680. Aromantic and Asexual YA Romance with Molly Horan

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Sarah Wendell: Hello there. Welcome to episode number 680 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and my guest today is Molly Horan. Molly is a YA author, playwright, and professor who is writing a dissertation on aromantic and asexual characters in YA literature. Molly also teaches classes about YA literature, so we have many books to discuss. We’re going to be examining the relationships between people within the context of aro and ace characters and how that requires a re-examination of how we portray human bonds in media overall and how they work in real life. So many book recs, so many books we discuss. They are all in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast under episode 680.

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Are you ready to talk about asexual and aromantic characters in YA romance? I totally am. This is a really interesting conversation. Let’s do this: on with the podcast.

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Molly Horan: Hi! My name is Molly Horan. I’m a Young Adult author. My most recent novel is Thanks for Listening. I’m also a professor. I teach at NYU and The School of Visual Arts, creative writing, specifically writing for young adults, and I’m also a playwright and I write musical theater.

Sarah: That’s a really small resume!

Molly: [Laughs]

Sarah: Have you thought about doing more with your life?

Molly: Yeah! I’ve had a, you know, have to break into a couple new genres. I, I, also I write picture books, too.

Sarah: Oh! I, ‘course. So you write musicals and plays!

Molly: Yeah.

Sarah: That’s so cool! I did not know that!

Molly: I, I enjoy it. I just had a, one of my plays in a reading. I’ve been part of a playwriting lab for the last almost year, and literally yesterday I had the reading of my play, and it, it went well; it was exciting.

Sarah: That’s so cool! Are you working on any musicals or plays right now?

Molly: I am, I am! So my writing partner, who is also my partner-partner, we met in a musical theater writing class, and we are currently working on multiple musicals.

Sarah: Wow! So do you do the, the, the script, and do they do the music, or do you both, do, do you both do both?

Molly: So I, I am just a lyricist and book writer, because I am not skilled musically at all.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Molly: My partner Sam, he is a very talented musician, but he will also give a lot of feedback on lyrics and we consider ourselves kind of co-book-writers.

Sarah: That’s, that’s very excellent! So basically, it’s all theater kid all the time in your house.

Molly: Oh yes.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Molly: We are, we are watching musical theater movies and trying to go through Gallivant, that musical show from I guess now ten years back.

Sarah: Yep.

Molly: And if we are out of the house, we are probably seeing a show!

Sarah: That’s fantastic. I’m assuming that you know about Schmigadoon!

Molly: Yes, yes. I, I really enjoyed it. I liked it. I actually, I haven’t watched the most recent season, so I’ve got to catch up on that.

Sarah: Well, it’s like a little gift, little gift for yourself.

Molly: Yeah.

Sarah: So your doctoral thesis was about asexuality in YA literature. I have so many questions. First, what led you to this thesis topic? That is really interesting.

Molly: Yeah, so it, when I first started, and I want to, I just, I have to clarify for, for my own self, my own sanity: it’s still, I’m still very much working on my doctoral thesis. I wish it was a was. I wish it was a –

Sarah: ‘Tis.

Molly: – thing that I have completed.

[Laughter]

Molly: It is a thing that is ongoing. But yeah, when I first kind of applied to the program, my focus was going to be on mystery YA, which I chose because it was so far afield from what I was familiar with and comfortable with, and I thought I should challenge myself.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: And I think if you talk to, certainly people in literature, if not all the humanities, they would say, No, you do what you’re passionate about! You’re going to be working on this so many hours a day. Don’t pick something as a mental exercise; do something that you want to read about and study about, you know, for hours and hours a day.

Sarah: Hours and hours and hours, yes.

Molly: Yeah, so I really focused on the creative part of my thesis first, which was the, my novel Thanks for Listening. So I, I wrote that as part of my doctoral thesis before it got published and realized that I wanted to make an ace protagonist, and that got me thinking about asexuality in YA literature. Currently on my kind of annotated bibliography I have thirty YA books with ace protagonists, and I realized that the biggest – I’m kind of going to narrow my scope a little bit –

Sarah: Yeah.

