Defining and Redefining Popular Genres: The Evolution of ‘New Adult’ Fiction

New Adult Fiction

“…Many attempts have been made to define it, based on features including, but not limited to, theme, narrative voice, protagonist age, readership age and the diegetic inclusion of sex (Brookover, Burns & Jensen 2013;Carmack 2012;Jae 2014;Pattinson 2014;West 2014;Wetta 2013). However, as I mentioned at the beginning of this Introduction, as I have argued briefly elsewhere (McAlister 2018a(McAlister , 2018b, and as I will argue in more depth over the course of this Element, what 'new adult' denotes has evolved substantially. This means that a single, fixed definition cannot encompass the term, and to attempt to provide one would not only do a disservice to the category but also would fail to recognise the complex and changing ways that genres emerge and develop in the contemporary literary marketplace.…”