Q&A with Nick Burd, The Vast Fields of Ordinary
We Are the Youth Book Club: An Interview with Nick Burd, author of The Vast Fields of Ordinary.
For We Are the Youth’s first book club, Brooklyn-based author Nick Burd, 31, talks to us about his award-winning debut novel The Vast Fields of Ordinary, a coming of age young adult book about Dade Hamilton, a gay teenager in Iowa exploring friendship, relationships, and family drama during his “last real summer” before going to college.
The Vast Fields of Ordinary is in the early stages of being turned into a movie to be directed by Bruce Cohen, the producer of American Beauty and Milk. Nick talks to us about sexuality, gay literature, and the to-be-named quasi-sequel.
Did you have any books about young gay people to read when you were growing up?
I really didn’t. I grew up in a religious environment. The things in the library weren’t gay or lesbian oriented. My sexuality was forming in my mind in sixth, seventh, eighth grade, and I couldn’t find any young adults geared towards gay kids. When I found adult themed gay books that was kind of a big deal.
