Street: When did you first decide to become a writer?
Curtis Sittenfeld: I always wrote starting when I learned to read and write, which I think was about first grade, and you know I don't think I knew I would support myself as a writer until probably.the last few years, but I went to graduate school at the Iowa Writers Workshop. I entered in the fall of 1999 and then graduated in the spring of '01. And I think that going there kind of helped me figure out how to put writing at the center of my life and I think that's when I knew that I would finish novels, but of course writing novels isn't the same as supporting yourself as a writer.
Street: I had read that you had entered a contest in Seventeen magazine, which you won, so did that cement your interest in wanting to pursue it (writing) further?
CS: Yeah, it was definitely really exciting..some of the other people who won that contest were Sylvia Plath and Alice Seagall, who wrote The Lovely Bones.so it definitely felt like public affirmation of my writing and I really appreciated that. And I think a sort of strange thing is that the writing that you do in high school and college, if you continue writing, especially writing fiction, I think that it's hard not to look back on that and feel that you were in sort of an early stage.You know like there's stuff that I had published at an early age that I wouldn't want anyone to read now. I'm 31 years old now.so I actually think that on the whole, like in most cases, I would not encourage college students to try to get published because I think there's a high chance that later you'll look back on that work and not feel completely proud of it.
Street: So could you tell us a little about the LitPac organization and what inspired you to participate in that?
CS: Sure, it was founded in 2004 but a writer named Stephen Elliott and he is based in San Francisco. He writes fiction and non-fiction and he covered some of the '04 campaign and he's very liberal and he realized that most writers, especially most fiction writers are also liberal, and I think he felt like this was a resource he could kind of tap into because also, you know, being a writer can be a somewhat, not always, but it can be a somewhat isolating lifestyle and so I think he felt like here are these people that if you ask them to sort of participate in the political process, they will, but you have to ask them. And so, he started having these fundraising events around the country where, and this was true but I think he sort of fine-tuned it for '06, but basically the money from the event go to progressive candidates from tight congressional races around the country. So, you could actually.I did an event in San Francisco that was raising money for a congressional candidate in New Mexico.I'm doing one in Bucks County and then he said to me, "Can you do one in Boston?" and I said, "No" but almost spontaneously I said, "do you want me to organize an event in Philadelphia?" and he said, "sure." So I feel, of course, a little bit like I've been planning a wedding. I had no idea.in some ways, it makes me be impressed with the publicists I work with at Random House, my publisher, because I'd say event promotion in some ways might be harder than writing fiction.
Street: So have you enjoyed being involved with it (the event)?
CS: I certainly hope that Lois Murphy.I'm a staunch democrat so I like to feel that ideally I'm contributing to the election of a democrat and it's also been fun. It's been an opportunity for me to sort of introduce myself to Philadelphia writers and I've lived here for just a year. I mean most of the people that I asked to participate, including who couldn't participate but were still very nice, most of them I had never met before.
Street: We noticed when we were looking through the list of writers that were participating in the fundraiser that there's a lot of diversity between them in the genres. Are there any underlying connections between the writers you asked to participate or is it just that they lived in Philadelphia and were well-known?
CS: Basically, I think the common denominator is living in Philadelphia and also wanting to raise money for a democratic congressional candidate. I mean, beyond that, you're right. I wanted to have a range of you know fiction, nonfiction, men, women, different ages.
Street: To your knowledge, has anything like LitPac been attempted in the past or is it really the first time an event like this has been organized?
CS: Well, I mean, again, it's certainly not something I came up with. It's definitely something that Stephen Elliott came up with. The honest truth is that I don't know. I think that in 2004 in Bucks County, I think that there was a sort of fundraiser that writers participated in. I would hesitate to say that it's unprecedented but I think it's still exciting.
Street: On the LitPac website, it says that LitPac will offer voters a phone call from their favorite author on Election Day reminding them to vote. Do you intend to participate in this effort and how do you feel about a country in which writers believe that citizens need additional incentive to vote?
CS: Well, did you guys hear, I think it was maybe in Arizona, there was something strange, like you had a chance of winning the lottery if you vote, like there was something crazy, so I would say, my god, having a writer call you is the least of it.I don't know how active that program is but if Stephen Elliott asked me to participate, I would.I mean it would take so little time. Certainly, it is gimmicky but it probably is very effective. To me, it's not that hard, it's not that time-consuming to vote, but maybe some people need a little nudge.and I think he also has a program, which I have not participated in but where people can make a donation to LitPac and then get their favorite author to join in their book club over the phone. Those are just a few of the methods he's trying out, but I think that the reading series have been the most effective.