Molly: – that those, those books remain, those books informed it, but I’m going to focus on a much smaller list of about five to six books that have protagonists that are both asexual and aromantic, because that is much, much less common in YA literature. And act-, not what I wrote; my, my protagonist is not aromantic; is, you know, starting her first romantic relationship and is very excited about that, but it is much less common in YA to have in, in general a protagonist that is not involved in any kind of pursuing a relationship, has a crush out- – even, you know, asexual characters, mostly in YA, again, are interested in romantic relationships, so I’m going to be focusing on books where they’re aro and ace.

Sarah: Wow.

Molly: …Yeah.

Sarah: So my first thought when you said that you’ve compiled a list of books that have asexual characters: would you be willing to share the list with me so I could put it in the show notes? Or is that –

Molly: Oh yeah!

Sarah: – not allowed, since it’s part of your thesis research?

Molly: Ah, I, I guess I’ll double-check with my thesis advisor, but I, I think it should be fine. I will say, you know, what’s really interesting about, that I found really interesting during this process is at a certain point it kind of makes sense. You know, again, what I’ve been advised by my advisors is you kind of stop looking for new books, ‘cause you’re like, This is when I’ve conducted not my research as far as looking at analyzing, but compiling?

Sarah: Right.

Molly: So even, you know, my list kind of ends in 2023? And even, you know, the last two years, there’ve been so many ace books, so, you know, the list that I have is extensive, but because of, you know, recent titles in the last couple years, it’s not exhaustive.

Sarah: That’s very cool, though! What made this the topic that you were going to write about and research? Like, what was it about this topic that really drew you in?

Molly: I, so I teach writing YA at the college level, and, you know, I would say eighty percent of my students are very, very excited to write romance in some way, shape, or form, you know.

Sarah: Oh, that’s nice to hear! I’m glad to hear it!

Molly: Yeah! You know, they, some are fan-, more fantasy fans, and they want romance but not with dragons. With, with dragons in the background! [Laughs] And some are more interested in realism. But I will normally get one or two students every class that – and it will normally, you know, take them a couple classes to ask, you know, sort of nervously, do I have to put romance in this?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Molly: And sometimes it is because the students themselves are kind of on the ace spectrum, or they just are not interested in romance, or, you know, that’s, they want to try something new, and I understand why they would think that a YA book has to have a romantic plotline, just because when you think about the big ones, you know, it’s not just romance but it’s love triangles, right?

Sarah: It’s in there.

Molly: It’s the love triangle. In Twilight it’s the love triangle; in The Hunger Games – so, or, you know, the, the grand sweeping romance of The Fault in Our Stars. So I was interested in looking at books that might, you know, not focus on that, and by not focusing on romance I think it also gives a lot of room to put a lot of weight on other relationships: on friendships, on family relationships. One of the books that has an aro/ace character is Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger, which is a great fantasy book, and the character is asexual and aromantic, and I think the author did a really good job. It is, you know, the character says it explicitly like once or twice, but it’s not something that she’s conflicted about; it’s not something that she has angst about. The, the narrative is very interesting. There’s a murder mystery. She’s trying to figure out, she has supernatural powers, you know, how she wants to use these, how she can control these, but so much of the focus is on her family. You know, she’s very close with her parents. You know, at the beginning of the novel a loved one dies, and she’s trying to get justice for them. She has a best friend that she’s very close with. You know, she is part of kind of a larger, in ways she’s part of that friend’s family, and there’s just so much space. You know, there’s never a moment where she’s like, Oh, I don’t have a romantic partner, I don’t want a romantic partner; I’m going to be alone or not have a family or not have a purpose. So I, I appreciate that, that I think that’s an important thing for teenagers to realize, even if they’re not ace, right? Because I feel like so much angst when – I mean, there’s so many reasons to be, to be, and rightfully so, stressed out when you’re a teenager. But I think a lot of it comes from, you know, will someone ever be in love with me that I’m in love with? You know, a big part of what is shown to them is what adulthood has to be is you find a partner and you settle down and you get a house and maybe you get kids, and it’s not something that you can just make happen, again –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: – even if it’s something that you want to happen, so just showcasing in YA that you can have a lot of important relationships and, you know, love in your life without that I thought was important.

