Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Dream School by Blake Nelson BLAKE NELSON TEEN NOVELIST. "Nelson's subject matter tends to emphasize the “adult” in Young Adult fiction, tackling mature themes like sexuality, death and addiction in a frank, sparse and unyielding manner that thrills his audience. Even as a 40something man, Nelson is able to wholly inhabit his always teenaged, frequently female protagonists, bringing them to life in a starkly realistic manner, sure to open the eyes of more than a few parents." --- Time Magazine. "Nelson's spare style and nuanced portrayal of street kids is strongly reminiscent of the classic work of S.E. Hinton. The gritty beach setting, compelling cast of sensitively drawn secondary characters and spot-on dialogue elevate the story beyond that of a typical genre mystery." --- Kirkus Reviews. "The latest from contemporary YA powerhouse Blake Nelson is so filled with joy and voice that it’s impossible to put down." --- Write All The Words. PARANOID PARK (2006): "Violence and Silence in Blake Nelson's Paranoid Park": NPR'S "Fresh Air with Terry Gross", radio interview (March 2008) "[ Paranoid Park's ] examination of guilt and responsibility in Portland, Oregon, pushes off fast and keeps going on a hell-bent course toward a conclusion teens can debate for days." --- Chicago Sun Times (October 2006) “With Paranoid Park , author Blake Nelson–-previously best-known for his debut novel, Girl, which was also made into a film back in 1998–- seems to be trying something few authors do: He’s writing from the perspective of an actual teenager. Not putting teenagers into adult-style stories, or repackaging teenagers as the kind of 14-going-on-40 perky, precocious snark machines that films and television mostly make them out to be. The protagonist of Paranoid Park is a 16-year-old skateboarder who really does read like a 16-year-old, which is to say, kinda vapid, kinda confused, kinda stressed, and not very in touch with himself. He isn’t full of snappy one-liners and trenchant observations; Ellen Page’s Juno or any random character from Veronica Mars would take him to pieces in five seconds flat, while he watched with his mouth open. So he isn’t necessarily the most interesting guy in the world to read about. But like a character in a Judy Blume novel, he seems pretty true-to-life, and he’s likely to remind readers of their own misspent youths.” --- “Book vs. Film: Paranoid Park,” The Onion’s A.V. Club (April 2008) Blog Post Gus Van Sant on the film Paranoid Park , New York Magazine (Nov. 2007) “ A seminal coming-of-age text . Nelson's intimate depiction of Andrea created a cultish following, the tales of frequent re-readings the stuff of legend.” --- Vanity Fair. " Andrea's candid and surprisingly sweet monologue, uncondescendingly records a world of clothes anxieties, coolness consciousness and her confusing mix of tender, erotic and angry feelings toward alternative rocker, downtown big shot and on-and-off lover Todd Sparrow. While making Andrea neither victim nor victimizer, Nelson captures this young woman's fears and joys in subtle and often uncannily accurate ways as Andrea aches for consistency but still revels in life's indeterminancies." --- Publisher's Weekly "Whether you’re just “finding yourself” as a teen or doing so belatedly as an adult, Blake Nelson’s devastatingly accurate portrayal of teenage Andrea Marr’s entrance into the Portland music scene is for you." --- MTV.COM (naming Girl the #1 music themed novel) "I'm writing all choppy because I'm reading Girl by Blake Nelson at the moment and it's hard to get out of a writing style when all you've been doing is reading it because you've been bored and your bangs could only take so much cutting." --- Tavi Gevinson, The Style Rookie. “If you grew up reading Sassy magazine, you know who Blake Nelson is. His debut novel, GIRL, about a teenager exploring the Portland rock scene was excerpted in three successive issues, and later made into a movie. But you may not know that Nelson has written many more books, exploring issues of sexuality, morality, and interpersonal relationships with a sensitivity and astuteness that shows more respect for his YA audience than many adult fiction writers show for theirs.” -- Bust Magazine. "In Dream School . Nelson takes up the voice [of Andrea Marr] without skipping a beat. Reading it, you can see the influence that Girl might've had on writers who are heading up the naturalistic wave that's dominating the young lit scene now. It's like the missing link between Bret Easton Ellis and Tao Lin." ---The Seattle Stranger. " Dream School is first and foremost an enduring account of what it looks, feels and sounds like to be young." --- The New York Times. "You guys, it’s really good!" --- xoJane. RECOVERY ROAD (2011) "Nelson offers another sharply focused portrait of a teen in crisis in this story of ex-party girl Maddie, who struggles to renew herself after being released from a rehab center. At Spring Meadow, Maddie's best moments come