Carolyn Mackler (edit name/settings)

My Bio:

Carolyn Mackler is the author of the award-winning teen novels, The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things (A Michael L. Printz Honor Book), Vegan Virgin Valentine, and Love and Other Four-Letter Words. Her latest novel, Guyaholic: A Story of Finding, Flirting, Forgetting…and the Boy Who Changes Everything, came out in August 2007. Carolyn’s novels have been published in several countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Korea, the Netherlands, Denmark, Israel, and Indonesia.

Carolyn has contributed to magazines including Seventeen, Glamour, CosmoGIRL!, Girls’ Life, Storyworks, and American Girl. She has a short story in Thirteen, edited by James Howe, and in Sixteen, edited by Megan McCafferty.

Carolyn lives with her husband and young son in New York City. A graduate of Vassar College, she is currently working on her fifth novel for teenagers.



My Life Story:

I was born in Manhattan, on Friday, July 13, 1973. When I was one, my parents moved us from Greenwich Village to Syracuse and then to Brockport, which is a small village in Western New York (and the setting for many of my novels and stories). I did K-12 at Brockport Central School District. Things were okay from kindergarten through fourth grade, when I lived in a creative oblivion, building tree forts, riding my bike, and starting a newspaper with my best friend.


This is me, at four, playing dress-up


Here’s me hanging out in a homemade house. My parents used to let me keep these up for weeks at a time!


Stephie and me, summer after sophomore year From the beginning, I loved to read and write. When I was four, I would tell stories into a tape recorder (I still have the tapes!). I also dictated stories to my mom. She’d write down my words, I’d color the pictures, and then she’d stitch them together. I read obsessively. My first real chapter book was The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. From there, I read every book I could get my hands on – the Beverly Cleary books, the Judy Blume books, The Great Gilly Hopkins, Tuck Everlasting, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, The Girl with the Silver Eyes, Homecoming, the Great Brain books. Sometimes I felt like I lived in those worlds more than my own. But it was okay. In elementary school, people didn’t catch on that I lived in fiction more than reality.

In fifth grade, everything changed. I was going through this phase of wearing plaid boarding-school dresses, my hair in long braids and ribbons. But suddenly, as if there were a special summit to which I was not invited, all the other girls started wearing cute lavender tops, designer jeans, feathered hair. I was still playing with dolls – and they were spending their time gossiping, whispering, and clustering together in the school yard. It was official: I was a misfit.

Needless to say, junior high sucked. It helped that my parents loved me even though sometimes, at home, I wore a straw flowerpot on my head. Also, I had a best friend, Stephie, who lived three doors down. Stephie was a year younger than me, so we weren’t together in school. But the second we got home, we were inseparable. We played violin together. We wrote notes on balloons and released them in a giant field near our houses. We took vacations with each other’s families. Sometimes, on a warm summer morning, I’d carry my cereal through the two backyards separating our houses, and Stephie and I would eat breakfast together. Even though my school life was awful, my home life was happy, much thanks to Stephie’s friendship.

Things got better in high school. Stephie started hanging around with some boys. That meant, by default, I got to hang around them, too. My parents took me on a shopping spree and I picked out some clothes that might help me fit in a little better. I joined ski club. I got my first boyfriend. I became obsessed with George Michael’s Faith album. I started putting together a group of friends and, at some point along the way, my confidence bounced back from its all-time junior high low. Sophomore year, I made friends with Jen, who had long blond hair and drove a black Trans Am. Senior year, I met a wannabe rock star on an airplane and he wrote a song for me. I got cast in the school musical. I fell in love for the first time and, yes, I had my heart broken for the first time, too.



Even so, I was still haunted by those feelings of being a misfit. Even though things looked okay on the surface, I often felt like no one really understood what was going on in my head. That’s where I turned to young adult novels. I read and re-read all the Judy Blume books. I read A Summer to Die so many times I can still remember passages by heart. I devoured every other book by Lois Lowry. I loved the M.E. Kerr books because the characters often seemed so alone and I could relate to that. And the Norma Klein books. And, actually, every other YA novel I could find in the Seymour Library.


At fifteen, sneaking in a book between my knees People often ask me now why I write novels for teenagers. Lots of reasons. One of the biggest reasons is that I honestly believe that, along with certain friendships, I was saved by the books I read during those years. They spoke to me in a way that nothing else did. They helped me feel less alone. They made me laugh. They made me feel like there was a world bigger than my high school.

