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About The Book

First loves, first songs, and the drugs and reckless high school exploits that fueled them—meet music icons Tegan and Sara as you’ve never known them before in this intimate and raw account of their formative years.

High School is the revelatory and unique coming-of-age story of Sara and Tegan Quin, identical twins from Calgary, Alberta, growing up in the height of grunge and rave culture in the 90s, well before they became the celebrated musicians and global LGBTQ icons we know today. While grappling with their identity and sexuality, often alone, they also faced academic meltdown, their parents’ divorce, and the looming pressure of what might come after high school. Written in alternating chapters from both Tegan’s point of view and Sara’s, the book is a raw account of the drugs, alcohol, love, music, and friendships they explored in their formative years. A transcendent story of first loves and first songs, it captures the tangle of discordant and parallel memories of two sisters who grew up in distinct ways even as they lived just down the hall from one another. This is the origin story of Tegan and Sara.

About The Authors

Trevor Brady

During the course of their twenty-year career, Tegan and Sara have sold well over one million records and released eight studio albums. They have received three Juno Awards, a Grammy nomination, a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, and the 2018 New York Civil Liberties Union Award. They have performed on some of the world’s biggest stages, from Coachella to the Academy Awards. Outspoken advocates for equality, in 2016 Tegan and Sara created the Tegan and Sara Foundation, which fights for health, economic justice, and representation for LGBTQ girls and women. The sisters currently reside in Vancouver, British Columbia, and split their time between there and Los Angeles, California. Visit them at TeganandSara.com or connect with them on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook: @TeganandSara.

Trevor Brady

During the course of their twenty-year career, Tegan and Sara have sold well over one million records and released eight studio albums. They have received three Juno Awards, a Grammy nomination, a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, and the 2018 New York Civil Liberties Union Award. They have performed on some of the world’s biggest stages, from Coachella to the Academy Awards. Outspoken advocates for equality, in 2016 Tegan and Sara created the Tegan and Sara Foundation, which fights for health, economic justice, and representation for LGBTQ girls and women. The sisters currently reside in Vancouver, British Columbia, and split their time between there and Los Angeles, California. Visit them at TeganandSara.com or connect with them on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook: @TeganandSara.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster (September 24, 2019)
  • Length: 384 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781982112684

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Raves and Reviews

“Complexly intimate, smartly crafted, and packing a subtle emotional wallop. . . . A quietly heroic origin story.”
ROLLING STONE

“One of the most interesting and brave coming-of-age stories I have read in many years. Tegan and Sara reveal the confusion, the unraveling of personal truths, the fear, the excitement, the shame, and the seclusion that many of us endure as we make our way through the world. This is also a book about how music saves people, how music gives us a voice and a reason to keep going.”
JANN ARDEN, singer-songwriter and author of Feeding My Mother

“To navigate the experiential landscape of high school is always an emotional minefield. To have Tegan and Sara unabashedly share the perspective of young lesbians is a rare and invaluable gift, the kind of empathetic education our society is starved for.”
K.D. LANG, singer and songwriter

“What a gift to read the coming-of-age story of the brilliant Tegan and Sara. High School gives us a glimpse into the struggles and triumphs of both sisters as individuals and an evolving band. Their vulnerability, honesty, and compassion burst through, and I know will make countless people feel less alone. It is so important for the LGBTQ+ community to have memoirs like this to be able to recognize themselves and be inspired to follow their truth. Oh what I would have done to have this book in high school. I am endlessly grateful to Tegan and Sara for giving so much to this world.”
ELLIOT PAGE, actor and producer

“It should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever listened to a song by Tegan and Sara, that while not only are they able to convey the raw and complex emotions of the high school experience, the aimlessness of suburban life and the exhilaration of finding your way out, they also speak universal truths about intimacy between families and sisters, friends and lovers. They’ve captured a time and a place so perfectly, I can’t exactly be sure that I wasn't there.”
BUSY PHILIPPS, actor and author of This Will Only Hurt a Little

