Adam Silvera

Silvera grew up in the Bronx and sold books for a living before publishing. They Both Die at the End states its premise in the first line: a service telephones people on the day they are going to die, and two strangers meet to spend it together. The novel sold modestly for four years, then went to the top of the lists when readers on TikTok found it in 2021, which is about the clearest documented case of that effect anyone has. The First to Die at the End returns to the day the service began. His debut, More Happy Than Not, borrowed a memory-removal procedure from science fiction to write about a Bronx teenager who wants to forget that he is gay, and it announced the pattern early: a speculative device used to make an ordinary pain literal. Infinity Son moves further into fantasy. He writes about grief, and about being Puerto Rican and gay, without arranging comfort for the reader, and he has been open that the endings people find cruel are the honest ones.