Florence Gonsalves
Hello and welcome. I'm Florence Gonsalves, a YA author, poet, and educator located in Western New York where I teach in the humanities, walk my dog, and write across genres, sometimes on a typewriter, sometimes on a napkin.
My published work spans teen fiction, including Love and Other Carnivorous Plants and Dear Universe; creative writing pedagogy, available on LitHub, creative nonfiction, including sex and mothers and bluebirds (but not at the same time); higher education storytelling slash university communications (think robot arms scooping chocolate peanut clusters and geomagnetic storms), as well as experimental mustache stories.
In 2021 I started the Dandy Line Poetry Troop, a community arts endeavor that offers free typewritten poems on the spot in Buffalo. If you'd like to follow along, I write about the quirky experiences and other aspects of the writing life in Buffalo on my open access Substack, The Dandy Note. Subscribing is free and helps support my work. If you're inclined to purchase my books (thank you for your support!) or would like to follow me on several social media platforms, I remember to check some of them sometimes and would love to hear from you. For poetry commissions or to request a live typewriter poet at your event (me) or to say hi, got your form right here.
Dear Universe
May 2020
It's senior year, and Chamomile Myles has whiplash from traveling between her two universes: school (the relentless countdown to prom, torturous college applications, and the mindless march toward an uncertain future) and home, where she wrestles a slow, bitter battle with her father's terminal illness. Enter Brendan, a man-bun- and tutu-wearing hospital volunteer with a penchant for absurdity, who strides boldly between her worlds—and helps her open up a new road between them.
Dear Universe is the dazzling follow-up to Florence Gonsalves's debut, Love & Other Carnivorous Plants, hailed by School Library Journal as "a must-have sharp, powerful, and witty immersion into the complexities of...mental health."
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Love & Other Carnivorous Plants
May 2018
Freshman year at Harvard was the most anticlimactic year of Danny's life. She's failing pre-med and drifting apart from her best friend. One by one, Danny is losing all the underpinnings of her identity. When she finds herself attracted to an older, edgy girl who she met in rehab for an eating disorder, she finally feels like she might be finding a new sense of self. But when tragedy strikes, her self-destructive tendencies come back to haunt her as she struggles to discover who that self really is.
With a starkly memorable voice that's at turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Love and Other Carnivorous Plants brilliantly captures the painful turning point between an adolescence that's slipping away and the overwhelming uncertainty of the future.
“Gonsalves’ debut is a pitch-perfect take on what happens when the future you imagined doesn’t live up to expectations, and every misstep seems to unravel the person you thought you’d become.… The struggle of holding on to an old friendship while discovering a new version of yourself should resonate with any reader." - Booklist Starred Review