Try this quote on for size: “I think storytelling is our deepest form of expression. It’s something we all do as humans, and I think it very often saves our lives. It’s how we process the world. It’s how we understand things and muddle through the problems we’re going through, whether they’re personal problems or gigantic, world-changing problems.”
That’s writer Daniel José Older dropping absolute truth bombs about the power of story. We’re so lucky to have Daniel teaching our new Young Adult cohort at this year’s StoryBoard. To say Daniel is “out of this world” as a writer and instructor, is both a really bad joke, but also sort of true.
Daniel José Older is the lead story architect for Star Wars: The High Republic, a canonical franchise of novels and television shows set in the Star Wars universe.
Daniel is also a hugely prolific writer and instructor. In addition to his Star Wars work, Daniel is also the author of the New York Times best-selling of the Young Adult urban fantasy series Outlaw Saints, the sci-fi adventure Flood City, and the monthly comic series The High Republic Adventures. His other books include the historical fantasy series Dactyl Hill Squad, The Book of Lost Saints, the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series, Star Wars: Last Shot, and the Young Adult series the Shadowshaper Cypher, including Shadowshaper, which was named one of the best fantasy books of all time by TIME magazine and one of Esquire’s 80 Books Every Person Should Read.
In 2023, Daniel taught a PJ Seminar for StoryStudio titled “Crisis Creates Us: A Master Class on the Secret Heart of Story.” Several writers who took the class weighed in with glowing feedback on Daniel as an instructor. For instance, one writer said, “This was an excellent class and quite frankly, one of the very best I’ve ever taken.” Another: “The class as a whole was brilliant.”
Daniel also runs a successful podcast and Substack called Sketchbooks & Scratchpads
Daniel’s online Young Adult StoryBoard workshop will get into both the nuts-and-bolts and big thematic ideas behind what makes Young Adult fiction work (and not work). We’ll discuss craft, process, and publishing. We’ll engage with story as the living, life-changing, power-laden, political creature that it is. And we’ll have fun in the process.
Any writer looking to hone their YA craft would be lucky to study with Daniel.
Apply for Daniel’s StoryBoard 2025 cohort now!