during her fleeting romance with another young patient, Stewart. Returning home, 16-year-old Maddie battles loneliness and isolation at her high school where her earlier drunken escapades earned her the nickname "Mad Dog Maddie". Predictably, reuniting with Stewart isn't the answer to Maddie's problems, and tension rises as both teens' resolve to stay sober. Nelson gives a hard, honest appraisal of addiction, its often-fatal consequences, and the high probability of relapse. This is an important story that pulls no punches." --- Publisher's Weekly (STARRED) "Nelson delivers a searingly honest portrayal of the horrors of alcoholism and drug addiction without a shred of didacticism, and with deep and abiding compassion for the stumbling and scarred characters he creates. Highly recommended." --- Children's Literature Review. DESTROY ALL CARS (2009) "Smart and entertaining," ---New York Times Book Review ( "Raiders of the Lost Earth") "James' consideration of 'the lameness of people in general'—which he fairly applies also to himself—gives a nuanced look at why it's hard to change anything in the world but also why it's a noble cause worth striving for." --- Los Angeles Times Book Review ("Saving the Planet, One Book at a Time") ROCK STAR SUPERSTAR (2004) "The best rock band novel of the year." --- Publisher's Weekly (STARRED) BLAKE NELSON TEEN NOVELIST. It’s official: the 90s are back in vogue. You know that Figment has recently published Dream School, the sequel to Blake Nelson’s 90s classic Girl, about Andrea Marr: grunge rock princess turned elite liberal arts student. As Andrea faces college–preps, professors, parties, and all–she’ll struggle to find her own path to cool. You can read an excerpt of Dream School for a limited time on Figment here, and you can read more about Blake’s inspiration and style below. How did you come up with Andrea, the main character in Girl and now Dream School? How much did you know about her before you started writing, and how much did you discover along the way? Originally, Andrea was just there to tell the story of Cybil, who shaved her head as an artistic/rebellious statement. But then as I continued the story, Andrea started to talk about her own life, and especially her relationship with a senior boyfriend when she was just a sophomore. This relationship, which I just threw in there to give her something to talk about, became the main focus of Andrea’s story at the beginning. Eventually, it took over. Soon the the whole book was about Andrea’s transition to indie coolness, which was actually more interesting than Cybil’s, because Andrea was a more ordinary person. She had farther to go. You’re a guy writing from a girl’s perspective. What are the challenges in that? Did you ever hear, “You’re doing it wrong!” from female readers? It has been pretty effortless for me. I really like doing it. I find that girl characters can be a little more honest than boy characters, since boys only really think about a few different things: Call of Duty . . . food . . . girls’ body parts. I feel freer when I am writing from a girl’s perspective. Any advice for other writers looking to take the gender-bending leap? If you feel lost or you don’t understand your character, start over using a different person. I feel like everyone has an alternative gendered person that they can talk through. You just have to find that character. Also, try writing from the perspective of someone you would like, or fall in love with. In fact: let yourself fall in love with your character. That’s probably the best way. Girl was made into a movie. Do you picture your characters differently after seeing them on the silver screen? Yes, that’s why I didn’t see Girl (the movie) until after I wrote the sequel. But I think it’s up to the movie. Like in Paranoid Park (another of my books that was made into a film), that actor did such a good job that I always see him in my mind when I think of the book. The Girl movie didn’t stick in my mind quite so much. And I only saw that movie once. So it hasn’t affected me that much. Describe Dream School in four words. Cool kids at college . . . Andrea has a lot of fun in college—did you draw on your own college experiences in writing it? Yeah, I was like her, but I was in bands instead of being a film maker. But my favorite part of being in college was when my band traveled to all the other colleges to play gigs, and that’s what Andrea and her friends do. Andrea’s adventures in college are very close to mine. We can’t help but notice that Dream School ends on a bit of a cliffhanger–any chance of another Andrea adventure? My Figment editor, Dana Goodyear, brought that up, and we talked about what would happen to Andrea if she got her book published and went to New York and was part of the literary scene there. That would be really fun to write about. And make fun of!! What does your ideal writing set-up look like? Couches are my favorite. I like to put my feet up and balance my laptop on my lap. And then balance my coffee cup on the cushion beside me or on the arm of the couch, which drives people insane because they’re sure I will spill it, though I never do. I like having a lot of things balancing all around me while I write. I also listen to music. Often, a certain record or band becomes the sound track of a book, though I never really plan it. And interestingly, after a long period of never writing in public, I have found recently that I like to write in coffee shops and libraries and places like that. For those Figment users who were barely conscious in the 90s, what are the 5 most important things to know about the decade? 