[1] In his memoir, Brave Face, Hutchinson explains that, throughout his adolescence, "he struggled to understand his sexuality, his depression, and the suicide attempt that led to a search for self-acceptance.
[2] Hutchinson graduated from Jupiter High School, then studied medieval and renaissance literature at Florida Atlantic University, though he dropped out to work in information technology.
[10] As if explaining the book's unusualness, School Library Journal compared the storyline and writing style to Nick Burd's The Vast Fields of Ordinary and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.
Lambda Literary expanded on the idea, saying it "is a book about more than love and loss; it's about struggling to find motivation and not taking the people in your life for granted".
Lambda Literary called the book "a beautiful, masterfully told story by someone who is at the top of his craft",[11] and VOYA noted, "The voices of each character are strong and unique".
In 2017, We Are the Ants was included in the American Library Association's Rainbow List top 10[12] and was selected as one of the best 63 novels for young adults published in the previous twelve months.
Eight of Hutchinson's books are Junior Library Guild selections: We Are the Ants (2016),[25] At the Edge of the Universe (2017),[26] The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza (2018),[27] Brave Face (2019),[28] The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried (2019),[29] The State of Us (2020),[30] A Complicated Love Story Set in Space (2021),[31] and Before We Disappear (2022).