Episode 270: 10 minutes with Megan Jacobson

October 21, 2026

In episode 270 of the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast:

10 minutes with Megan Jacobson

Allison chats to award-winning author Megan Jacobson about her new YA novel ‘The Waiting Place’, tapping into a 16-year-old voice, and why she wrote the epilogue first.

Books we mention

Click on the titles to find out more or buy. See contact page for affiliate disclosure.

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Bookmail

‘We Did it Anyway’ by Carla Salmon

‘Us in Bright Lights’ by Zanni Arnot

‘All of Us‘ by Katrina Nannestad

‘The Witches of Winderry Spires’ by Karen Foxlee

Other

Wilderness Society’s 2026 Karajia and Environment Awards for Children’s Literature

Berry Writers’ Festival

Friday First Chapters #16: Zanni L. Arnot reads ‘A Guide To Falling Off The Map’

10 minutes with Megan Jacobson

About Megan Jacobson

Megan Jacobson new novel for teen Megan Jacobson is an award-winning YA author, picture book author, ABC journalist, and former TV screenwriter. Her first two YA novels, Yellow and The Build-Up Season, were shortlisted for many awards.

She is the author of three picture books, including ‘Big Love’, which was a 2022 CBCA Notable book, and ‘The Big Box of Feelings’, out earlier this year, and both illustrated by Beck Feiner.

Her latest YA novel is ‘The Waiting Place’.

Find out more.

About ‘The Waiting Place’

The perfect girl. The teen delinquent. And the bland one. All dead and sharing an unlikely afterlife. Can they run from their demons while being chased by angels? ‘The Good Place’ meets a Tradwife TikTok account in this dizzyingly good YA novel about unlikely bonds, forbidden romance and trusting yourself when it really matters.

Sixteen-year-old Emily Woodward has lived her whole life in a tiny, high-control religious community. Some say it’s a cult; Em was taught it’s the only way to get to heaven on Halley’s comet. She knows she’ll be married off at eighteen, even if she secretly dreams of a life bigger than that.

Then the car crash happens.

In death, Emily is destined for the Good Line, but before she can be sorted, she sees her rebellious big sister sent to the Bad Line. Desperate to find a way to save her sister, Em agrees to run away from the angels with Jackson, the teen bank robber, and Xanthe, the most perfect girl in Em’s community. But can she trust a clearly hell-bound bank robber? And is the perfect Xanthe just with them to snitch?

The three teens find themselves in an afterlife that morphs into all the places they’ve waited in their lives, and for them to survive they need to take the actions they were too afraid to take when they were alive.

The Waiting Place is about judging people for what they do, not who they are, and it’s for everyone who’s ever been told they would not, could not, must not.

Find out more.