1-It was a feminist period. Meaning that girls took themselves seriously as a group and a gender. They held themselves aloof from boys. Girls who were preoccupied with boys and getting a boyfriend were considered superficial and sort of lame. 2-People wrote letters. I wrote tons of letters, and got tons of letters. It was almost like a side career. They were long and super fun to write. You would spend a whole night writing someone a letter . . . especially if you were away somewhere, like in a foreign country. 3-The world was pretty dangerous. You didn’t tool around with a stroller in Brooklyn in 1991, unless you wanted someone to steal your baby. 4-You could still be gloomy. A lot of the art and music of the 90s was very dour and “miserabilist.” Nowadays everyone’s more cheerful. At least on the surface. 5-I was young and unknown in the 90s and was just starting my career and that’s generally the funnest part of your life! NAOMI FRY ! NAOMI FRY'S PIECE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES "T" MAGAZINE. (T stands for STYLE, for some reason) The touchstones seem to be everywhere these days: the plaid-wearing, goateed bicycle messengers of “Portlandia”; the grunge heiress Frances Bean Cobain’s recent Hedi Slimane photo shoot; the chortling return of “Beavis and Butthead” to MTV. Yes, the ‘90s are totally back — so much so that some culture observers are probably busy deciding at this very moment that they’re already over again. And there’s no doubt that “Dream School” (Figment), Blake Nelson’s sequel to his beloved 1994 teenage bildungsroman, “Girl,” owes its publication, at least partly, to our current fascination with that halcyon age of mix tapes and Doc Martens. Nelson himself said, “I finished writing the book in 2000, but nobody would publish it, so it sat in my drawer for 10 years.” Blake Nelson, author of “Dream School.” Quite apart from the fickleness of retro-focused trends, and regardless of Nelson’s own nostalgia for the ‘90s (“I miss Feminism! The whole culture is so 1950s right now, so conservative and conformist”), “Dream School” is first and foremost an enduring account of what it looks, feels and sounds like to be young. While “Girl” told the story of the Portland, Ore., teenager Andrea Marr and her adventures in the Pacific Northwest’s indie rock music scene, its sequel follows her east to Wellington, a snooty liberal arts college modeled on Wesleyan, which Nelson also attended. Parts of “Girl” were published in Sassy, and the passages gave readers a first-person voice so realistic they might have had to remind themselves that not only were the excerpts fiction, but also fiction actually written by an adult man. Were the oft-missed magazine around today, it might have serialized the new novel as well, which is told in an equally convincing voice. Despite the gender switch, “Andrea’s experience in college is very nearly identical to mine,” Nelson explained. Before he went to Wesleyan, he had “never dealt with entitled people before, and I didn’t fit in.” From its first chapter, in which Andrea arrives at Wellington and internally compares her ordinary luggage to her fellow students’ “nice” bags (“it wasn’t the most embarrassing thing ever, but it was pretty noticeable”), “Dream School” establishes its protagonist’s outsider perspective. She sees her classmates as “very eastern,” who seem “used to airports and being picked up and going to new places.” Though Nelson’s uneasiness in college may have been spurred by his peers’ socioeconomic privilege, the book isn’t overtly political. Much like the author himself, “Andrea’s not ideological. She’s an observer.” Yet what “Dream School” may lack in pointed critique, it makes up for in Nelson’s spot-on, often tongue-in-cheek renderings of the minutiae that fill Andrea’s college experience: the pretentious girl in the creative writing workshop who keeps using the term “metafiction”; the eyeliner- and leather-coat-wearing, sexually confident dorm lothario; the forever cooler, laconic friend who makes an experimental film about ecstasy. Girl Author Blake Nelson on YA Fiction and Lana Del Rey. Blake Nelson has a knack for writing from a teenage girl’s perspective, which has made his young adult fiction some of the most fun and realistic on the market. His first novel, Girl , was published as a serial in Sassy before becoming a book and, eventually, a movie. His much-longed-for follow-up novel, Dream School , came out in December — fittingly enough, also as a serial, although it’s now in book form, too. Blake stopped by Turntable.fm to spin tunes and chat about Kathleen Hanna, teenage girls, and why the Plain White Ts are the best band in America. Melissa Locker started playing “Hold The Line Feat. Mr. Lex & Santigold” by Major Lazer. Melissa Locker : Hi Blake! Blake Nelson : Santigold, oh my god, you’ve done your homework (she went to the college in the book). ML : Homework is for winners! So, welcome to Turntable. Thanks so much for agreeing to do this. Blake Nelson started playing “Destroy Everything You Touch” by Ladytron. ML : I thought you would be a natural fit for one of these interviews, because music is so important in your books. BN : I was a musician for many years when I was very young. I learned everything I know about the entertainment business in the back of horrible clubs in Worcester, Mass. ML : That sounds … unhygienic. You also lived in Portland in the ’90s. That was quite a music education. BN : It’s so funny to come from that and end up writing “children’s books.” I love saying that at cocktail parties though. “And what do you do Mr. Nelson?” “I write children’s books.” ML : Young Adult fiction has changed and grown so much in the last few years. It must be amazing to witness. Melissa Locker started playing “Young Adult Friction” by The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. BN : Oh, I like this song. I like the name of this band. I love that band that’s called I LOVE YOU BUT I HAVE CHOSEN DARKNESS. I think they’re from Canada. ML : I do like band names that are almost sentences, like: And They Will Know Us By The Trail of the Dead. It’s like, add more words, guys! Make the marquee guys work for it. BN : Ha ha. ML : But back to young adult fiction, when you see books like The Hunger Games get mass market, crossover appeal, do you ever want to jump up and down and remind people that you’ve been doing it better and longer than a lot of people? Blake Nelson started playing “King Of The Beach” by Wavves. BN : Uh, I’m not sure I’ve done anything better than Hunger Games, it sounds pretty good. But I like to do literary stuff more, and more realistic so … I am not going to have a big audience like that. I can still be good though. Have you ever read King Dork by Frank Portman? It is a GREAT book about being a musician and starting a band and all that. ML : I haven’t! But your book Rock Star Superstar touches on the same subject area. BN : Yeah that’s a good one. This is my song fave from my LA time, since it’s so LA. ML : Why is this song so LA? BN : The Wavves song? Because it’s about the beach? ML : Right. It’s very beachy. How did you start writing YA? Melissa Locker started playing “Teenage FBI” by Guided By Voices. BN : I had this one character in my mind, and I saw that he could be YA. And people had said to me, “You should write YA, your style is really simplistic and you appear to be mildly autistic.” So I said, “Okay, I’m gonna try this.” And I did, and this woman Regina Hayes bought it at Viking and she was this super cool, awesome woman and I just liked her so much that when she said, “You should write another one,” I said, “Okay.” ML : “Mildly autistic” is a HUGE compliment, right? And was Girl your first novel? Blake Nelson started playing “Stay Monkey” by Julie Ruin. BN : GIRL was my first novel, yeah, but I had written a bunch of stuff by then … so I wasn’t a total amateur. ML : Love this song. BN : This record is my favorite by KH. ML : Tell the nice people reading who KH is. BN : Kathleen Hanna. ML : Of Bikini Kill. OG Riot Grrl. BN : This record is like a novel. It’s so obviously done in isolation. It feels so solitary. ML : Yeah, I can’t wait to hear more of this project and see what she does next. Speaking of Riot Grrls, when did you live in Portland, Oregon? Melissa Locker started playing “More Than This” by Roxy Music. BN : I grew up there. Then I lived there in the late eighties. Then a couple years in the early nineties. And then one year in the mid nineties, then another year in the mid nineties and then from 2007 to 2009. ML : So you were around in the Riot Grrl years and long enough to really get a sense of the Portland music scene and the place. Your novels always have a really strong sense of place, but since I’m from Portland I’m never sure if I’m just projecting. BN : Yeah, but that wasn’t really on my radar. The riot grrl phenomenon. I knew who Bikini Kill was, and that was very different than what we think now. There was a lot of bad energy around that scene. It was kind of super confrontational and wild. ML : Really? BN : Yeah, when Bikini Kill first came out, it was a little ugly. I didn’t go to any of their shows. My friend roadied for them and he told me to stay away. ML : Details. Blake Nelson started playing “1, 2, 3, 4” by Plain White T’s. BN : I don’t know. I wasn’t there! I mean, I knew all those people eventually. But it was just like they’d stop the gig until all the dudes left. And the worst