I looked up through the cage of bare branches. Any day now, the trees would break into blossom. The cold edge to the wind would fall away. Life would burst forth. My mom had found a good job. My sister would write brilliant songs. I would go to college, see the world, find my tribe, do something awesome. Burn all the bad shit to the ground. Build something beautiful.
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were coming out.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’ve got a lot to acknowledge. Here’s the first thing: When I was fifteen, I had an eating disorder. No one diagnosed me, not even when I hadn’t eaten for days and was in so much stomach pain that my mom took me to the emergency room at two in the morning (just like Matt!), because lots of people don’t think boys can even get eating disorders. One of the many reasons I wrote this book was because boys are damaged and distorted by the same terrible body-image issues and expectations as girls, and we all need to realize how full of shit that is, and how awesome we are no matter what we look like.
The most important acknowledgment is this one: books have big families. Here are the people who helped birth this one:
Seth Fishman, for being a goddamn genius rock-star agent who took a chance on something completely batshit crazy.
Kristen Pettit, who I already knew was brilliant, but until we rolled up our sleeves and took scalpel and chainsaw to this book, I didn’t truly understand how much a great editor is responsible for a book turning out halfway awesome. Thank you for turning this hot mess into something a little hotter and a lot less messy. And thank you to Elizabeth Lynch for rad flap copy and general editorial magnificence.
John Joseph Adams, for publishing my stories when no one else would. And including them in amazing anthologies. And introducing me to Seth. And being just generally a magnificent specimen. Basically, whatever career I have is thanks to you . . . so . . . yeah.
Holly Black and Cassandra Clare, for being the best YA teachers a writer could ever hope to have.
Jacqueline Woodson, for talking me through some tough decisions, and just generally providing the kind of incredible affirmation that I sorely needed through some rough times.
Beta readers Eliza Blair, Richard Bowes, Sadie Bruce, E. G. Cosh, Pratima Cranse, Kris Dikeman, Lara Elena Donnelly, Eric Esser, Barry Goldblatt, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Chris Kammerud, Matthew Kressel, Carmen Maria Machado, E. C. Meyers, and Luke Pebler all caught tons of horrific mistakes, and, I’m sure, numerous offensive asides. Any problems this book still has are in spite of them.
My siblings in the Clarion class of 2012, who made me into something halfway awesome. My comrades in the Altered Fluid writer’s group, who made me into something even closer to awesome.
The Kiefer-Osts, whose lakeside weekends provided me with remembered warmth on many a bleak cold night. My Picture the Homeless family, especially Lynn Lewis & Jean Rice & Tyletha Samuels & Nikita Price & Arvernetta Henry & DeBoRah Dickerson, for teaching me so much about strength and survival and dignity in the face of horrific oppression. Maria Dahvana Headley isn’t just one of our best short story writers—she is a paragon of generosity and awesomeness. Kalyani Sanchez, Kathy Rodriguez, Patricia Thomas, R. F. I. Porto, Saffie Kallon, Tim Fite, Trinidad M. Peña, and Walead Esmail were my cheering squad for the years when I was sorely in need of one.
My sister, Sarah Talent, BFF and Number One Fan and Staunchest Ally.
My mother, Deborah Miller, has been my Writer Hero since I was thirteen, when she showed me how to do a cover letter and a self-addressed stamped envelope. She was publishing dark and edgy brilliant stories when I was still a puppy, and her words have inspired me my whole life. But after coming through an unspeakably rough year, surviving some shit I could never have survived, she’s now my Life Hero, as well.
This is my debut novel, but it’s also my seventh novel. Every single one of its predecessors died a long, slow, painful death that made me generally miserable and probably pretty awful. My husband, Juancy Rodriguez, had my back through all of it, and through a whole lot of other shit, and without his unflinching love and support and affirmation (and stern admonishments), I probably wouldn’t have been able to keep picking myself up to start again. To say nothing of the fact that he turned me on to so much of the art that is most important to me—Octavia Butler, Battlestar Galactica, and Avatar: The Last Airbender, to name a few—my storytelling chops would still be stunted and inadequate without them.
And finally, my father, Hyman P. Miller, who spent seven years battling cancer. Twenty-four hours before he passed away, we accepted HarperCollins’s offer to publish The Art of Starving. So pretty much the best thing in my life and the worst thing happened right next to each other. This book is for him, for the lifetime of love and acceptance he gave me, which is how I got through my own miserable high school experience, and for the superpower of self-acceptance.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Hyman P. Miller
SAM J. MILLER lives in New York City now, but grew up in a small town in upstate New York. He is the last in a long line of butchers. In no particular order, he has also been a film critic, a grocery bagger, a community organizer, a secretary, a painter’s assistant and model, and the guitarist in a punk rock band. His fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Award, was long-listed for the Hugo Award, and has won the Shirley Jackson Award. He’s a graduate of the Clarion Writers Workshop. His husband of fifteen years is a nurse practitioner and is way smarter and handsomer than Sam. You can visit him online at www.samjmiller.com.
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BOOKS BY SAM J. MILLER
The Art of Starving
CREDITS
Cover art © 2017 by Matt Blease
Cover design by Jenna Stempel
COPYRIGHT
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE ART OF STARVING. Copyright © 2017 by Sam J. Miller. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958596
ISBN 978-0-06-245671-7
EPub Edition © June 2017 ISBN 9780062456731
17 18 19 20 21 PC/LSCH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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