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Author Name
Website: DavidLevithan.com
David Levithan is the author of novels Boy Meets Boy, Are We There Yet?
and The Realm of
Possibility. He has also co-written novels, is the editor
of the PUSH imprint at Scholastic and his short fiction has also been
included in publications and collections. Boy Meets Boy has
won numerous Young Adult literature awards.
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Short
story collections
Interview
with David Levithan
The
Short Review:
How long did it take you to write all the stories in your collection?
David Levithan: It
actually took me twenty years. The first one was written as a
Valentine's Day story for my friends my junior year of high school. And
the last one was written as a Valentine's Day
story for my friends when I would have been in twenty-first grade.
TSR: Did you
have a collection in mind when you were writing them?
DL: Not until about the
last two of three. It honestly blows my mind to imagine what my
junior-year-of-high-school self would have thought had someone told him
the story he was writing would be published twenty years later in a
collection by Knopf... and that it would be his eighth book.
TSR: How did
you choose which stories to include and in what order?
DL: I just imagined
it was a mix tape and that the stories were songs. I can't explain why
they seemed to fit in the order they did -- it just seemed right.
TSR: Do you
have a "reader" in mind when you write stories?
DL: For
these stories, it was mostly my friends. Although a couple of them
started in YA anthologies, so I knew they'd be read by teens.
TSR: Is there
anything you'd like to ask someone who has read your
collection,
anything at all?
DL: Well, I always
ask which story a reader liked the most. Which I'm sure is a rather
annoying question to be asked by the author... but in many ways, that
means you only have to say you liked one twentieth of the book, and
you're off the hook for the other nineteen.
TSR: How does it feel knowing that people are buying your book?
DL: Incredible.
Especially when I get MySpace or Facebook messages from readers who say
the books have meant something to them. That never gets old.
TSR: What are
you working on now?
DL: A novel with my
friend John Green, called Will
Grayson, Will Grayson. It should be out next summer.
TSR: What are
the three most recent short story collections you've read?
DH: First Kiss (Then Tell), an anthology,
Black Juice by Margo Lanegan,
Grl2Grl by Julie Ann Peters
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