dudes were there because that was the thing, they were challenging the scene and calling bullshit on all of it, and so all these creepy dudes would show up and there’d be fights. It wasn’t this touchy feely thing that people seem to think it was now. ML : Yeah the YouTube videos of some of the shows definitely validate some of that. They could be very yell-y and confrontational. BN : That’s why the Julie Ruin record is so fascinating. That’s what Kathleen did next. And it really shows her withdrawing from that and becoming more … I hate to say it … personal and artsy … she’s so amazing. ML : And she’s married to Ad Rock, which is just awesome. Melissa Locker started playing “Waltz #2 (XO)” by Elliott Smith. BN : That’s a really interesting marriage to think about. I can’t figure it out myself. But I’m sure it’s great. ML : Ad Rock showed up at a Portlandia live show the other day and everyone in the audience was yelling, “Where’s Kathleen?” which I thought was great. What was it in the Portland scene that inspired you to write GIRL ? BN : Actually, it was its normalness and its lack of anything really differentiating it from any other scene. And also it was where I went to high school. So it made sense. In those days, it hadn’t become such a “thing” yet. It was still its backwater self. ML : Just lots of young girls hoping the lead singer notices them? BN : That’s sort of a universal story. ML : Sad, but true. What made you want to write about it? Blake Nelson started playing “I Figured You Out” by Mary Lou Lord. BN : I think of Andrea as not a person trying to get Todd’s attention, but as a person that’s just into that world. And she meets him, and she slowly falls in love with him…. ML : Oh I love Mary Lou Lord! BN : I love this song. Mary Lou Lord is so real… ML : She was on Kickstarter trying to raise funds for her next album. I gave her $5. BN : Really great I meant to type. ML : Sassy Mag serialized GIRL when it came out. BN : Yes, thank god, or it wouldn’t have been published. ML : And then you repeated that serialization with the follow up novel, Dream School. Was that a nice bookend to the process? BN : Yes, if it worked once, do it again! ML : And then Figment published it. So it worked out both times. BN : Yeah, it’s been super fun having DREAM SCHOOL come out and connecting with all the GIRL fans and just like… Melissa Locker started playing “Back In Your Head” by Tegan & Sara. BN : Tegan and Sara! ML : They are up and comers! Again! BN : I love how everyone hates LANA DEL REY. Everyone hated the SMITHS too. And now they are part of the canon. ML : Jessica Hopper said today that everything people are saying about Lana Del Rey could be considered musical slut shaming. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I also get it. Blake Nelson started playing “Born to Die” by Lana del Rey. ML : But I don’t think she was ready for SNL, and I think she did a lousy job. BN : Interesting. I sort of scoffed at Amy Winehouse at first, but now I love her so much. ML : RIP Amy Winehouse. BN : I love Pitchfork and that whole scene of geeks judging people who actually try to do things. ML : Those who can’t, write bitchy reviews. That said, I write a lot of reviews. Hire me, Pitchfork! ML : What took you so long to write Dream School ? BN : I was busy. I was working on other projects. Ha ha! ML : With all the ’90s nostalgia floating around today, have people come calling about GIRL or other work? BN : Yeah, sure, we’ve done a ton of stuff. It’s been really fun. Melissa Locker started playing “Dystopia (The Earth Is On Fire)” by Y.A.C.H.T. ML : Any chance GIRL is going to be re-made into a movie? Reboots are the new black. BN : That’s a really good idea. It’s not really up to me though. ML : Speaking of movies, what was it like working with Gus Van Sant to make Paranoid Park ? BN : I like really short songs and really short books. I think we have to get away from these 600 page books. ML : I will admit my attention span is about 300 pages, preferably 250. Oops I just said that publicly, now The New Yorker will never hire me. BN : That was another thing about YA books I really like. SHORT. ML : That’s what I like about YA, too. Plus I feel like the nature of YA requires authors to strip plots and dialogue down. I really respond to the simplicity. BN : Me too. Blake Nelson started playing “You Can’t Be Friends With Everyone” by Make Out. ML : Have you ever considered writing for adults? Or, rather, for adults who don’t read YA. BN : GIRL was originally an adult book. I wrote it basically for Kim Gordon [of Sonic Youth] for some reason. And for my friends who had been through the ’80s punk scene of when I was in high school. The tone of it was originally “look how stupid we all were.” And how adorably confused. But then about halfway through, I realized that the kids of that time (the Sassy ’90s) were going to be the real audience. They were gonna eat it up. And I actually felt this deep thrilling FEAR in my chest, like what if I became the J.D. Salinger of my time? Or