Today we are excited to welcome Rebecca Bendheim to Cynsations to talk about her debut novel, When You’re Brave Enough (Viking/Penguin Random House, 2026), which released on April 7th. In this hopeful, queer Bildungsroman, Lacey the protagonist’s emotional journey is so achingly real, with all her worries about traditions—whether they are the weird loving family kind or religious temple kind or school theater ones—that any teen would find it relatable.
You can watch the book trailer here. When You’re Brave Enough was chosen as the June 2027 middle grade NEA Read Across America pick, and they created these discussion questions for young readers.
Congratulations on your debut! The multimodal format of When You’re Brave Enough: emails, video transcripts, song lyrics, and immersive monologues woven in-between its short chapters, are perfect bite-sized reading for the reluctant middle grade readers. How did you decide on this medley of forms?
Thank you so much! It actually took six years for this medley of forms to come together. I first wrote When You’re Brave Enough as a novel-in-verse with physical letters between Lacey and Grace woven between the poems.
In my first revise & resubmit with an editor, which didn’t pan out, the editor asked me to change the poems to short chapters, which I ended up loving. Then, when I started working with Kelsey Murphy at Viking, she suggested I change the letters to emails, since it’s rare for thirteen-year-olds to be sending physical mail. I pushed back at first; letters are so sweet and romantic! Emails are so boring and corporate! But when I looked around my sixth-grade classroom, I saw that my students loved emailing each other. Plus, Kelsey told me I should “have fun” with the emails, throw a bunch of ideas at the wall and see what works.
I’ve always loved experimenting with different forms, from co-writing songs with musician friends to once taking a screenwriting class with the screenwriter of High School Musical, so it was amazing to get the chance to write songs and video transcripts to build out Lacey and Grace’s world.
At around twenty-one, I even had a period of being dead set on becoming a songwriter. I thought I’d fully given up on that dream, and definitely never expected to get to hear Gail Shalan, my very talented audiobook narrator, sing and play ukulele to songs I wrote in the audiobook. I even got to sign a songwriter’s contract for the melodies! I love how many of the paths I thought were detours have ended up coming back around for this book.
Sections titled, “What I Didn’t Say” and invertebrates: worms and insects, effectively get the reader into the protagonist’s head. The book length “flitting fruit flies” metaphor captures the anxiety and a “Spikey” worm forms a foil for the child transitioning into adulthood. Tell us about building interiority when writing for children.
To me, the hardest thing about writing for tweens is writing emotion. I love to write characters who are having a feeling for the very first time, don’t know exactly what they’re feeling yet, or definitely wouldn’t tell you if they did.
This is common for this age, especially for queer kids; studies show that most queer and trans kids first realize they are queer or trans in early adolescence, but don’t come out publicly until years later. Metaphors like these are a way to bring readers into my character’s inner world without losing the authenticity of that character’s voice in that period of their life.
I also want to touch on the worm/caterpillar metaphor. There are a few times when Lacey mentions feeling like a worm surrounded by butterflies. It was hard for me at Lacey’s age, with no queer role models, to see a future for myself.
My main goal for this book, with Lacey and Grace but also with Grace’s moms and my other queer characters, is to show LGBTQ+ readers that there are many fantastic ways to grow up.
“You don’t have to kiss someone if you don’t want to” this comeback from the protagonist is one of the most powerful lines in your book, a perfect segue to have conversations with children about identity and consent. Is there a line or a scene, special to you, or something that stayed intact through the life of this book?
Thank you! Having Lacey repeat that line to someone younger than her was important to me.
And yes, while I’ve had to cut quite a bit (including a full fourth member of the Isa-Nell-Lacey friend group!) much of the heart of this story has stayed the same.
The scene that is probably the most word-for-word from my first draft is the one where Lacey comes out to her sister. I based Mack’s response on how the first friend I came out to responded. We were in college and had just finished a sunrise, pre-class hike. She had pulled up in front of campus, and instead of getting out, I told her. She asked if I thought it was a bad thing and I realized, right then, that I didn’t. Like for Lacey, this was a “good thing” for me that would lead me to authentic relationships and joy. That realization carried me through a hard year, and from the start, I knew I had to include it in Lacey’s story.
I also read a 2021 study of over 20,000 LGBTQ students that found that 97% of them had heard negative comments about LGBTQ identities at school. The middle grades were the worst years for this, which I’ve seen firsthand.
I want to do whatever I can to combat this shame and negativity, even if it means repeating the words “good thing” fourteen times (I just checked) throughout the book.
You have subtly subverted tropes to add layers of meaning to each supporting character. I love how Violet upends clichés about visual cues of dress and behavior. Your secondary characters hold weight on the page, yet never overshadow the protagonist. What is your process for developing secondary characters?
My secondary characters start out flat. They often have placeholder names in the first few drafts and only truly come alive in revision. I learned the “character onion” exercise from my VCFA advisor, Jennifer Ziegler, where you draw a bunch of ovals inside each other and ask yourself these questions:
- What does your character want that is clear for all to see?
