Adam Silvera

Adam Silvera (born June 7, 1990) is an American author of young adult fiction. His work frequently centers on queer characters and explores themes of identity, grief, and mortality. He is known for the bestselling novels More Happy Than Not (2015), History Is All You Left Me (2017), and They Both Die at the End (2017), which gained renewed public interest in 2020 through Tiktok's BookTok sub-community.

Early life

Adam Silvera was born and raised in the South Bronx in New York City. His mother, Persi Rosa, is Puerto Rican and worked as a social worker. He began writing at a young age, producing fan fiction for franchises such as Harry Potter and Marvel, beginning around age eleven. Silvera has stated that he was interested in storytelling throughout his childhood, often prioritizing writing over schoolwork.

Although he read widely as a teenager, he has cited Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments series as an early influence, noting that it was the first time he encountered queer characters in fantasy literature. Silvera has also mentioned Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe as an important early example of queer Latino representation in YA fiction for him.

Silvera did not pursue a traditional college path, instead, he worked in various positions within the book industry. He was employed at Barnes & Noble, initially in the café before moving to the sales floor, where he became familiar with contemporary young adult literature. He later worked at the independent bookstore Books of Wonder and as a reviewer for Shelf Awareness. Silvera has explained that these roles, along with courses at the Gotham Writers Workshop, served as an informal education in publishing and craft. He has said that he “built (his) own MFA” by working in the book industry and taking writing courses.

Silvera has also spoken publicly about aspects of his identity and mental health. He has described himself as gay and has been open about his experiences with depression, suicidal ideation, and his diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. In a 2021 interview, Silvera stated that he initially wrote "straight narrators" because he had not encountered mainstream books featuring queer characters during his adolescence, noting that increased industry support for diverse stories helped make his own career possible.

Career

Silvera’s debut novel, More Happy Than Not, was published in 2015 by Soho Teen. His second novel, History Is All You Left Me, was released in January 2017. Later that year, Silvera published They Both Die at the End with HarperTeen. The novel was optioned for television in 2019 and has since been reported as in active development, with Silvera attached as creator, screenwriter, and executive producer. Silvera also co-authored What If It’s Us with Becky Albertalli, published by HarperTeen in 2018. Film rights to the novel were acquired the same year, with Brian Yorkey announced as screenwriter. A sequel, Here’s to Us, was released in 2021.

Silvera also expanded into the fantasy genre with the Infinity Cycle series, beginning with Infinity Son in 2020. The series continued with Infinity Reaper (2021) and Infinity Kings (2024). Silvera has described the Infinity Cycle as a long-developed project, noting in interviews that earlier versions of the story date back to his late teenage years.

Beginning in 2020, They Both Die at the End experienced renewed commercial visibility as a result of its popularity on BookTok, leading to its return to national bestseller lists. In a 2021 interview, Silvera credited the novel’s renewed commercial success, particularly in the UK, to TikTok’s BookTok community, stating that readers connected with its themes during the COVID-19 pandemic. In turn, Silvera later published the Death-Cast prequel The First to Die at the End in 2022, followed by The Survivor Wants to Die at the End in 2025. He has also announced an additional installment, No One Knows Who Dies at the End, scheduled for release in 2026.

Literary themes and academic reception

Silvera has stated that writing queer characters is central to his creative practice. In a 2021 interview, he explained that his early experiences as a queer Puerto Rican reader shaped his commitment to centering queer protagonists in his fiction, noting that he does not feel compelled to contribute to what he described as an already extensive body of heterosexual narratives. By his early thirties, Silvera had published eight young adult novels, all of which feature queer main characters.

He has also explained that his exploration of mortality in the Death-Cast novels was shaped by events from his adolescence. In a 2022 interview, he explained that witnessing the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, along with the subsequent death of a family member in a plane crash, contributed to his interest in stories about the unpredictability of death and the desire for characters to confront what remains unsaid in their lives.

Scholarly interest in Silvera’s work, particularly They Both Die at the End, has grown in recent years, with multiple studies examining the novel’s treatment of identity, mortality, and social structures. A 2022 paper in Research on Diversity in Youth Literature examines the novel’s representation of queer Latinx characters, noting its depiction of a bisexual Latino protagonist and its attention to varied forms of queer identity. The study also highlights the contrast between the two central characters’ relationships to their sexuality, suggesting that the novel presents more than one pathway to queer self-understanding.

A 2024 study positions the novel within broader trends in contemporary young adult fiction, arguing that it moves beyond narratives focused primarily on coming-out stories or sexuality-based tragedy. According to this study, the book has been discussed in relation to themes such as intimacy, agency, and grief.