more likely the Jackie Collins/J.D. Salinger of my time? And that’s what sort of happened. Melissa Locker started playing “Schizophrenia” by Sonic Youth. ML : Kim Gordon? Wow! Also, Jackie Collins/J.D. Salinger? BN : I didn’t know her or anything. I just had her in my mind for some reason … I thought: oh, this will be my pop novel. ML : Do you read a lot of Jackie Collings? BN : Just Hollywood Wives … ML : Well, yeah, of course. I was just wondering if reading a lot of Jackie Collins was the secret to cross-gender writing success. Blake Nelson started playing “1, 2, 3, 4” by Plain White T’s. BN : Oh, I don’t know. Is she? I never understand why people think it’s so unusual that I write from a girl’s perspective. Lots of people do it. PLAIN WHITE T’S, the heart and soul of America. ML : But you have this knack of tapping into not just girls’ minds, but teen girls’ minds, which I don’t even think their moms can do. BN : Yeah, well what’s more interesting than a teenaged girl? Not much. Teenaged girls are like … they’re the most important humans on the planet. Our fate hangs in their hands! ML : My only problem with the Plain White T’s is that this guy would blast “Hey There Delilah” in his car outside my window over and over and over again. BN : Yeah overkill is bad. ML : For like a month. It was nuts! And teen girls like Tavi from Rookie really are taking over the world. It’s so impressive to watch. I wish I hadn’t spent so much time puppy- dogging after rock stars when I was in high school like your heroine in GIRL . Melissa Locker started playing “Battery Kinzie” by Fleet Foxes. BN : Who was you favorite? ML : Rock star? BN : Yeah? ML : Oh jeez. I’m supposed to be interviewing you! But I was in Portland in the late ‘90s. BN : Really? ML : There were so many options. BN : Courtney Courtney Taylor [from the Dandy Warhols]. ML : NO! But he did sell me my first pair of Doc Martens and invite me to his show, but not the Dandys, the Beauty Stab, his hair metal band. BN : What were you doing in Portland? ML : I grew up there. Born and raised. BN : No shit. Where did you go to high school? ML : Lincoln. BN : Wow. I went to West Sylvan. Melissa Locker started playing “Where Is My Mind?” by The Pixies. ML : Oh yeah? All my friends went there. But I was a magnet student. BN : Lincoln High school; Mark Rothko, Elliott Smith, Matt Groening … pretty impressive. ML : The Portland Art Museum is having a Rothko retrospective. BN : I’m going to be there Feb. 27 to March 5. ML : You can see the show then. BN : I will check it out … I always think Mark Rothko’s paintings are about first love. The blindingness of first love. ML : I have not heard that theory before. BN : Epicness… ML : Yes, that for sure. Overwhelming emotion. BN : That’s a California word: epic. Also I say gnarly now. And rad. All because I live in LA now. California is its own world. It’s like living in another country. And they’re sort of fascists a little, but it’s okay because everything is neat and clean and the dudes come and trim the palm trees every Tuesday. ML : Hahaha. Does it affect your writing? BN : Yeah. Totally. It affects everything. I just wrote a book that is unlike anything I’ve ever done. ML : Can you talk about it? BN : Can’t say. But California … it makes you happy. Blake Nelson started playing “Our Deal” by Best Coast. BN : I think of my childhood as a Portlander in that constant gloom. And then all my years as a struggling artist in the cold grit of NY. And now I’m like, wow, I go to the beach and I go on hikes and everyone is sort of nice and not super-serious…. ML : Going from Portland to New York seems like a big improvement, what with the no rain thing, but California and sunshine? And the beach? That sounds like perfection. Do you listen to Best Coast and Wavves all the time now? BN : They are the “first couple” of Indie California so I pay homage. ML : Nice. Blake Nelson started playing “Hey There Delilah” by Plain White T’s. ML : nooooooooooo ML : ooooooooooooooooo ML : oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Writers similar to or like Blake Nelson. American author of children's literature. Her award-winning series Make Lemonade features a 14-year-old girl named LaVaughn, who babysits for the children of a 17-year-old single mother. Wikipedia. 