>> Danielle Clayton: Hi, I'm Danielle Clayton, one of the co-authors of the novel “Blackout”, and it is about 13 teens who get stuck in New York City during a blackout with someone they might like or not like. And they're all trying to get to a party in Brooklyn, and they all are in various places in the city. And it is you following along to see whether or not they're going to make it to this party and whether or not they're going to make it with the person they're stuck in the dark with. So the origin of the novel “Blackout” is very interesting because there are six of us writing together. And the way that it came about was during the pandemic, when everyone was at home and really struggling to find ways back into their own writing, I called five of my fantastic writer friends, Angie Thomas, Nic Stone, Tiffany D. Jackson, Ashley Woodfolk and Nicola Yoon, and I said, we should write something that can remind teens stuck at home during online school that there is love at the end of this once we get out of this, and we had felt like the whole world was experiencing a blackout metaphorically. So we decided to tell the story of 13 teens who had to navigate a blackout in New York City alongside someone they either might have a crush on, someone they hate, someone they might like, one of their best friends and find love at the other side of that. And they would say that I bullied them into this endeavor, but really, I just called them and got them excited because they all write about black teens in various situations and they were all excited to come together and collaborate on something that we felt like would remind readers of why they deserve a love story if they want one, and that they are loved and do a tribute to New York City. So I was a bookworm growing up. I was a little tiny little Matilda who was marching into her public library and school library, wanting a stack of books as tall as me. And that love of reading came from my dad. And so my dad was a big science fiction and fantasy nerd, and he would make us listen to books on tape on the way to school. He still reads tons of books every month. And so I grew up in a household that valued reading. Shelves were covered in books. Every Saturday we went to the bookstore and the comic book store, so it was a part of my everyday life, literacy and reading. And I believe that readers are created in the laps of other readers. And so I was read to very deeply, and so that turned me into a librarian first. And so I wanted to provide that for young readers. I wanted to be that place where I could talk about books and like geek out over all of the cool things that authors were doing. And that's how I found my way into becoming a writer, by reading all of these other books that I loved as a young person. So for me, librarians and libraries are lighthouses for communities. They were my lighthouse. They kept me sort of focused on all of the exciting things that life had to offer because a book can really take you around the world. And so it is super important to me. Literacy and libraries and librarians, they have superpowers.