Street: Do you think that the culture at boarding schools has changed since you were a student or is it pretty much just the same kind of thing you portrayed in your novel?
CS: You know what, I don't know. I graduated from high school in 1993, so I don't think that I would really pass myself off as a boarding school expert. I do think that I know enough about boarding school that.if I did have children, I would not send them to boarding school. I would not present myself as someone who knows what the sort of cultural atmosphere of every school out there is.
Street: You said that you would not send your children to boarding school, do you regret going yourself?
CS: I just think.that boarding school is unnecessary. I think a lot of the advantages offered by boarding school are also offered by college so I think you can just wait. Well, I think to me, I don't really feel like boarding school has a justifiable existence, but that's not the same as saying, they should all be destroyed.it's somewhat personality and your circumstances. I certainly don't regret going to boarding school.I have to say I don't think that it's that much of a big deal.
Street: As someone who attended the Iowa Writer's Workshop, we were wondering about your opinions of MFA programs in writing.
CS: Well, again, in a way I had such a limited view because I went to one and I never taught at any other one. I had an excellent experience and I loved it. It was so sort of intellectually engaging and stimulating and I made really good friends. My classmates were so smart. My teachers were so smart. I felt like I was incredibly lucky to go. I felt like I learned a lot. The one thing I would say is that I think that programs, like any college, any undergraduate college, MFAs vary, I think in quality, and so it sort of depends on the specific school, the teachers, and I think that there are a lot of really good programs out there besides Iowa, but I don't think that every program in existence is probably worth going to. And also, I would say that if I were considering enrolling in a MFA program, I don't think that I would attend on that charged full tuition. I would maybe pay in-state tuition. It's not something where it's worth spending $100,000. Because it's not like an MBA where there's a good chance that you're going to make a lot of money back in your first few years out. There's a good chance you're not going to make a lot of money in your first few years out, so I think that I would pick carefully.
Street: Your novel seemed to straddle the boundary between chick-lit and serious literature seemed to straddle the boundary between chick-lit and serious literature. Do you think that you're involvement in political advocacy will help you permanently transcend your status as a chick-lit author or do you even want to distance yourself from this category in the first place?
CS: Well, I'll tell you, I don't think that it's regular people, I think that it's journalists, I guess including college journalists, who love to speculate about chick-lit. I don't think that most general readers care very much about it. The question, of course, whenever someone says to me, "do you think you write chick-lit?" and again no one ever says to me except for reporters, but I feel like you have to tell me your definition of chick-lit and I'll tell you if I write it or not.The big question is: is chick-lit defined by subject matter, like is any fiction about young women, chick-lit? If it is, well then obviously yes, I do write chick-lit. Or is defined by quality and treatment and if that's the case, I hope I don't write chick-lit. I don't think you can define the way that you're publicly perceived and the way that your work is perceived. And I actually, I would say that my interest in LitPac has nothing to do with the classification of my own writing. The only time that I think about the way that my work is classified is when people ask me about it, but I'm not sort of positing my literary legacy on a daily basis.The way that the word feminism means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, I think that the word chick-lit means.so to me it could be, "it's chick-lit! I loved it! It was such a treat," and someone else could mean it in a very derogatory way. I think it's hard to have a conversation about it when you don't know if you're using the term in the same way.Maybe it's something like political correctness, which I think has settled into having you know, some kind a clear definition, but I think that for a long time, it was a little murky.
Street: So on a different note, we were wondering what's the status of Prep, the movie, and how much will you be involved in the production process, if at all?
CS: The status is that.have you guys seen or have you heard of the movie The Squid and the Whale? The person who made that movie is named Noah Baumbach, and he has been attached as a director/writer for the movie, and I think he's currently working on a screenplay. Beyond that, I have no idea. It's not like it's going to be filmed in the next week. The honest truth is I don't know if it will ever be a movie and I don't have any control over that. My involvement is mostly crossing my fingers and that's about it.
Street: Did you make any stipulations when the rights were sold that you wanted to have control over certain things or are you pretty much out of the decision making process?
CS: I'm totally out.legally all they have to do is pay me. It happens that the producer who's involved with it seem really nice and intelligent and they've actually kept me in the loop to some extent in terms of letting me know what's going on, but I have no.I mean they could cast, you know, Lindsay Lohan and they could change the name and just say based on the novel Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld and I could do nothing.At this point, they've optioned it, they haven't bought it, which makes sort of a difference, but if they go ahead and by it, then basically they can do whatever they want to it, which is fine with me. I feel like the book is mine and the movie, if it gets made, will be someone else's.
