Andrew Keenan-Bolger Will Celebrate LIMELIGHT Release with Book Launch Events in NYC

Broadway's Andrew Keenan-Bolger is making a showstopping YA debut with Limelight, a poignant coming-of-age novel about identity, first love, and the power of the arts to help young people feel seen. Limelight will be available where books are sold on Febraury 24. Pre-order today! 

Keenan-Bolger will celebrate the release with two special events in New York City:

Tuesday, February 24th (7 PM)

Book Launch for Andrew Keenan-Bolger with Jenn Colella
Special performance by Kyle Ramar Freeman & Callum Francis
Hosted by The Strand Book Store
828 Broadway on 12th Street – 3rd Floor Rare Book Room
Learn More

Monday, March 16th (6:30 PM)

A New 42 Book Talk featuring Andrew Keenan-Bolger with Celia Keenan-Bolger
Special performances to be announced
Hosted by The New Victory Theater
New Victory Theater, 229 W 42nd Street
Learn More

Danny Victorio has spent his whole life trying not to take up space. But when an audition for Manhattan’s most prestigious arts school offers him a way out of Staten Island, and his unraveling home life, he steps into a world where theater becomes his first real lifeline. As he navigates talent, pressure, and the unfamiliar warmth of true friendship, Danny begins to wonder who he might become if he finally stopped hiding.

Set against the gritty, vibrant backdrop of 1996 New York City, LIMELIGHT blends lived creative experience with interviews Keenan-Bolger conducted with LaGuardia alumni, queer New Yorkers, and artists who shaped the era. The novel captures both the magic and the challenges of the city in the 90s, portraying the exhilaration of finding community alongside the realities of homophobia, fear, and growing up queer in a shifting world.

At its core, LIMELIGHT is a tender queer love story that explores the pressures of toxic masculinity and the tension between wanting connection and fearing vulnerability. It also celebrates the teachers, mentors, and found-family figures who show up when adolescents need them most.

In Keenan-Bolger’s words: “I wrote this book for the artist, for the theater nerd, for the New Yorker-in-waiting, for the person searching for their purpose, and for the kid who feels lost in the hallways of their school but feels right at home wearing a pair of headphones.”Blending emotional honesty with a slow-burn romance and rich 90s NYC texture, LIMELIGHT is for queer teens, theater kids, and anyone who has ever felt small in their own world.

Andrew Keenan-Bolger (he/him) is the coauthor of the three-book series Jack & Louisa and cocreator of the popular series Submissions Only. As an actor, he has starred in six Broadway shows, including Newsies, Tuck Everlasting, and Mary Poppins, in the films On Swift Horses and The Rewrite, and in dozens of television series. A graduate of the University of Michigan, he moved to New York in 1996 and lives in Brooklyn with his husband and his dog.