Edan Lepucki Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

In an interview with Kristin Centorcelli of My Bookish Ways, Edan Lepucki, author of California discusses her upbringing and why she used dystopian fiction to explore the strains on a marriage.

Edan, congrats on California, and also the amazing success you've seen with it right out of the gate! Have you always wanted to be a writer? Will you tell us a bit more about yourself and your background?

Thank you so much, and thanks for your thoughtful review of California a few weeks back! I have wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember—since I learned to read, I suppose. Aside from my dancing skills (seriously, I challenge you to a dance-off!), I can only read and write. I have no other skills. In college, I enthusiastically double-majored in English and Creative Writing, and after I graduated, I worked at a bookstore in LA called Book Soup, and wrote short stories on my time off. I studied creative writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and after I graduated I started a novel. That one never sold, alas, so I wrote another one—California—to more successful results.

I was born at home in Santa Monica and raised in LA; I come from a large family of irrepressible showboats: divorced parents, step-parents, three sisters, and a brother—all of whom live in California. Aside from writing and teaching writing, I have also worked as a bookseller, a cheesemonger, and an SAT tutor (verbal ...