Death had been on author and poet Amber McBride’s mind for a while. 

In 2008, her father, Mario, had a near-death experience. Mario, who had prostate cancer, was scheduled for a simple surgery. But he struggled to regain consciousness after the operation. Under anesthesia, Mario said he saw himself peacefully floating above his own body until his long-dead grandmother told him to go back to the living world. 

Death returned when McBride was teaching at the University of Virginia in 2022. A gunman killed three of the school’s football players in a mass shooting that stunned the campus. The horrific incident came not long after McBride had pondered writing about the cruel irony of children dying not long after their lives began. 

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“Children in general — their souls are just so young — it doesn’t feel like they should be leaving,” McBride tells Word in Black. “The idea of, ‘I hope there is a place in between before whatever is next or not next, where they can acclimate before they go,’ kind of popped up in my head.” 

Death serving as her muse, McBride wrote “The Leaving Room,” a novel that has been listed as a finalist for the prestigious National Book Award. 

The novel, which releases on Oct. 14, follows Gospel, the Keeper of The Leaving Room, a liminal space between life and death where young souls go after they die. When another Keeper, Melodee, arrives at the Leaving Room, the two fall in love. Wanting to continue their romance, Gospel and Melodee must find a way to escape the Leaving Room. 

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Besides dealing with themes involving love, grief, and queer representation, a central theme of “The Leaving Room” is death itself. McBride sees the novel as a way to pierce the protective veil about the subject that parents often wrap around their children, particularly when a loved one dies. 

“We don’t talk about death with young people,” McBride says. Bringing death out of the shadows, she says, “opens up conversations so we can have more honest discussions. Children do pass. How do we bring that conversation to the table, so that friends who experience it, or kids who are going through it, feel like they can talk about it like it’s not taboo?” 

The fantasy novel isn’t just for entertainment, McBride says; students can learn a lot about death reading “The Leaving Room.” And because the story unfolds in verse, McBride says, it can be an excellent way for teachers to introduce poetry to children. 

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Despite the novel’s literary recognition, McBride worries that its subject matter and its inclusion of queer characters could make it vulnerable to being banned in schools.

“It can always happen, right?” she says.

The novel’s release comes just weeks after PEN America, a free speech advocacy nonprofit, released its list of the most banned books for the 2024-2025 school year. 

Censored or not, McBride says, it’s important to continue to write books that can challenge parents and young readers alike. 

“You have to keep writing the most authentic stories that young people want to hear,” she says. “And I think that in doing that, you’re always going to risk being banned. I think that young people are often not respected for the depth of things that they can talk about and that they can understand.” 

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McBride knows that children who may have experienced grief or are grieving will pick up her book when it hits bookstore shelves on Tuesday. If that is the case, she says, they need to focus not just on sorrow but the joy that comes with remembering loved ones. 

“We are able to remember what people leave behind, is a huge theme in this book,” she says. “Grief always has the opposite, which is joy and remembrance. I would say, keep that in mind when things get heavy, when you’re reading the book.”