Almost 10 years after her breakout YA debut Dear Martin, author Nic Stone returns to that same world with a middle grade spin-off novel, Dasia (Forever) (Crown, Oct.6). First introduced in the sequel Dear Justyce, the book follows titular Dasia, who has been diagnosed with leukemia and is admitted to a hospital where she encounters Jimmy, a fellow patient. Despite their disparate circumstances, one evening proves enough for a powerful friendship to bloom, and for Dasia to find her own voice. PW spoke with Stone about the personal connection that inspired her to write about young people facing illness, the importance of seeing past material differences, and how she brought poetry into her work for the first time.

Readers are introduced to Dasia as a character who faces a lot of responsibility for others, and winds up being the one in need of care. What was interesting to you about that shift?

I’m the eldest sister. We were latchkey kids. I had to get home to make sure my brother and sister had food. It almost is forgotten that when you perform adulthood as a child, it’s an easy thing to slip into, and it’s a difficult space to get out of. It was important to me that Dasia find herself in a position where she can’t get herself out of this. It isn’t something that she can figure out how to deal with. None of those things are options, because it’s an illness. [It was about] having her face the fact that she is a child, and that there are all of these things in her life that she doesn’t have a lot of control over. It was a difficult thing to do to a 13-year-old character, but I also felt like it was necessary because she needed the space to not have to be in charge of things, and I remember that very vividly.

This novel looks at the difficulties of young people grappling with health issues. What was the spark that inspired that aspect of the story?

I have a godson who’s 21, but long before he was born, he had an uncle he’s never met who died of acute lymphoblastic lymphoma. He had the same kind of cancer that Jimmy has in the book. I remember meeting him when he was 12, and he was in the thick of treatment, and he later passed away. And I remember reading John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars and thinking about how there are children who look like me, who get cancer. So, I just had this seed in my head. A seed got planted that involved a little girl who was dealing with cancer and an overnight adventure. That’s all I had until I wrote Dear Justyce, and the main character in that novel had a little sister. At some point, it clicked for me that this character that I’d been thinking about from over 14 years ago, and this sister of this other character could be the same person.

Why was it important to showcase how financial differences influence Dasia and Jimmy’s impressions of one another, but don’t ultimately stand in the way of their budding friendship?

Right now, when prices are what they are, you can see the gap widening between people who have access to what they need and people who don’t. And it’s unfortunately a gap that seems to be getting wider every day. But we’re witnessing in real time how people from different sets of circumstances are being impacted by the changes in the world differently, and it was important for me to make it clear that these are still people. No matter what you have, if you’re a human being, you are susceptible to illness. Whether you have a lot or you have a little, you still need people in your corner. There are so many things about being human that can get lost in all of the extra stuff that’s always going on. It was important to me to make sure that these two girls were able to connect over the fact that no matter what the circumstances are, at the end of the day, they’re both having to fight for their lives, and no amount of money is making that different.

This is the first time you’ve introduced poetry into your work. What felt right about this story or character to do so? And what has your journey with poetry looked like?

I’ve never written a book with poetry in it, but I’ve been writing poetry longer than I’ve been writing prose because it’s such a powerful and succinct way of expressing emotion. Getting to a space where I’m expressing Dasia’s feelings through poetry is also me stepping into a form of expression that I haven’t done before, but that I know people will be able to connect with. For Dasia, it’s about finding a way to express the things that she’s feeling without getting herself in trouble or saying something that’s going to upset somebody. She doesn’t have the time or the space to piss anybody off. So having this other secret space where she gets to fully feel her feelings—I hope that young readers see that and decide to latch onto it, because it can change the way you see yourself and see the world. Just writing through things.