Sarah: Definitely important! Because there’s certainly, even still, in, in YA and in romance, a lot of heteronormativity, gender essentialism, and allocentrism, and there’s not a lot of room in most parts of society right now for deliberate and active and intentional messaging is, that there’s not just one way to be an adult? One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about is how as a cis woman I was more adult and I was taken more seriously when I graduated, and then when I got married I was taken more seriously; I was married. Then I had kids; suddenly, I was taken even more seriously, because I had achieved these external things, that these things had to happen together to fully self-actualize in, in the eyes of the world. And when you don’t feel the way that everyone else feels, like, I remember very clearly reading romances in the ‘80s and ‘90s where there was, like, cresting and waves and sparkles, and orgasms were described in all of these different astronomical ways, and I was like, Is that really what it’s like? There’s no way. Really? It’s very obviously the, the reason why you feel like something’s wrong, because so much has been presented to you about Here’s what’s normal, and if you don’t fit in that normal it’s very alienating.

Molly: Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah: You also mentioned characters developing and building deliberate connections in YA as part of your research and as part of your interest in your field of study. What are some of the ways that you have characters or you’ve seen characters building that deliberate connection? I’ve done other interviews with people who are writing and researching asexuality and demisexuality in romance. One of them, Jane Buehler, talked about how there are established steps for writing romance that other, other romance writers have said, you know, you have the meeting and then the, the initial curiosity and the attraction, all these things, and if you’re asexual or demisexual those don’t happen, so you have to build intimacy in other ways. And they’re working on their own, like, steps towards intimacy for asexual and demisexual characters, which I find extremely fascinating. What about you? What are some of the ways that you have seen or have written characters building connections and intimacy?

Molly: I mean, I think what’s interesting about writing YA, writing teenage characters, and I always like to say I don’t, I think very few things, you know, when I talk about YA or teen characters are exclusive to them? It’s just often heightened in a way that you don’t –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Molly: – find in adulthood? And so, you know, when I was writing my protagonist on Thanks for Listening, Mia, so much of the initial connection is you, her just seeing, you know, her romantic interest as a cool girl and being like, Oh, what does that mean, you know, to be cool? And Oh, cool girl’s interested in me; what does that mean about me? And just this idea that you’re constantly not – judging yourself or measuring yourself sounds like it always has a negative connotation, but really just figuring how you are fitting in being like, Oh, am I kind of like this person? Do I want to be more like this person or less? in figuring out yourself. So I think that is something that’s very heightened in high school –

Sarah: Oh yeah. [Laughs]

Molly: – and it helps to create those initial, initial connections and attractions. And I think something else that I was able to explore in mine that I think happens in a lot of YA is you will have this character who has had long-term friendships based on proximity, which doesn’t mean they’re not bad, it does not mean they can’t continue, but normally means, you know, towards the end of high school when that proximity’s going to end, it’s time for a re-evaluation, and whether that re-evaluation is You are still my best friend and we are going to take very deliberate steps to keep this friendship strong, or, Oh, maybe you were just my best friend because we were always in home room together, and we can go our separate ways. So, you know, as a new person comes in, whether they’re a new friend or romantic partner, it can highlight what was lacking in other friendships, and that will get your protagonist starting to ask, Oh, what do I want from the people I spend time with, in any capacity?

Sarah: And it’s a lot of work. Like, relationships of any kind require work and investment of time? And like you said, once that proximity ends, the easy part of getting together with them, because you have the same, you know, second or fifth period classes or whatever, or you have the same lunch break, that goes away, and you have to do the work, and part of that is learning how to do the work. Learning how to build and maintain a relationship. I mean, there’s a lot of adults that are working on that now. Like, that’s hard! Especially post COVID. We sort of, we lost all of our proximity and had to start over again in a lot of ways. That’s really hard.

