Young adult author Allyson Braithwaite Condie knows audience well

Author Allyson Braithwaite Condie knows her audience well. That's because the BYU graduate spent three years teaching teenagers — first in Utah Valley and then in upstate New York.

Condie always wanted to be a writer, but as she grew older, it took a back seat to teaching high school. It wasn't until the Orem resident quit teaching to raise her family that she felt like something was missing.

Not that Condie minded being at home, but she missed interacting with high school students, and that's where the idea for writing a young adult book came from.

"For so long I had been reading so much in that genre because both I had been a young adult and was preparing to teach them and then teaching them," Condie said. "It just came really naturally to me because it was a group I had been around a lot."

But enthusiasm and working with teens doesn't guarantee a publishing deal. And when Condie sent queries to national book agents, her first book was rejected across the board.

"Nobody wanted it," Condie said. "Not one person was interested."

Perhaps, she thought, the book might be something that would appeal to a more specialized audience. It had a theme that lent itself very easily to an LDS market, and after revising and resubmitting it twice, Deseret Book accepted it, publishing "Yearbook" in September 2006.

Fast-forward four years and Condie has found considerable success. In December, she signed a three-book deal with Dutton Children's Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group. The first book, a dystopian tentatively titled "Matched," is due out this winter.

On top of that, her fifth LDS-market title, "Being Sixteen," a book about sisters dealing with eating disorders, is now on bookshelves. And despite the hard subject "Being Sixteen" focuses on, it's a book Condie is very excited about.

What do anorexia and bulimia have to do with Mormons and spirituality? Plenty, Condie said.

Most people are aware of anorexia and bulimia on a very basic level, but Condie would like to think that her book might help raise awareness of the warning signs that could lead to those behaviors.

"Being Sixteen" will hopefully create "a sense of community of women uplifting one another," Condie said. "A feeling of looking out for one another as women in an LDS community of sisters or friends or teachers. And not just in the LDS community, but just in your community. Because a lot of times, it's not the parents who see something first. It's not the sister. It's somebody else."

Condie had firsthand experience dealing with eating disorders while living in New York. Together with her husband, Scott, she lived in a sorority as a sort of house parent.