An Interview with Author Gayle Forman, Now Launching New Novel, NOT NOTHING

On Thursday, August 29 at 5:00pm, #1 New York Times bestselling author Gayle Forman appeared at The Hamptons Library to celebrate the launch of her powerful and unforgettable new book NOT NOTHING. 

In partnership with BookHampton, who was on-site at the library to sell books, the event featured Forman discussing the novel, taking audience questions, and signing copies for attendees.

Gayle Forman has achieved tremendous success as an author and has a clear, honest and approachable voice. I personally love her non-fiction for its direct, funny approach to writing about writing (maybe a little niche). Clearly, this is not written for middle grades, but check out, “So This Is Why Writers Are Drunks!” on her website for reference. 

Forman has lots to say, and you’d be wise to come to see her answer questions and sign books at BookHampton. Gayle is warm and approachable, and I appreciate how she debunks the myth that writers are mercurial and “tooorrrtuuurrred,” although I probably do fall into that category, fueled by black coffee and chewing my body weight in Nicorette Gum daily (no, not sponsored). I digress. 

I connected with Gayle Forman via email to discuss her latest novel, Intergenerational Connections, Seventeen Magazine, middle-grade readers, and her work with Hollywood.

You have some sage advice for writers, free from truism and platitude. Do you have any advice for someone conducting an interview?

Open with flattery and humor. Oh, wait. You already did!

A shame about Sassy Magazine, but, what was it like working at Seventeen Magazine?

It wasn’t Sassy—nothing could be—but it was pretty amazing. I worked under an editor-in-chief named Patti Adcroft who understood that teenagers are smart, passionate, and want to be engaged in the world. Which meant that in addition to writing personal essays and quizzes and articles like “75 Reasons Why Life Without A Boyfriend Rocks,” I did many serious articles about young people. I covered including child soldiers being forced to fight in Sierra Leone’s civil war, or interviewed young people across the gun control gun rights spectrum. Seventeen is where I learned to write, and also where I [GK1] met some wonderful friends.

Teen magazines are not necessarily considered literary scions. BUT, reading is reading. Where do you think young people are getting the majority of their reading?

Younger kids are still getting books at their libraries and at school, and then they get phones… Part of me wants to lament about how so many young people are just on TikTok and not reading except that TikTok is where so many young people are forming communities around books! Which is incredible. I also love that young people are writing and reading one another’s work on forums like Wattpad or on fanfic sites. And it’s been reassuring to watch the trajectory of my own kids. My now-20-year-old was an avid reader as a kid, then sort of stopped through middle and high school and now inhales books, which is why I think it’s so important to create young readers. Even if they get distracted by the siren song of social media, they come back to books.

What are Middle Grade readers? At what point do you realize you are telling a story for a younger audience?

It’s interesting with middle-grade readers because they are of course, the kids themselves, say eight and up. But they are also the librarians and teachers and educators who select books for their classrooms and libraries and the adult caregivers who will be reading the book aloud. I definitely think of all those readers when I write because the best middle-grade authors—the Beverly Clearys and Kate DiCamillos and Jason Reynolds of the world—can be read by multiple ages on multiple levels. Sort of a Pixar version: the kids will get it on one level, the older kids on another, the adults on a different one. Something for everyone.

Exposure to Holocaust Survivors is so powerful and profound, especially for young people. I remember when Survivors spoke at my school while I was growing up. Did you have that experience in school or otherwise?

My grandparents were German Jews who fled Hitler, though like so many people of that generation, they never spoke about it. The story was that they got out “just in time” and if by just in time you mean before it became impossible for Jews to legally immigrate, that is true. But they left in the fall of 1938, weeks before Kristallnacht. It was only as I was much older that I came to understand how terrifying things were for German Jews (and others targeted by the Third Reich) between 1933, when Hitler came into power, until the official start of the war in 1939.

How have young people responded to the subject matter?

It has not come out yet but my young readers so far have focused much more on Alex’s story, which is the bulk of the book, than Josey’s story about the war. But I do hope it opens up an age-appropriate dialogue about a history that seems ancient to young people but is really just a few generations away. One thing I have learned about readers is how they only absorb what they are capable of absorbing emotionally, developmentally etc. The latter Harry Potter books dealt with some heavy themes of totalitarianism that I think many older readers appreciated but that flew over the head of those who weren’t ready for that story yet.

What research did you do to create the character Josey?

So much of my Josey research was already there. My grandparents’ story, for one.  In my twenties, I volunteered at an assisted-living facility, visiting with an octogenarian named Oly. Later I came across the story of Jerzy Bielecki and Cyla Cybulska, a young interfaith couple—he was Catholic and she was Jewish—who fell in love while both were prisoners at Auschwitz. They survived, thanks to a daring escape in which Jerzy, wearing an SS uniform, marched Cyla out of the camp.  Then, about seven years ago when I was visiting my sister who worked as a nurse at an assisted-living facility, I met Sam, a spitfire nonagenarian Austrian Jew whose memory was sharper than mine. That was the spark that led to the character of Josey.  After that, I filled him out with lots of research about pre-war Krakow and the war via personal accounts and testimonies in memoirs and in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s archives. 

As a middle grader, who would you relate to more: Alex, who has had some run-ins with authority, or Maya-Jade, who is well-informed and high-achieving? 

Neither. My Maya-Jade tendencies did not kick in until college. 

Shady Glen… is that a Nancy Drew reference??

If only. I wish I’d connected that. How did I not make that connection either?

Similar to If I Stay, there are multiple narrative streams at play. As a writer, how do you keep all the storylines straight?

In one of the great ironies of the writers’ life, at a time when I am technically able to pull off the high-wire act of multiple POVs—or in the case of Not Nothing, having Josey, a 107-year-old narrate while mostly channeling Alex, but occasionally pulling back to offer commentary—my memory is that of a middle-aged woman. Which is to say, when I’m drafting, it’s really hard. I change things so much and have so many drafts that I never can remember what’s in one draft or another until I’m in the revision stage. That’s when the magic happens.

Speaking with someone vastly younger seems to have an element of healing for Josey. What intergenerational connections and relationships have been important to you in your life?

My grandparents all died before I turned 17 so maybe that’s why I have always sought out relationships with older people. I volunteered at an assisted living facility when I was in my twenties and became close with a woman named Oly and over the years, I have had very close friendships with people significantly older than me—I’m 54 now and have many close friends in their 70s and 80s. It feels like a gift to know people who have that much more life under their belts, to benefit from the lessons they have learned but also to recognize that no matter where and when they grew up, people are people are people are people.

 If I Stay was optioned as a film and was extremely successful. What was that experience like?

To be perfectly honest, not as much fun as it should’ve been, through no one’s fault but my own. Having a film made felt like winning the lottery, this huge–and random–break and the stakes felt so high that I didn’t really relax and enjoy it. I always tell my friends who are on this particular rollercoaster to enjoy the ride more. If I go for another round, I certainly will.  

You’re a New Yorker through and through, how often do you come to the Hamptons and what do you like about life on the East End?

I come out a few times a year to see various friends and I once taught at the Stony Brook creative writing program in Southampton. It’s a pretty magical place year-round. Summer is glorious, of course but I also love coming in winter. My friend lives in Sag Harbor and we have writing retreats. In fact, I wrote some of Not Nothing there.