everyone’s a critic, and most people are DJs

As you may know, my next novel, THIS SONG WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE (coming out this fall) is about a 16-year-old girl who becomes a DJ sensation. Writing this book made me even more interested in DJ and nightlife culture than I already was, so tonight I took a class at the Brooklyn Brainery about the history of the DJ.

Do you want to know one of the things we learned in this class? That the world’s first radio DJ was 16 years old at the time! His name was Ray Newby, and in 1909, he became the first person to play a record on the air.

Here he is years later (in the mid-60s, I believe), speaking about his accomplishment on TV:

This is so cool for me. I love knowing that my protagonist is just one in a long line of teen DJs!