex-boyfriend, Sam. Along the way, she uncovers some hard truths about herself, her mother, and what truly happened to her father.
Alternating between Angie’s present-day journey and Marilyn’s romance set against the backdrop of LA in the 90s, the stories of In Search of Us intertwine to create a powerful tale about secrets and lies, race and identity, and mothers and daughters.
Available for Sale
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Bookshop
Title: Love Letters to the Dead
Publisher: Macmillan (2014)
Genre: YA, Cross Over, Literary Fiction
Ava Dellaira writes about grief, love, and family with a haunting and often heartbreaking beauty in this emotionally stirring, critically acclaimed debut novel.
It begins as an assignment for English class: Write a letter to a dead person. Laurel chooses Kurt Cobain because her sister, May, loved him. And he died young, just like May did.
Soon, Laurel has a notebook full of letters to people like Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Amelia Earhart, Heath Ledger, and more―though she never gives a single one of them to her teacher. She writes about starting high school, navigating new friendships, falling in love for the first time, learning to live with her splintering family. And, finally, about the secret she has been holding onto.
Only once Laurel has written down the truth about what happened to herself, can she truly begin to accept what happened to May. And only when Laurel has begun to see her sister as the person she was—amazing and deeply flawed—can she discover her own path.