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Wikipedia. Vietnam-born American writer of children's literature. She won the 2011 National Book Award for Young People's Literature Wikipedia. American author of children's literature. Dunn wrote at least 45 books. Wikipedia. Austrian-born American children's literature author. Born Doris Adelberg in Vienna, Austria on February 15, 1929. Wikipedia. Dream School by Blake Nelson. The author talks to us about Dream School , the sequel to his much-loved novel Girl . Rookie is no longer publishing new content, but we hope you'll continue to enjoy the archives, or books, and the community you've helped to create. Thank you for seven very special years! ✴ About Rookie. Rookie is an online magazine and book series for teenagers. Each month, a different editorial theme drives the writing, photography, and artwork that we publish. Learn more about us here, and find out how to submit your work here! More from Books. We Know It Was You. Sunday Comic: The Best Song Ever #9. Sunday Comic: Walking on a Pretty Day. More to See. Twist and Turn. Getting Over Embarrassment. Looking Around, Not Up. Next Article. How to Do a Pompadour. Blake Nelson has written 12 books, but his most beloved (by us at least) is probably his first, 1994’s Girl , which was written from the point of view of a suburban high school student named Andrea Marr and chronicles her discovering the mid-’90s music scene in Seattle, falling in love for the first time, and growing up a little. Dream School , the sequel to Girl , comes out next month and takes Andrea to college on the East Coast. I emailed Blake some questions, which he was wonderful enough to answer. Naturally, I couldn’t stop asking him about Andrea. For a certain subset of readers, the story of Girl ’s publication, first as excerpts in Sassy magazine, is the stuff of ’90s alt legend, but for those of us who were in single digits at the time (or not yet born), can you explain how that came about, preferably using early- to mid-’90s slang? Girl was my first novel. When I finished it, I sent it to publishers and they were like: “We don’t understand this.” The rejections came pouring in. So then I tried sending it to Sassy . Of course, they understood it and published several chapters. Meanwhile, there was one book editor who was still considering Girl . But she couldn’t decide. She kept saying: “But who’s the audience? Who’s going to buy it?” So then Christina Kelly at Sassy called and said: “We’re getting all these letters from readers who like your novel.” So I ran up to the Sassy offices and got this stack of handwritten letters from 13-year-old girls in places like Oklahoma City, and I ran across town to that book editor’s office and put them on her desk and said: “Here is the audience! These are the people who will buy it!” And that’s how it came to be published. When did you decide you wanted to write a sequel? Did you ever worry about messing with the sanctity of the original story? I wasn’t worried. I thought, if the sequel sucks, I’ll just throw it away. It was about six years after Girl when I wrote Dream School . Since she was now in college, Andrea had to be more mature, less chatty than she was in Girl , but I still thought she was interesting, and it was still fun to follow her around and see what she did. Also, describing college was fun. I was really pleased with that. Dream School shows what college is like for smart people. It’s so lame how people portray college as just sororities and guys with beer cans strapped to their heads. College can actually be really great. Who is an ideal reader for the stories of Andrea, as in what age, gender, and sensibility? I gave my little sister (who is very different from me in a lot of ways) Girl as a high school graduation present, but I’ve been too nervous to ask her what she thought of it, or even if she read it… Yeah, it’s hard to know who’s gonna like what. I told one group of high-schoolers the other day: “If you think Keds are cool and Uggs are not, you will like Girl .” You and Andrea share a lot of biographical details (hometown, college, profession). Is she you? If so, why not just make her a dude? I did write about boys around that same time. But the ’90s was a very girl-oriented time. People really wanted to know what was up with them. “What do teenage girls think about?” That was the question that was in the air. “Why are girls so cool?” “Have girls ever been as cool as they are right now?” It didn’t seem like they had. A lot of that was the flowering of feminism, and just the way things worked out. Generation X got screwed in a lot of ways, but we had amazing girl culture. Kathleen Hanna, Sassy , all the great zines… I was just exploring the same things as everyone else. How did you inhabit the head of a young woman for the first time and how did you get back into that mindset to write Dream School? I just tried it. That’s what you do as a writer, or any kind of artist. You try things. With Girl that female voice just instantly worked. It was so fun to get Andrea talking. She had so much energy, her sentences would loop around and reconnect to things, or end in these funny non sequiturs, or just trail off into total confusion. Her voice felt exactly right. It was thrilling. If I were hoping to get my brain to a place like that I would be way into the blogs of teenagers on websites like LiveJournal and Tumblr. Girl and Dream School have a real diary quality to them that might remind people reading them today of what they see their peers do daily on the internet. Do you ever find yourself going down the teen-blog rabbit hole? I love to read teen blogs. I go on scouting missions to Lookbook and from there find interesting blogs that I check back in with. Tumblr is