Author2Author: E. Lockhart & Megan Crane, pt. 1

I first heard about E. Lockhart and her novel for teens, The Boyfriend List, when she sent me a note a few weeks back. (It turned out that I actually knew about her work for grownups, which was published under a different name, but that's a different story.) She sent me a copy of the book, which is a perfect welding of YA and chick lit sensibilities, particularly in recognizing how narrators in both genres come to terms with their insecurities through talking them out in (in this case overtly) therapeutic detail. Anyway, E. picked up on a casual line I'd written about having two romance novelists with Ph.D. degrees do one of these Author2Author dialogues--which is still totally going to happen--and she pointed out that she, too, had a doctorate in literature, then suggested she could get hold of Megan Crane, who earned her Ph.D. right around the time she sold her first novel, English as a Second Language. So here we are!

E. Lockhart: Vassar, where you and I both went (me some five years ahead), seems to breed novelists who (like both of us) write about youth and the process of growing up. Teen novelists Mariah Fredericks (The True Meaning of Cleavage) and Carolyn Mackler (Vegan Virgin Valentine) went there, as did adult novelist Thomas Beller (Seduction Theory).

My experience there (the artiness, the sexual politics, the small community, the hijinks) has hugely informed the subjects I choose to write about. What was it like when you went, later? How did you fit in? Has going there affected what you write?

Megan Crane: I don't think there was much change in Vassar between your time and mine. It was the dawn of the 1990s--everyone accented their Manhattan black with Seattle plaid, was PC to a fault in word and deed, and spent a great deal of time responding emotionally to everything from homework assignments to a change in barometric pressure. There was still smoking in the library when I arrived (which I recall from the one time I went there of my own volition--I'm very impressed that you studied there until eleven each night!)* There was a lot of running wild, drawing down the moon, and partying at nine in the morning. My memory of the place is of a sort of churning mess of intellectual adolescent angst--with so much creative energy focused on each person's individual identity issues that the air practically hummed and actual artistic projects became somewhat sidelined. A friend at the time said Vassar was like Tommy with no mirror: hear me, see me, touch me, feel me, but just make sure you pay attention to me! (And for the record, I was a Mug rat and proud of it!)

* E. says, "I only studied until eleven because nothing good was going on at the bar until then."