Ari koontz

Author of
Just Ask Elsie (Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan, 2026)

Ari Koontz is a queer nonbinary writer and educator with an MFA in creative writing from Northern Michigan University. They’re dedicated to telling full-hearted stories of bravery and whimsy in every possible genre, centering the beautiful complexities of queer identity and community, and supporting their local public library. A born-and-raised Midwestern UU, Ari lives close to where the water meets the woods and loves to take long walks when they should be writing.

AriKoontz.com / Substack / Instagram / Represented by Serene Hakim

 

books by Ari

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Just Ask Elsie (Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan, 2026)

Eleven-year-old Elsie is learning a lot in church – and not about Jesus. Her family is Unitarian Universalist, which means the members of their congregation are Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, and everything in between. Instead of studying the Bible in Sunday School, she’s in a puberty education class called Our Whole Lives, or OWL, where they’re learning about everything from sexual orientation to masturbation. Everything, in short, that Elsie’s never heard in school.

OWL was super awkward at first, but now Elsie loves it, though she knows these lessons might seem weird to outsiders. And sure enough, when a nosy girl in her fifth-grade class overhears her weekend plans, word quickly spreads, until she’s suddenly Elsie the Puberty Girl, the butt of jokes and the target of whispers in the halls. It seems like the whole school is laughing at her… but then they start coming to her for advice. Elsie finds herself fielding questions her classmates have never had a chance to ask, and as she finds creative ways to answer them, she starts to think that the attention might not be so bad. Especially if she can use this new platform to get closer to the girl she likes.

But just when Elsie thinks she’s crushing it, the principal takes notice of her not-so-secret advice operation. And he’s not happy about it. Soon Elsie is faced with an even bigger mission: stand up for the fifth graders’ right to learn about what’s going on with their bodies, or lose her platform – and her chance at winning her crush’s heart.