New YA sensation Angie Thomas: "Publishing did something pretty terrible. They made the assumption that black kids don’t read"

Now 29, Thomas is the one doing the encouraging and it's all down to a short story she wrote while studying creative writing at college in Jackson, Mississippi. That story became her first novel, The Hate U Give, about Starr, a black teenage girl living in a poor, black neighbourhood in inner-city America who sees her unarmed childhood friend Khalil get shot dead by a police officer. Since its US release in February, the book has topped the New York Times young adult fiction best sellers chart, selling more than 100,000 copies. Fox 2000 snapped up the film rights last year, lining up Amandla Stenberg, who played Rue in The Hunger Games, to star in the adaptation.