Pretty ‘Fly’ Idea by Author E. Lockhart

While you may be familiar with stories about people turning into animals, here’s a premise you definitely haven’t encountered before: 16-year-old Gretchen Yee wakes up as a fly trapped inside the boy’s locker room at her high school, where she proceeds to spy on her schoolmate’s conversations, as well as their — well, um, let’s put it as Gretchen Yee puts it — “gherkins.”

This is the plot line for E. Lockhart’s newest book, Fly on the Wall. Set in a New York City public “art” high school, the small cast of artsy students is a group of vivid and dynamic characters. Lockhart succeeds in combining romanticism, alienation, humility and comedy all into this compact coming-of-age story. The book is also written in a very unique style that allows you to read Gretchen Yee’s thoughts as they come into her head. This allows you to develop a close bond with her that will continue on past the last chapter.

“The goal of Fly on the Wall was to get some honest emotion on the page,” Lockhart explains. “Somebody coming to terms with feelings of lust, yearning.”

This 38-year-old author’s previous young adult work includes The Boyfriend List (Random House, 2005), which has a sequel due out this spring, entitled, The Boy Book.

Lockhart grew up in Seattle. She split her high school years between a small art school (admittedly similar to that in Fly on the Wall) and a prep school. “I was completely unpopular at the art school,” the author says. “And at the prep school, I was magically popular.”

“I had radically different experiences,” Lockhart says. “[Which lead] to my interest in adolescent fiction. I didn’t choose it consciously; it attacked me on all sides.”

Lockhart finds much about high school to be “toxic comedy.” The legal obligation to attend is intriguing; the fact that students must show up for class, and sit in classrooms with the people they’ve had romances, fights, and entirely separate pasts is packed with more than enough emotion to keep her imagination cranking.

“High schools are like these intense, little microcosms,” Lockhart says. “The art school [I attended] — at which everyone was so competitive to be most unique — on the surface looked relaxed. At the prep school, everyone was safe in their position; secure socially. There, I could be unique.”

Lockhart now lives in the New York City area, writing full-time in her small, raspberry-colored office with a window.

“I’m in my pajamas all day,” she says gleefully.

Lockhart tells a story about how on a recent visit to a local school, she was asked if she was lonely after she described her lifestyle to the children.

“I’m never lonely,” says Lockhart, an only child. One of her cats meows his agreement in the background. “I figured out how to entertain myself long ago. When I was six or seven, I realized I wanted to be a writer, although I had big hiatuses from it. I would write long novels and illustrate them.”

“The books I read when I was younger than a teen stuck with me my whole life,” says Lockhart, whose favorite childhood author was Astrid Lindgren, “[and they] made me want to be a writer.”

Lockhart admits to dreaming of acting as a career as well when she was a teenager. She attended summer drama camp, and participated in school plays. This part of her background fueled her next book to be published, Dramarama, due out Spring 2007. However, when she got to college, she says she came to the decision that she had “no talent” for acting.

“I didn’t really care that much [about acting],” Lockhart says. “I was mainly writing/literature criticism in college.”

“When you talk to people who write books for teens,” Lockhart says, “They have very little ego. They care about reaching out to people who don’t have books otherwise. They care about honesty.”

“The audience is vulnerable, misunderstood,” the author continues. “Writers for teens, instead of being competitive, band together, do projects together, fight censorship. The community is really invested in their audience in a way adult writers aren’t. In adult publishing, everyone was so snarky.”

Lockhart is also a part of AS IF! (Authors Supporting Intellectual Freedom). She describes one scenario, a bill that may be passed in Oklahoma, which would move any books with sexual scenes/content from the young adult sections of libraries to the adult section, and not allow teenagers to take out these books. AS IF!’s quest is to raise public awareness that these actions are indeed still happening, as backwards and outdated as they seem.

In her limited spare time, Lockhart enjoys cooking, yoga, and playing with her child. After she pauses to think for a minute, she admits that her motivation comes from “the wolf at the door;” the concept that a predator’s going to come in at any moment to snatch everything away. It’s a scary thought, but undeniably keeps her in action.

“I’d like to stay employed as a writer,” Lockhart says. “It’s a long, shaky road to choose. I’m very grateful to be working at it.”

Lockhart offers some refreshing optimism towards the emerging young adult fiction genre. She thinks the biggest difference between when she was a teenager, and teenagers these days, is that there are tons of these great books geared completely towards them now.

“There was no section in the bookstore [back then],” Lockhart says. “All this literature is now being created specifically for teenagers; it’s a great time to be a teenager.”

“It’s really incredible,” she continues. “People are doing really, really good work. It’s an exciting time.”

Lockhart also has a positive outlook when it comes to contemporary heroes.

“What makes a hero is doing something,” the author says confidently. “We can’t save the world, and yet we shouldn’t be paralyzed to inaction because of that. Gretchen Yee [main character from Fly on the Wall] takes action in the world to make things better. At least she’s moving through the world fully, someone who’s living the ‘big life.'”

For more info on E. Lockhart (Emily Jenkins), be sure to visit her official website – EmilyLockhart.com.

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