Spend more than a couple of minutes talking with the talented, down-to-earth, and very funny Wiley Cash, author of  the critically-acclaimed 2012 Discover Great New Writers selection, A Land More Kind Than Home, and, well, it’s no surprise that his storytelling is mature and thoughtful. So here's Wiley on learning how to tell stories and handle literary rejections,  what the characters he creates teach him about normal people, and answering an age-old question: Does seeing your roommate weep help dry your own tears?  Interview by Michael Jauchen for the Discover Blog.

Katherine Applegate's The One and Only Ivan has been awarded the John Newbery Medal for "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children." 

Funny is powerful stuff in literature, but easy to botch. So funny done well – funny with a soul, the potent, arm-whack-you-have-to-hear-this, new-image-tattooed-on-the-back-of-the-brain kind of funny, provocative funny -- always gets the attention of the Discover selection committee readers. David Abrams (Fobbit) and Alex Gilvarry (From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant) have created darkly comic novels, easily read as companion pieces, that compelled our readers to think long and hard about war and death, race and human rights. David and Alex discuss what they learned at the movies, the literature of war, and satire’s reverberations, among other things, on the Discover blog.

What's a talented writer to do when he's got new stories to set in a thoughtfully imagined world, fans are clamoring for an extension of a beloved series -- and the traditional publishing route to continuing the cycle is closed?  Just a couple of decades or so ago, the answer to that question would have been simple: slink off into the sunset and develop a serious drinking habit. But nowadays the Internet and the spread of ebooks offers many a route to continued storytelling.

Donations -- of cash, emergency rations, manpower and medical supplies -- surged into Haiti in the wake  of the devastating earthquake in January 2010. But almost 3 years later, those donations have yet to improve the lives of many of the intended recipients. Former AP Correspondent Jonathan M. Katz was the only full-time American reporter on the ground wen the quake hit, and he explains how and why the best laid plans went awry in Spring '13 Discover pick, The Big Truck That Went By - and in this guest post on the Discover blog.