Alexandra Monir, BLACK CANARY: BREAKING SILENCE author

Fictitious

BLACK CANARY: BREAKING SILENCE author Alexandra Monir talks about writing for the DC Icons young adult series, adapting the fan-favorite Black Canary and Court of Owls in a prose novel, and how she got the job of writing a major media tie-in. This DC Icons young adult novel reimagines the fan-favorite DC comics superhero Dinah Lance as a teenager living in a near-future dystopian Gotham City. Decades ago, Gotham and its vigilante heroes fell to a violent shadow organization called the Court of Owls. The Court has reshaped the city in their patriarchal image, setting up a cruel and vindictive autocracy. Dissenters are punished by superhuman enforcers called Talons. And women in particular have been subjugated—not just with the removal of rights and freedoms, but by having their abilities of music and singing artificially stifled. Seventeen year old Dinah is fortunate to have been educated by her parents about life before the Owls took over. A childhood experience—hearing the forbidden, beautiful, impossible sound of a woman singing—drives Dinah to seek out truths the Owls have buried. Yet to resist the autocratic regime could land her, her friends, and her police officer father in Arkham Asylum—or in the morgue. Dinah must find a way to unleash the incredible power of her own voice to combat the Court of Owls. And perhaps she can find an ally in her school’s new transfer student, a mysterious senior named Oliver Queen. BLACK CANARY: BREAKING SILENCE is the 5th standalone novel in the DC ICONS series, and is available December 29th from Random House Books for Young Readers.