Street: So, we read online that your boyfriend is a PhD candidate at Penn and so we were wondering what your impressions were of the university?
CS: I love Penn. I also came over last night (Thursday, September 14) and I went to the reading at the Kelly Writer's House by Jennifer Egan.I think that the Kelly Writer's House seems like an amazing resource. I don't think that I've ever seen anything quite like that on any other college campus. So, I think that's a cool thing to have. I think that Penn's very pretty, especially Locust Walk. It's funny because my father was in town, so my boyfriend was sort of showing him and me around the campus and my father was basically saying that he hadn't been to Penn since 1968 or something, and he think he just thought it was so much more beautiful than it had ever been before. So, the funny thing is I've been with my boyfriend so many times when he's giving people little, informal tours that even though I've never, you know, gone to Penn, taught at Penn or anything, I can give.like I can say, "do you know who Charles Addams is? Well, he worked here and the Addams family house is based on this building.".Is it the business school that's built one building inside the other? I think that I actually know more about the Penn campus than I ever thought I would.
Street: In that last response, you mentioned teaching and we were curious about whether you missed teaching and would you ever consider teaching a class, say, at Penn?
CS: Actually, I'll tell you something. I have to think of the timing. In the fall of 2004-this is before Prep came out-I e-mailed someone in the English department at Penn, a teacher, a professor, and I said, "I got his name off the website. I have this book coming out, I'm moving to Philadelphia, and did he have any teaching spots available?" And he said something like, "writing positions are very hard to come by," basically sort of saying, "no thanks," and since then, I have not pursued it.Actually, this January and February, I'm teaching at a school in New Zealand. It's actually their summer session. And I'm sure I'll go back to teaching at different times, but right now, I'm working on my third book, and it's not something I'm actively pursuing, I guess.
Street: You mentioned a third book. Did you start working on this after you completed the other two? Because I read something online that you were working on The Man of My Dreams while you were completing Prep.
CS: This is kind of a weird thing, but my publisher bought Prep in June 2003 but he didn't publish it till January 2005, so there was actually a whole year-and-a-half when I was working on my next book, and even when Prep came out, I was still working on my next book. I feel like it's a very, kind of, confusing thing. It almost sounds like with my right hand, I was writing Prep, and with my left hand, I was writing The Man of My Dreams. But it was not simultaneous.I think maybe it was in Time magazine and people have asked me that since then, but I'm like, "no, no, no! It's not how it sounds." I finished Man of My Dreams, I finished writing it in, let's see, like July of '05. And then, there's the editorial process where it comes back to me and goes back to my publishing house, but I only recently, relatively recently started my third novel. And I was kind of toying around with different things before I settled on the secret topic.
Street: As students in college who are obviously interested in writing, do you have any advice for someone our age if they told you that they wanted to pursue a career as a writer and what would you recommend that they do?
CS: I would say, actually I don't get asked this that much by college students. By the way, I have a brother who just started his senior year at Princeton, so he keeps me connected to the younger generation. So, I would say one, don't go to an MFA program right after college. I think it's a big mistake. I think that you have to actually be out of the academic setting to truly appreciate it and to appreciate what a gift of time that is. And having a job makes you appreciate.I mean I only worked for two years after college before I got an MFA, but I think it's not a mistake to even work for five years or something. So, that's one thing I would say. I'm pro-MFA but not immediately after college. I also, and someone who's had a different experience from me would probably tell you differently, but I would say don't move to New York. It's expensive, it's distracting, and there's like too many writers there.I get sent books to blurb, you know the little endorsements on the back of the book, which by the way, you should never believe any of them.it's all sort of systems of favors. I get sent a lot of books where it will be a novel about a young editorial assistant at a publishing house in New York, which is sort of like a snake eating its tail. It just feels sort of circular and boring. I would just say live your life, don't be afraid to go to somewhere other than New York. Don't be afraid to go to the West, the Midwest, the South, and I think another thing is when you take creative writing classes in college. If you have a classmate, even if you don't feel like you know them that well, if you feel like you get their writing and they get your writing, stay in touch with that person. Like I have friends in other states where I'll send them my work and they'll send me their work and we don't necessarily socialize that much except to give each other feedback, but when you find someone who's kind of on your wavelength, it can be really helpful. You feel like you have kind of a kindred spirit in a kind of writing context. And I would also say, I almost think, and this ties back to what I was saying having been in Seventeen, is I almost think there should be a law against under the age of 25 having a novel published ... Focus on improving your writing and wait until you have a manuscript that's really polished before worrying about pursuing the business side of it ... That's my monologue.
