New Adult Fiction

This Element uses the tumultuous history of new adult fiction to provoke exciting new ways of thinking about genre.

Jodi McAlister (Author)

9781108827881, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 November 2021

75 pages
17.6 x 12.6 x 0.6 cm, 0.11 kg

The term 'new adult' was coined in 2009 by St Martin's Press, when they sought submissions for a contest for 'fiction similar to YA that can be published and marketed as adult – a sort of 'older YA' or 'new adult'.' However, the literary category that later emerged bore less resemblance to young adult fiction and instead became a sub-genre of another major popular genre: romance. This Element uses new adult fiction as a case study to explore how genres develop in the twenty-first-century literary marketplace. It traces new adult's evolution through three key stages in order to demonstrate the fluidity that characterises contemporary genres. It argues for greater consideration of paratextual factors in studies of genre. Using a genre worlds approach, it contends that in order to productively examine genre, we must consider industrial and social factors as well as texts.

Introduction
1. 2009 – New Adult at St Martin's Press
2. 2011-13 – The New Adult Boom
3. 2020 – New Adult, A Decade On
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Reference material [Children's / Teenage YR], Modern & contemporary fiction [post c 1945 FA], Children’s & teenage literature studies [DSY], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA], Literature & literary studies [D]