great, but it’s so visual, there’s not as much writing, but that’s OK. I love how certain blogs just set a mood. Young people are so inventive and interesting, especially if they are left to their own devices. When did you start writing? I was a musician in my teens and early 20s, and most of my energy went into that. I wrote a lot of songs, which was good training for writing fiction. I learned how to keep trying even if your first attempts are terrible! I didn’t start writing seriously until after my band days, which was my mid-20s. What did you read as a teenager? I read stuff like Jaws or The Doonesbury Chronicles . Just whatever I happened to pick up. Then when I was in bands, I had a lot of free time. That’s what happens when you’re a musician, you sit around a lot. And people started turning me on to better stuff: Kerouac and Henry Miller and Tom Wolfe. I also rediscovered F. Scott Fitzgerald. He’s been the biggest influence on my career. You could take any F. Scott Fitzgerald story, replace “flappers” with “punk rockers” and you have a Blake Nelson story. Now a lot of your work, including Girl , Dream School , and your other new book, Recovery Road , about addiction and rehab, can be found in the Young Adult section of a bookstore, but I’ve read that you didn’t necessarily begin with those intentions. It’s true. I didn’t intend to be a Young Adult writer. And a lot of my books fall into a middle ground, of not totally YA and not totally not. But that’s OK. The books find their way. Recovery Road , which I worried was going to be too extreme for the YA crowd, has been embraced. And rightly so, because it’s the best kind of YA book, not preachy, not message-y, but still a solid story that’s honest and real. It seems like most YA fiction these days, especially the commercially successful stuff, is set in paranormal worlds (vampires, werewolves, and wizards), whereas your stuff is often grounded in the mundanity of everyday life. What do you think of the current landscape of books for people in their teens? Do you keep up with the Twilight s and Hunger Games of the world? The problem for me with the wizards and stuff is it’s all so nerdy. I like stuff that is more trying to be cool. Even if it fails, I’d rather experience the effort. And by cool, I don’t mean smoking a cigarette on a street corner. I mean, something that’s good, and has style and integrity, and will last, and is addressed to other good stuff from the past. Like Ryan Gosling. I suspect he might be a total dork. But he’s trying to be cool. And that tension makes him fun to watch in his movies. You root for him and you feel like you might learn something. When did you realize that you were good at writing for teenagers? When Girl came out I got a lot of mail from teenagers. I guess I thought the audience would be a little older. But the letters were great. I was so impressed by them. I hadn’t planned to write YA books, but after that it made sense to. And plus, I like teenagers. I like thinking about that time in my own life. One thing about me: I didn’t hate high school like some people. I was an odd kid and suffered the usual miseries, but I never got too worried about it. I’d get a big zit and I’d see it in the mirror and I’d laugh. I’d be like: “I’m a teenager! I got a zit!” I would do things like kiss girls’ hands when I was introduced to them. I seemed to be living in several different centuries at once. I was weird. But I enjoyed my youth. What are some of your favorite television shows and movies (past and present) with teenage female leads? My all-time favorite teen movie: Splendor in the Grass . The greatest! Of more current things, I love Taylor Momsen, mostly because she was so amazing in the movie of my book Paranoid Park . And also Gossip Girl . And I just watched Twin Peaks for the first time, since Tavi kept posting about it. That was great. I especially liked the promiscuous dark-haired girl, with the lipstick, I forget her name. [ It’s Audrey. —Ed. ] As a writer, those kind of characters are the best. They present the most dramatic possibilities. Are there any parts of Girl or Dream School that women have taken issue with? For instance, Andrea’s first orgasm, or other parts you biologically or emotionally could not have experienced? Did you do research or reporting for stuff like that? No research, I just made it up. And I got a lot of it wrong, I realized as I got older. But one thing I’ve noticed is that people are insecure about sex, so if a female character says: “Whenever I kiss a boy, my ears tingle,” the female reader thinks: “Oh no! Why don’t my ears tingle?” instead of thinking: “That doesn’t really happen! This is a guy writing this, not a girl!” Also, I think in some cases, if you have a good story going, people will go with it. It’s like when you hit a wrong note as a musician. If you’re really tearing it up, nobody cares if you make a mistake. Surprisingly though, I still meet people who have never seen my picture and think that “Blake Nelson” is a girl. That’s weird. ♦