- Why do they want this?
- Why do they really want this?
- What from their past contributed to these feelings?
I usually do this exercise for each character and then do a full revision of the draft only focused on them. For When You’re Brave Enough, I had a group of amazing teen beta readers, campers at a camp I worked at who asked if they could look at my draft, ended up reading it in one night, and gave hilarious feedback that transformed this book. In the draft they read, Violet, Andre, and Jaden had much smaller roles in the story, but their passion for these characters inspired me to give them the page time they deserved.
When You’re Brave Enough has a large, yet cohesive cast—with plenty of adults that teachers warn the novice children’s writer about. How did you integrate these adults, believable and a little fallible, into this story, and was there an editorial moment that helped you gain clarity?
One of my favorite parts of writing middle grade is that while friends and crushes are very important, parents, siblings, theater directors, coaches, and rabbis often play just as vital a role in a tween’s life.
In both writing and teaching, we talk a lot about agency. I often start by giving my characters (and sometimes my students) too much of it; my first drafts include tweens/teens running about town with pretty much no adult involvement. As I revise, I further integrate the adults, but with the thought of agency always in the back of my mind.
My young characters are always the ones driving the story, making the big decisions, learning from their own experiences, mistakes, and wins, and saying the line that matters. The adults in their lives support them, or at least try to, and I hope this encourages readers to turn to different adults in their life for support. But in the end, the adults in my books learn from the young characters, not the other way around.
The refrain, “It’s a good thing” adds a lyrical reassurance to the chapter endings in this book. What inspires you to write, any hobbies that are “a good thing” for you?
I wish I was the kind of writer who often felt inspired to write. Instead, I have to force myself into my chair, block all distractions with a variety of weird apps where a garden grows or a sentient bean knits socks for each minute I focus, blast white noise, and then, if I’m lucky, the writing starts to flow and suddenly it’s impossible to stop.
I do think bike rides and showers are fantastic for brainstorming and recently, When You’re Brave Enough inspired me to get back into theater, which I haven’t done since I was Lacey’s age.
Last week, I was in my first community theater production and it was definitely a “good thing” I want to keep doing!
Tell us about using a classic book as a layer in your contemporary story. Did you have other helpful mentor texts as you were developing When You’re Brave Enough?
I first read The Diary of Anne Frank when I was around Lacey’s age and remember feeling shocked at how much her writing sounded like my innermost thoughts, even though our lives, time periods, and circumstances were so different.
While revising When You’re Brave Enough, I decided to re-read it, and this time, picked up the definitive edition, which has some passages that are not in other versions. I was so surprised to see a passage about Anne’s “strong desire” to kiss her friend Jacqueline and attraction to women in her art history textbooks.
I wished I could give this version to my thirteen-year-old self, but since I couldn’t, I gave it to Lacey.
Another book I read many times throughout the revision process was The List of Things That Will Not Change by Rebecca Stead (Wendy Lamb Books, April 2020). In this book, the main character is struggling in the aftermath of something the reader doesn’t know about until the end. This book helped me work toward my goal of having readers realize Lacey’s feelings for Grace right along with her. It’s also just a beautiful book!
How do you balance writing from personal truth and imagined empathy while setting emotional boundaries around sharing your lived experience?
This is hard and I’m still working on it!
My first experience sharing my writing with a large group of people was through spoken word poetry. If you’ve ever been to a poetry slam, you know that these poems are often extremely personal and emotional, and I love that about them. You’re in some bar or tiny black box theater and you suddenly feel like everyone in the room is your closest friend.
That feeling got me hooked on writing, and because of that, I think I’ll always write from deep personal truth.
However, with social media and the internet, I do feel like I need to set more boundaries.
A month before When You’re Brave Enough came out, one of my posts about my book got reposted by an account that did not think kids and teens should be allowed to read about LGBTQ+ people. This account had millions of followers, and for over two weeks, my DMs, comment sections, and email inbox were flooded with death threats and messages calling me an abuser.
I was terrified for my in-person events and thankfully got support from Authors Against Book Bans and Penguin, since both organizations unfortunately have a lot of experience with situations like this.
I will never stop writing queer books, but going forward, I know I’m going to need to set more boundaries on how I engage with others when it comes to my writing. While I feel so lucky to get to publish my books on a larger scale, sometimes I miss the trust and intimacy I felt in a rapt black box theater.
I have heard you recite poetry at open mic nights in Vermont. You have authored a memoir in poems, Coming Out Party [Burlwood Books, 2023]. Did you ever consider writing a novel in verse? Or is there one in the pipeline?
This book was originally a novel in verse, and I love reading verse novels whenever I can get my hands on them! I’d love to write another one day, but for now, I often write in verse when I’m struggling with a scene in a prose book. It helps me get right to the emotional heart of the scene and lets me figure out things like dialogue, setting, and physicality later.
How do you approach communication and career strategy with your agent, Patricia Nelson, and what advice would you give writers who are seeking representation?
