The rise of Boomer lit: literature for an older generation

Young-adult fiction's older sibling is gaining popularity in the literary world, Saffron Alexander finds out more

Photo: Getty/French Select

By Saffron Alexander

The Telegraph - 08 Oct 2015

In the sixties, when the young-adult fiction genre began to gain traction amongst publishers and readers, todays boomers would have been on the cusp of adolescence.

Widely considered to be one of the founding novels of the genre, the boomer generation would have grown up alongside S. E. Hinton's 'The Outsiders', a novel that explored the darker side of teenage life in a way very few books did before. It became one of the best-selling YA novels of all time and is reported to still sell around 500,000 copies each year.

'The Outsiders' birthed the idea of modern YA fiction, paving the way for people like Suzanne Collins, John Green, and James Dashner - the authors waving the YA flag today. But, for the baby boomers who first saw themselves accurately represented in fiction almost fifty years ago, the literary world appears to have forgotten them.

This is why a growing number of people are championing the growth of 'Boomer lit' - fiction written, and marketed with the baby boomer audience specifically in mind.   More