Please describe the content of Amelia Westlake Was Never Here and what can readers expect from the read?Īmelia Westlake Was Never Here follows the story of two students in their final year at an elite private girls’ school: Harriet Price, a rule-abiding prefect, and Will Everhart, a rule-breaking slacker. That is why I think young adult stories will always be in fashion in one form or another. In a sense, we are always coming of age, no matter how old we are. Young adult books focus on the coming-of-age narrative and that is something everyone who has been a teenager relates to.

Why do you feel young adult books are so popular and have such a voice right now? Both characters are different versions of myself. Will is more like the person I am now-cynical, negative, and probably far less woke than she thinks she is. When I think about the two main characters in the book, I see Harriet as a representation of the type of annoying person I was in high school-naive, ridiculously optimistic, and completely unaware of my own privilege. Which character do you most relate to and why? Those concerns were becoming central to the cultural conversation as well, and we’ve since seen them culminate in the #MeToo Movement. As I began writing the story, I realized it was developing into an exploration of power and privilege. Amelia was the best thing about high school as far as I’m concerned, and I thought it would be fun to revisit that experience in fiction. We invented an imaginary student called Amelia Westlake. Aurora: What was your inspiration behind Amelia Westlake Was Never Here?Įrin: The idea came from a hoax I did with two of my school friends when we were in our final school year.

Amelia westlake by erin gough