One of the reasons Patricia is so great at her job is that she is very honest and direct.
We’ve been working together since 2021, and though we didn’t sign a publishing deal until 2024, she kept pushing, confident When You’re Brave Enough had a chance. She has a fantastic editorial eye and deep knowledge of the market, my writing, and what it takes to build a long career, so I know I can trust her, whether she’s telling me she likes a certain direction or that an idea doesn’t have legs or it’s time to set a project aside.
In publishing, it can sometimes be hard to get clear answers, and I so appreciate her honesty, vision, and steadfast belief in my career.
I want writers seeking representation to know that there are so many different types of author-agent relationships.
So as you scour Publisher’s Marketplace to research which agents are making deals in your genre, I also recommend thinking about how you work best.
Maybe you want an editorial agent, or maybe you have a strong critique group and just need someone to send your finished manuscript out. Maybe you want someone who feels more like a friend, or maybe you’d work best with someone who intimidates you a little bit or is super organized.
Many authors, including me, are happy to talk to you about our agents. Before querying, I had many calls like this.
Finally, cold querying works. I was sure I would need a personal connection but ended up meeting Patricia through the query trenches. The waiting and rejection is brutal, but you’ve got this!
What have literary friendships brought to your writing life, especially like the Austin-based Typewriter Rodeo, and what sustains you most in community with other writers?
I’m an extrovert who would never survive as the classic version of a “writer,” writing alone by a pond deep in the woods.
My literary friendships keep me going, whether I’m typing and sharing poems with my fellow Typewriter Rodeo poets, brainstorming with my great friend and one of the Typewriter Rodeo founders, Sean Petrie, on his apartment rooftop while eating cheeseburgers, or doing online writing sprints with my VCFA friends.
What sustains me most is getting to hear about all the different stories my friends are working on and telling them about mine. It’s in these moments that I get to take a step back from the task of trying to force my mind into focus mode and really think about how incredible it is that we are all creating entirely new worlds with words, something people have been doing for connection and reflection and pure fun since the dawn of human existence.
In the last few years you have been actively involved with Authors Against Book Bans. What does it mean for you to be a storyteller for young people today, and how do you see writing as an act of advocacy or care for your readers?
My least favorite thing about book bans is that because most banned books are about kids of color, queer kids, or kids going through something difficult, they send a message to these children that their existence in itself is inappropriate.
To me, writing for young people today means fighting to show readers that they are not alone in their struggles and who they are is fantastic. While I’ve received many death threats and truly gross accusations since writing When You’re Brave Enough, I have also received fan art from a nine-year-old who wanted to draw every outfit my characters wore to Lacey’s bat mitzvah and a message from a young teen who said she felt like the book was her diary being read back to her in book form.
Being a storyteller right now means pushing through the negative noise and always coming back to that kid who desperately needs to feel seen.
I feel lucky to be part of Authors Against Book Bans because of the guidance and community support they’ve given me through the hard moments of publishing a queer middle grade book as well as the amazing policy advocacy I’ve gotten to join them in.
And finally, tell us about your next book, How to Take a Risk (Penguin Random House, 2027). Preorder Link at Barnes & Noble.
How to Take a Risk is my second queer middle grade that comes out in February 2027!
Its main character, Reagan, is very different from Lacey. While Lacey is always thinking and questioning, Reagan is a girl of Action.
She loves to cliff jump, hill-skateboard, and complete her annual summer “Risk List” of dares with her best friend Zander across their coastal Maine town. But when the summer before seventh grade brings a ton of change, from Zander wanting to be more than friends to a new baby sister coming soon, she takes on increasingly scary dares to avoid facing her emotions head-on. You’ll get queer friends-to-crushes, a sweet sister relationship, and big emotions and realizations like in When You’re Brave Enough, but also a lot that’s brand new.
I hope you enjoy it and thank you so much for this interview!
Cynsational Notes
Rebecca Bendheim is the author of the middle grade novel When You’re Brave Enough and a graduate of Vanderbilt University and Vermont College of Fine Arts. She types poems around the country with the Typewriter Rodeo poetry troupe and lives in Maine with her wife, an orange cat, and a chorgi (chihuahua-corgi) puppy.
Mitu Malhotra holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has been recognized as a Lee & Low New Visions Award finalist, winner of the Katherine Paterson Prize for Literature, and with scholarships from Boyds Mills/Highlights Foundation, Tin House, and a Djerassi Program writing residency. Her short story “Toxins” is part of ELA curriculum and her writing has appeared in Hunger Mountain, Thin Air Magazine and elsewhere. In previous avatars, Mitu was a textile and fashion designer, and has taught in India, the Middle East and the US. Mitu is a member of CBIG (Children’s Book Illustrators Group, NYC) and SCBWI, New Jersey. When not writing or drawing, Mitu can be found cooking, upcycling clothes and sewing memory kimonos or building miniature doll houses from salvaged materials. Website: www.mitumalhotra.com Instagram: @mituart Bluesky: @mitumalhotra.bsky.social