Updated Fancy Girl By Jasen Sousa Query Letter

Fancy Girl is a young adult novel written in free verse, complete at 17,132 words. This book is about a 19-year-old single mother who is struggling to raise her daughter inside of the Mystic Housing Projects in Somerville, Massachusetts. Fancy Girl is a modern day version of The Outsiders, and possesses a gritty authenticity that is missing is most Young Adult fiction. Deanna Keight is trying to find some sense of stability and hope for herself and her daughter in an unforgiving environment. This is a story of a young woman who tries to lift herself out of poverty by selling her body.

Along the way Deanna confronts violence and abuse, the drug addiction of a friend who brought her into the life, an attack and kidnapping by the father of her daughter, and the death of the one man who seemed to really care. By the end of the narrative Deanna discovers that fast money is not going to make her life better, and that poverty is not something she must remain in, just because previous generations of her family have. This is a story not just about courage, love, and redemption, but of the maturing of self under the worst circumstances possible, and the understanding that one can recover from bad choices; and lifestyles, and move onto something better. It is a story every teenager who has ever been in trouble will want to read as the writing is charged and hip and compelling.

Iā€™m twenty-seven, and live in Somerville, Massachusetts. I have an M.F.A. from Pine Manor College in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and am the founder of a small press called J-Rock Publishing that publishes poetry books for young adult writers.

Thank you for your consideration. I hope to hear from you soon.

Kind Regards,

Jasen Sousa
Jasen SousaComment