THIS IS MY BRAIN IN LOVE

This Is Your Brain On Life is a YA contemporary romance that is at once a multicultural love story, an exploration of neuroatypia and race, and a (mostly) happy book about mental illness. Told in dual narrative, it's a tale of microaggression, macro-emotion and, ultimately, self-acceptance.

Jocelyn Wu has just three wishes for her junior year: To make it through without dying of boredom, to direct a short film with her BFF Priya Venkatram, and to get at least two months into the year without being compared to or confused with Peggy Chang, the only other Chinese girl in her grade.

Will Domenici has two goals: to find a paying summer internship, and to prove he has what it takes to become an editor on his school paper.

Then Jocelyn's father tells her their family restaurant may be going under, and all wishes are off. Because her dad has the marketing skills of a dumpling, it's up to Jocelyn and her unlikely new employee, Will, to bring A-Plus Chinese Garden into the 21st century (or, at least, to Facebook).

What starts off as a rocky partnership soon grows into something more. But family prejudices and the uncertain future of A-Plus threaten to keep Will and Jocelyn apart. It will take everything they have and more, to save the family restaurant and their budding romance.

I. W. Gregorio is a practicing surgeon by day, masked avenging YA writer by night. After getting her MD at Yale School of Medicine, she did her residency at Stanford, where she met the intersex patient who inspired her debut novel, None of the Above (Balzer + Bray / HarperCollins), which is a 2016 Lambda Literary Award finalist, a Spring 2015 Publishers Weekly Flying Start, an ALA Booklist Top Ten Sports Book for Youth, and a 2015 ABC Children's Group Best Book for Young Readers. It was also named to the 2016 American Library Association Rainbow List. She is proud to be a board member of interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth, and is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Newsweek, Scientific American, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury Newsand New York Post, among others. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two children. Find her on Instagram and Twitter as @iwgregorio, or on her website at www.iwgregorio.com.