“A genius memoir. Tegan and Sara are massively gifted songwriters, so it shouldn’t have shocked me like it did. There’s simply nothing like it. It’s a completely original, utterly gripping, gorgeously written and captivating memoir that must be read. Tegan and Sara are bold, brilliant storytellers. High School is the freshest, most beautiful, and fearlessly powerful coming-of-age memoir.”
AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS, New York Times bestselling author of Running with Scissors and Toil & Trouble

“Tegan and Sara have pulled back the curtain on a formative chapter in their lives and offer a gloriously dizzying, richly observed account of how they became who they are today and what inspired the music we’ve come to know and love. Funny, frank, and so very cool, High School is basically the teenage best friend I always wanted growing up.”
— DAN LEVY, actor, writer, and producer

“Intense, vulnerable, and life-affirming—everything I'm looking for! Tegan and Sara take us back through their whirlwind journey, densely packed with the intricate complications and the envious, unspoken connection of growing up an identical twin.”
ABBI JACOBSON, comedian and author of I Might Regret This

“Candid, tender, courageously honest, and heartbreakingly familiar; I could see myself and my own experience reflected in these stories, more so than in anything else I've ever read. Reading this book moved me deeply.”
JULIEN BAKER, singer and songwriter

“Deeply moving, relatable. . . . High School never holds back from the absolute authenticity Tegan and Sara have become known for. I never wanted the book to end.”
CLEA DUVALL, actor and writer

High School highlights the indisputable fact that Tegan and Sara were never just musicians—they are master storytellers. In reflecting on that torturous span of time spent agonizing over one’s body, friendships, parents, and desires, this book highlights how high school is less of a place or memory but a metaphor for uncertainty, and underlines the salvation that can only be found in music. High School foreshadows the beginning of a rich and riveting literary career.”
VIVEK SHRAYA, musician and author of I'm Afraid of Men

“This account of the pains and pleasures of dirtbag queer-girl adolescence is everything you could want from a memoir: honest and hilarious, dishy and sweet, smart and self-aware and utterly charming. What a gift to get this view of Tegan and Sara as sisters, as friends, and as artistic collaborators, as they were becoming musical icons, and—more importantly—themselves.”
CARMEN MARIA MACHADO, author of Her Body and Other Parties

High School embodies the singular gift of words leaping off of the page and becoming feelings, rattling around in the hearts and minds of a reader. The truth of nostalgia is that it must have multiple lenses to operate in its most flourishing form. Much like in their music, in this book, the voices of Tegan and Sara are two distinct bodies of water flowing into the same harmonious river, spilling through the echoing hallways of old high schools, through the bedrooms of first heartbreaks, through the old haunts that remind you of your own. This book is a triumph of memory, affection, and engaging writing.”
HANIF ABDURRAQIB, author of Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest

“Tegan and Sara’s literary coming-of-age memoir, High School, is an engrossing, sharply crafted, deeply authentic look at the misery of (queer) adolescence and the gorgeous glory of becoming yourself. So much angst and revelation, depression, inebriation, inspiration, vulnerability, and power. A wild, teenage ride I could not put down.”
MICHELLE TEA, author of Against Memoir

“This book is the LSD–fueled, wallet-chained, Kurt Cobain–inspired handbook of how to become young, queer rock stars, written by chapter-swapping twins who I wish I had read when I was in high school. This book would have changed everything. I recommend reading it under the covers with a flashlight, and hiding it from your mother.”
IVAN COYOTE, author of Tomboy Survival Guide and Rebent Sinner

“A sweet and salty coming-of-age memoir. The countless Tegan and Sara fans will love this, but it’s also for anyone who ever went to high school and nurtured dreams, schemes, joy and rage while barricaded in their bedroom. Count me in.”
ANN-MARIE MACDONALD, author of Fall On Your Knees

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