M E Girard Books in Order

If you want the best first read: Girl Mans Up → Then Everything Happens at Once
If you want gender, family tension, and a standout teen voice: Girl Mans Up
If you want romance, body image, and a pandemic-era coming-of-age story: Then Everything Happens at Once

M E Girard is a Canadian YA writer whose books focus on queer girls, messy feelings, and the pressure to fit somebody else's idea of who you should be. Born in Quebec and now living just outside Toronto, she built her writing life alongside a serious career in nursing. That mix shows up on the page. Her stories feel emotionally sharp and lived-in.

She has said she has spent a lot of time thinking about gender rules. One childhood memory says a lot: on a shopping trip, she picked out a She-Ra figure while her sister reached for a Hot Wheels car, and young Girard insisted the car was for boys. It is a small, funny story, but you can see the seed of her later work in it.

Writing did not arrive as one neat breakthrough. Girard worked as a registered nurse, much of that time with children and young people, and kept writing until the hobby turned into something harder to ignore. She found an important boost through the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, where she was a fellow in 2013 and again in 2015. Those retreats gave her close feedback, community, and confidence.

That confidence really mattered.

Her debut novel, Girl Mans Up, came out in 2016 and quickly found readers. The book follows Pen Oliveira, a Portuguese queer teen in Ontario who loves gaming and keeps running into other people's narrow ideas about gender, loyalty, and respect. Readers who connect with it usually talk about Pen's voice first. She is funny, guarded, observant, and stubborn in a way that feels real, even when she is scared or getting things wrong.

Girl Mans Up also announced the themes Girard returns to again and again: family pressure, friendship that can turn controlling, first love, body politics, and the fight to name yourself before somebody else does it for you. The book won the Lambda Literary Award in 2017 and was also a finalist for the William C. Morris Award and the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. That is a strong debut by any measure.

Girard's second novel, Then Everything Happens at Once, arrived in 2023. It follows Baylee, a teen sorting through desire, self-worth, friendship, and body image just as the first wave of the pandemic changes daily life. The book is sex-positive, awkward in the best way, and honest about how fast things can spiral when you want more from love than you know how to ask for. It also shows Girard widening her range without leaving behind her interest in girls who feel misread.

Her day job still matters here. Girard has said that she spent much of her nursing career caring for kids with special needs, and during the first waves of the pandemic she also worked in ER and ICU settings. You can feel that practical knowledge in her fiction. Even when emotions are big, the details around stress, family responsibility, and fear tend to feel grounded.

She writes girls who take up space.

Across both books, her characters are not polished heroines. They want things, misread signals, make mistakes, and keep moving. Girard has described herself as especially interested in what it means to be a girl, particularly a queer, fat girl, and that curiosity runs through her work. These days she still lives outside Toronto, balancing writing with nursing and family life, and she remains a strong pick for readers who want contemporary YA with heart, friction, and honesty.