In terms of the intimacy in the YAs that you’ve read and written, what are some ways that they have developed connections to each other? Do you have any, do you remember any examples from some of the books that you’ve been researching?

Molly: One of the ones that comes to mind is Loveless by Alice Oseman?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: Oseman wrote the Heartbreaker [Heartstopper] series, probably what they’re better known for, and that is an example. So the protagonist of Loveless realizes that she’s asexual and aromantic –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: – and really, I think, more so than almost any of the characters that I’ve seen in my research, panics. Just says I, you know, if I cannot have a romantic partner, I’m going to be alone. And, you know, not – slight, slight SPOILERS – has, has a roommate that she befriended, that begins with her going to college.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: And this roommate very deliberately, first of all, does a kind of romantic gesture but platonically? And says, you know, I have thought about how I want you to be in my life as an adult, and I’ve, you know, I hope you feel the same way, and you know, this is an allo character’s like, I want to get married, and I want to have kids, but that does not mean that I don’t want you to be a central part and, like, and here’s how!

Sarah: [Laughs] Yep.

Molly: And just this idea of being really deliberate about saying to a person not just, I want you in my life, but being, like, you know, our relationship hasn’t been mapped out for us –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: – in the same way that a romantic one is, so I have to think very deliberately about how we’re going to slot into each other’s lives, and I have, and here’s what I think. What do you think? Just doing that kind of mental work, I think, you know, creates a sense of intimacy.

Sarah: Definitely, and actually saying I want to have a relationship with you, even platonic, that’s taking a big emotional risk. Like, I was thinking –

Molly: Yeah.

Sarah: – when you were talking, like, Wow, if someone said that to me, I would be like, Oh! That’s really flattering! Yes, let’s make this, you know, let’s make this work. Like, that’s not a thing that you hear very often, but I can imagine how gratifying and what a, like, what a compliment!

Molly: You know, the YA author John Green, in a podcast, I don’t remember the context, but he –

Sarah: He’s done like a few, so it’s hard to remember which one.

Molly: [Laughs]

Sarah: Got it. Mm-hmm!

Molly: He was talking about his best friend, and he’s like, If there was some kind of, like, adult best friend ceremony, you know, I would definitely do it with him, and just this idea that, you know, still kind of grasping at straws of, you know, I know what the steps are to say to the world, like, this romantic relationship is progressing, and my level of commitment, involvement, but really, once you get past, like, the best friend keychain in third grade, there’s just not a lot of – and I was, I was always a person that was trying to look for those things, even as I got older. I, in high school, my two best friends, I made, like, matching charm bracelets. I’m like, We’ll take these to college. Like, this will be proof.

Sarah: Yeah.

Molly: Again, looking for those markers, pulling mostly from what I’d been shown about romantic relationships to be like, this is how you symbolize, like, we’re in this.

Sarah: Yeah. And so you have the external trappings, like a romantic relationship. You might have a wedding ring or an engagement ring or, you know, might have some sort of jewelry –

Molly: Right.

Sarah: – that is from them, or – and it’s interesting that you mention, like, the events. Right, like, if you’re, when you move in with somebody, maybe you get engaged, maybe you get married, maybe you elope, but, like, there, there are visible public markers for romantic relationships, but there aren’t as much for friendships.

Now I want to create like a whole set of, of, like, friendship ceremonies and friendship occasions, right?

Molly: And it’s often, I think, with friendships even the reverse, that, like, the, as you grow up, you know, you have your friends who are your roommates, and you move out, and you separate and go into, you know, your, your silos with your partners. I remember being, I never really watched Will & Grace?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: But kind of, you know, checked it out when there was the reboot and was reading the recaps, and I remember being really upset at the finale that it was shown as like this big thing of growth that not only, like, they, I feel – again, I’m, I’m putting words in the, the writers mouths – but that it seemed like these were such close friends, they lived together through adulthood, and so when they went off and began living with their partners and had their children, they stopped speaking. You know, ‘cause of a fight and it’s, you know, TV drama, but to me part of that was like, Well, they had such a strong adult friendship bond, and that’s very immature. So you have to, like –

Sarah: Yes.

