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YA author Jennifer Niven: ‘Teenage depression needs to be talked about’
Although she has published eight other books, American author Jennifer Niven is perhaps best-known for writing the young adult novel All the Bright Places. The story of two troubled teenagers living in a small town in Indiana, the book has garnered much critical and commercial acclaim since it was first published last year. It’s currently being adapted into a film starring Elle Fanning.
Niven was in the country recently upon the invitation of National Bookstore to meet her fans, some of whom stood in line for hours under the sweltering heat just to have their books signed.
I got to talk to the lovely Niven about her writing career, being an unexpected advocate of the issue of teenage depression, and where she stands in the great dog vs cat debate. Excerpts:
GMA News: I know you started writing at an early age. At what point did you figure out that this was going to be a career?
Jennifer Niven: It’s interesting because my mother was a writer. I grew up writing and she always encouraged me. I also saw firsthand how stressful and demanding it could be and I think that scared me away from writing for a while, as a profession.
I kept writing, but I just didn’t think about it for a while until I graduated film school and I got my master’s in screenwriting. I was thinking about movie ideas, and I came across a really interesting story about a deadly Arctic expedition from 1913. I said to my mom, ‘This’ll be such a great movie.’ And she said, ‘But you could write it as a book first. And the movie could come later.’ And I thought, a book, uhh… But the more I started thinking about it, the more I thought, that’s a story I really would love to read. [The book became The Ice Master: The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the Karluk.]
And here I am. Nine books later. Every book I’ve written has been something I really wanted to write.
This is your first YA novel. What took you so long to write it?
That’s a great question, and especially since this story is a personal one, and one I carried around for quite a while. I think, one, I started accidentally in non-fiction, with writing that first book about the expedition. From there, while I always loved reading YA books, I kind of went where my career led me at the time. One project kind of moved into the next. It really wasn’t until the spring of 2013, when my literary agent died unexpectedly; that made me pause and just re-evaluate everything what I was doing and what I wanted to do next, in a way that I hadn’t because as I said, one project kind of just led into the next. So that’s when I stopped and said, I really wanted to write YA, and I would love to do something with this story that I’ve been carrying around for a while.
How hard was it to kind of shift gears, from writing non-fiction to YA?
It was hard. Each time I shifted genres, it was like starting a new career in a way. It’s not as if my non-fiction, Arctic adventure readers wanted to come to my first adult novel and read about a young woman living in Appalachian North Carolina in the 1930s! [Velva Jean Learns to Drive]. Not all of them did. And those readers didn’t necessarily want to come to the YA world. It can be risky. You work really hard to build up an audience. And then you start all over again. But I think it was most important to just follow what I needed to do creatively.
When you were first starting out, did you ever have attacks of self-doubt, that maybe you weren’t good enough to do this?
Yes. Every single book. I still feel that.
How did you get past that?
My mother always said, ‘Whatever you do, just believe in yourself, and believe in your work. There are enough people in the world who won’t believe in it. You need to at least believe in it, consistently.’ So I tried to remind myself of that. And then, I think, for me, there were stories I needed to tell in each of the books. And I just tried to honor that and listen to it. It was really scary with the YA because I felt like I was taking this huge risk. I didn’t have my agent, who I’ve had all those years. I was starting with a new agent. Everything felt new. There was a brief period of time before I actually started writing the book, when, I thought, maybe I’ll just go take a break from writing and go do something else for a while. I’m so glad I didn’t do that.
About All The Bright Places, you’ve said it was about events that happened in your life. The books that you’ve written before happened to different people, and it was history. But this was about your own life. Were there ever any worrries that you put too much of yourself out there?
Absolutely. I think that’s always so scary. I’m a private person. I don’t think there are many of us who just love to say, ‘Here’s me, this is what happened to me. Sad it happened to me. Let me share it with you.’
In writing a book, you feel vulnerable enough writing it. You write it and then you put it out into the world. And people are like, ‘I don’t like that book.’ Everyone’s gonna have a reaction to it. There’s nothing you can do about that. And so, with this one, because it was so personal, I felt even more vulnerable writing it. By the time I started it, I thought, I just have to see it through, and give myself permission to never show it to anyone, if that’s what it takes to write it as honestly as possible. And after I finished, I don’t know if anyone would want to read it, but I’m glad I wrote it.
When you finished the book and it was gonna go out there, at what point did you know that this was going to be something?
I got this wonderful new agent, and she started taking the book out to show editors. And even while she was doing that, I was thinking, is there even a story here? I don’t even know if anyone…I mean, is there a plot? I was still questioning that. I think the first inkling I had was when my agent was going to do an option for the book. Every day, there was a different offer from different publishing houses. With the first one, I thought, oh that’s brilliant, and with the second one, I thought, okay, that’s interesting. And by the time we got to Thursday, and that was when Random House came in, and my agent was saying, ‘Come on, it’s Random House, and it’s Knopf.’ So I thought, that’s great affirmation. That made me think, okay maybe this book will do something.
You deal with some pretty heavy themes in the book. Have you found yourself being some sort of advocate, especially concerning teenage depression?
I have. That was never my intention, but I wanted to write as honestly and as sensitively as I could. It’s taken me by surprise a little bit. There are adults who take issue with it, because they feel like teens shouldn’t be reading anything like this; they would rather they didn’t know about these issues. The children of those same people are writing to me and saying, ‘No one will listen to me, and they tell me I’m just being a teenager and to get over it.’ And I think, it obviously needs to be talked about. These things need to be talked about.
I feel when I talk to my fellow YA authors, we all say the same thing, we are giving voice to the voiceless, and it makes us feel very proud and honored to get to do that and speak for them, for these teens who aren’t always listened to.
Lightning round questions: What’s your favorite city?
Besides Manila? Los Angeles. It’s where I live, and it’s been my home for 20 years now.
Favorite snack?
Popcorn.
Cat or dog?
Cat. I have four. I love dogs, but I’m allergic. But I’ve always been a cat person.
If you were to have three living authors over for a dinner party, who would they be?
David Levithan, who’s really my good friend. I love him. So definitely him. I think I would have Judy Blume. That would really be interesting. And I would probably have John Green over. I haven’t met him yet, and I would love to meet him. That would be an interesting dinner.
You mentioned in a previous interview that you were working on your next YA book. Anything you could tell us about it?
Yes. It’s called Holding Up The Universe, and it comes out October 4th, 2016. I’m so excited. It was really challenging writing it, because I’ve been living in this world with Violet and Finch for a few years. After I finished writing it I went on tour, and I’ve been touring ever since and talking about it. So it was really hard to just sit down and have the stars align, and everything working so I could come up with two new characters, but once I did and found their voices, I loved writing them.
One last question: how do you feel about being a female author, especially in this day and age when there have been so many of you writing in the YA genre?
It’s really wonderful, the whole community of YA has been so welcoming and so lovely and supportive. I think the men in that genre, they get to be, like, rock stars in a way because there are so few of them. And everyone has a crush on them. [laughs] But it’s really such a lovely and supportive community. I feel very lucky to be a part of it. The people that have written multiple YA books have just been so lovely and gracious to those of us who are just coming in and starting fresh with it as a genre. So I really do feel grateful. — BM, GMA News
All the Bright Places is available in National Bookstore.
Paul John Caña is a magazine writer and live music geek. He is also co-founder of libreto.org, an online collective of writers and artists. Email him at pjcana@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter and Instagram @pauljohncana.
