Sweet Sixteener Nisha Sharma recently spoke to Fearless Fifteener Stefanie Lyons about her YA contemporary novel-in-verse, DATING DOWN (April 8, 2015 from Flux).
About the Author:
Stefanie Lyons holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. When she’s not writing, she’s organizing her locker, crushing on boys, practicing her clarinet, or getting ready for prom. In her head, that is. Because her teen years were great. Stefanie resides in Chicago. DATING DOWN is her first novel.
Find Stefanie on her website, Twitter, and Goodreads.
About DATING DOWN:
When a good girl falls for a bad boy
She thought she loved him. She thought she could change him. She thought if she just believed in him enough, his cheating and his drugs and his lying would stop, and she’d be his and he’d be hers and they’d love each other forever.
But for Samantha Henderson, X–the boy she will not name–is trouble. He’s older, edgier, bohemian . . . and when he starts paying attention to Sam, she can’t resist him. Samantha’s family and friends try to warn her, but still she stays with him, risking her future and everything that really matters.
As moody and vivid as it is captivating, DATING DOWN is told in scenes and bursts of poetry that create a story filled with hurt, healing, and hope.
DATING DOWN is available for purchase at Amazon, Powell’s, Books A Million, Barnes & Noble, and Indiebound.
Nisha: Out of all of the parts in Dating Down that I enjoyed, my favorite was the writing itself. The verse in Dating Down is beautifully lyrical. Did it come naturally or was it a stylistic decision?
Stefanie: The verse part was a bit of a surprise. I heard a voice and started writing from it. It was languid and quiet, which struck me as odd. I went with it because Sam, the main character, is insecure and filled with self-doubt at the start of the book, so it fit. Also, I was reading a lot of Emily Dickinson, Anne Sexton, Anne Carson, and Allen Ginsberg at the time—so, duh. 😉
The Sweet Sixteens 