“Robin and Her Misfits,” a young adult novel by Dr. Kelly Ann Jacobson, assistant professor of English at the University of Lynchburg, has been nominated for Virginia’s Young Readers’ 2024 selection for “Great Reads for Great Places.”

Published in 2023, the book reinterprets the Robinhood story from a queer perspective.

“As someone who has spent most of his career in the state of Virginia and is an advocate for queer stories for young adults, especially in areas of the state where there is often resistance to accessing these books, this award means a lot to me,” Jacobson said.

Robin and Her Misfits is one of several novels for adults and young adults that Jacobson has written. She is also the author of Tink and Wendy, a queer reimagining of the Peter Pan story, and the upcoming novel The Lies of a Toymaker.

Described by Publishers Marketplace as “another gender-bending queer retelling, set as ‘Pinocchio’ meets Steven King’s ‘The Gunslinger,'” The Lies of a Toymaker will be published by Three Rooms Press in May 2025.

Great Reads for Great Places is an initiative of the Library of Congress’ Center for the Book. The list of books, compiled from the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, is distributed during the Library of Congress’s annual National Book Festival.

This year’s festival will take place on Saturday, August 24, in Washington, DC.

Jacobson, who teaches introduction to creative writing, fiction, poetry, science fiction and fantasy writing, and advanced creative writing, is also writing a textbook, Young Adult Fiction Writing, published by Bloomsbury Academic.