In the fall of 1991, I went to Vassar College and majored in Art History. I worked in a café on campus, which I loved. The summer after my freshmen year, I went bicycling through Europe with a friend. The summer after my sophomore year, while I was on a hiking trip in Utah, my parents split up. I got the news when I called them from a hotel in Salt Lake City. I remember sitting on the staircase, sobbing, feeling like my childhood was over. I started out junior year lost and confused, but then I spent a semester in Paris, where I met Jenny, one of my best friends in the world. Jenny and I spent five months talking nonstop and, by the time I returned to the United States, I was a new person. As I said, friendships have saved my life, over and over again.

After I graduated from college, I had no idea what to do with my life. I’d been keeping a journal since I was fourteen, and I’d also begun writing poetry and short stories. So I thought maybe I’d like to write novels. But how do you even begin? Jenny told me she was going to move to Seattle and get a job at a restaurant and experience real life a little bit. I decided to follow her. I bought a used seafoam green Toyota Tercel and drove cross-country by myself, camping and staying in youth hostels the whole way across. Jenny and I got an apartment and jobs in Seattle, but after a few months, I was restless. I missed the east coast.

I drove back to New York City in December 1995. It was cold and gray and wet. I put together a resume. I went on job interviews. No one would hire me. I temped for a lawyer. I licked envelopes for a nonprofit organization. I slept on my mom’s futon and pounded the pavement, hoping something would click. Finally, the following spring, I landed an internship at Ms. Magazine. From there, I began learning more about the writing business. I wrote some (very small) articles. And, over the next few years, I wrote larger articles for Ms. and for other magazines. All along, I still wanted to write young adult novels. So in the fall of 1997, I took a class at NYU called “Beginning Your Novel.” It was in this class that I began a first draft of Love and Other Four-Letter Words. For the next year and a half, as I struggled to pay rent by writing magazine articles, I worked on this story whenever I could.

Finally, in the spring on 1999, I sold Love and Other Four-Letter Words to Random House Children’s Books! I cannot even begin to describe how much I began hyperventilating when I hear the news. Love and Other Four-Letter Words came out in 2000, the same year I began dating Jonas.


Here's Jonas and me, right before we got married In 2003, Jonas and I got married AND my second book came out. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things went on to win the Printz Honor (insert more hyperventilating here). The following year, I published Vegan Virgin Valentine. My latest novel, Guyaholic, came out on August 14, 2007.

My life now is relatively calm. I live with my husband, Jonas, and our young son, in a lovely apartment in Manhattan. Three days a week, Jonas goes to work, our son goes to preschool, and I work on my fifth novel. My desk is situated in a corner of our bedroom, next to the windows. As I’m writing, I often rotate my chair toward the windows, which overlook the rooftops and water towers of the Upper West Side. I’m still enchanted by New York City and how, in this city of misfits, I’ve finally found a place where I belong.



Random Facts about Me:

Birthday: July 13, 1973

Hometown: Brockport, NY

Adopted Hometown: New York City

Family: My husband, Jonas, and our young son. My huge assortment of parents, stepparents, step-siblings, parents-in-law, stepparents-in-law. And, of course, my friends, who are totally family to me.

Favorite Color: Blue, all shades

Biggest Quirks: I’m a picky eater. I’ve been a vegetarian since I was four. Actually, I frequently joke to my husband that I’ll eat anything as long as it doesn’t include meat, fish, or goat cheese.

Favorite Savories: Potato chips and onion dip, Southwest sourdough bread, toasted with butter, from Ithaca Bakery in Ithaca, NY. A pear salad from Alice’s Tea Cup on the Upper West Side. Tofu scramble and a biscuit from Old Devil Moon in the East Village.

Favorite Sweets: Chocolate (the darker, the better), Ben and Jerry’s Chubby Hubby ice cream, strawberry shortcake, fresh raspberries by the gallon

Favorite Things to Do: Spend time with my husband and son, read novels, write novels, walk in Central Park, swim in lakes (not in Central Park), eat sweets and savories, take road trips in the summertime.

Favorite Music: Dar Williams, Kimya Dawson, the Garden State Soundtrack, Dave Matthews, Amy Rigby, REM, Ani DiFranco, U2, The Nields, the Cowboy Junkies

Favorite Movies: Juno, A Walk on the Moon, Love Actually, Garden State, Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, Waitress

Favorite Television Shows: It used to be Gilmore Girls, but now that that’s ended, I’m boycotting TV. Seriously.

Favorite Books: This Lullaby, Summer Sisters, Forever…, Gingerbread, Looking for Alaska, America, Boy Meets Boy, Rats Saw God, Hard Love, The Jessica Darling Books (Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings), Stargirl, Elsewhere, A Summer to Die, Caucasia, Shopgirl, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Marjorie Morningstar