Adam Rapp

Adam Rapp works across novels, plays, screenwriting, and directing, often following young people at society’s margins. His fiction for teenagers includes Missing the Piano, 33 Snowfish, and Under the Wolf, Under the Dog, while his stage career includes acclaimed plays such as Red Light Winter and The Sound Inside. Punkzilla is a novel in letters about fourteen-year-old Jamie, known by the title’s nickname, who travels from Portland toward Memphis hoping to reach his seriously ill older brother. The letters record unstable transportation, fleeting encounters, addiction, family estrangement, and the kindness of strangers along the route. Candlewick Press published the story for teen readers about a runaway facing social isolation. Punkzilla received a Michael L. Printz Honor, recognition that places it among Rapp’s most prominent books for younger readers. Its epistolary form lets the protagonist’s raw language carry both the road narrative and the urgent attempt to reconnect with family.