WBUR News profiled Boston-based educator, author, and editor Autumn Allen ’18MA/MFA, who recently released her second young adult novel, You Only Live Twice (Kokila-Penguin Random House, 2026).
As described by WBUR, this book “captures the giddiness of first love, the reward of forging your own path, the joy of Islam, and the harsh realities of being visibly Muslim in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing.”
For Allen, it is critically important for young Muslims and racial minorities to see themselves represented in literature. “It’s not that every kid has to be an avid reader, but they just need to know that they could be. There are books for them,” she says.