Molly: – make this extreme thing of, yes, now they’re moving out into partners with children, and they’re stuck. They’re not going to talk to each other anymore, ‘cause they really, this is a weird thing they had, and now we have to make it normal. And I remember reading that and being very upset, being like, No! They can just be best friends! [Laughs]

Sarah: What a truly crappy ending! I didn’t –

Molly: But the very end, if I’m remembering this correctly, they do resume speaking because their children meet and start dating in college.

Sarah: Oh, for crying out loud.

Molly: And so they’re like, We’re going to be in-laws! Which, again, is like, oh, they can start talking when they’re in this still, like, normal situation. Like, in-laws talk! That’s fine! But then they, they raised hell, and they’re just living together and best friends again in the reboot, so.

Sarah: That is (a) immature and (b) what a cop-out.

Molly: Yeah.

Sarah: You mentioned that you teach writing YA lit and…for eight years now, which is so cool. And I know a lot has changed in the YA genre over the past, you know, five to ten years. What are some of the things that you’ve noticed changing about the genre?

Molly: I will say that I have not – I’m terrible at keeping up on fantasy and sci-fi –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: – which is such a big part of YA. And I always try to put in a couple fantasy and sci-fi titles, because I know my students really enjoy them, but I just, I have, I have a hard time with them. But I do think, I often think about how much YA has changed, not even the last five, ten years but, like, since I was a teenager?

Sarah: Yes!

Molly: And just, you know, the sophistication of the YA books that are coming out now versus the YA books, not, say, you know, there are some absolutely gorgeous books that came out when I was in high school that I still love: Looking for Alaska came out when I was in high school; Speak came out when I was in high school. But though I would say, especially something like Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, which is about, you know, sexual assault, a YA book that not just handled that, but also was a beautifully written piece of literature was, you know, kind of few and far between at the time, and now it is, it’s very common, you know, for that to be tackled in a very, you know, literary way, for lack of a better term. So I think that definitely has changed? Absolutely, queer representation.

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Molly: So I teach a YA class that’s specifically on queer YA, and we started by reading Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden, which I have great affection for, and – have, do you know this one…

Sarah: I don’t know this one. Tell me everything.

Molly: So it’s, you know, so hard, and I always try to prevent myself from saying like, this is the first, but this is certainly one of the first YA books with lesbian protagonists.

Sarah: Oh wow, it was published in 1982!

Molly: Yeah. And specifically, you know, the author would talk about how when she read books, you know, with specifically lesbian protagonists and they were together romantically, one of them had to die, or something terrible –

Sarah: Yes.

Molly: – had to happen to them, and she wanted to create one that didn’t hap-, that didn’t happen.

Sarah: Yes.

Molly: My students almost always do not connect with this text, and I completely understand why. The characters seem very young. So they’re both seniors in high school, they’re seventeen, and they read as like maybe modern thirteen-year-olds? But we talk about that. You know, I say, They don’t have the internet, they don’t have social media, they don’t have, they’re not kind of comparing themselves to adults. These two particular characters, obviously there’s a lot of pop culture in the ‘80s, but because both of them are kind of stereotypical, like, nerdy, studious, one is into architecture, you know, they’re not watching a lot of pop culture?

Sarah: Yeah.

Molly: You know, a really pivotal scene, they meet in the Cloisters, or the, yeah, the kind of tapestry area of the Met, and they love the, you know, unicorn tapestries, and they kind of play-act this kind of medieval thing, and this blows my students’ minds. They’re like, Are they eight? I’m just like, There wasn’t a lot to do! I don’t, I don’t know!

Sarah: Totally different time.

Molly: So that’s always interesting, and then we read the book that I remember from when I was a teenager, Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan, which is a really short book, it’s really great, and they are all really intrigued by that, because – are you familiar with this one at all?

Sarah: Oh yes!

Molly: Yeah. So just this idea that, you know, it seems at once this, like, queer utopia, but also they’re still dealing with homophobia, and some of it kind of, you know, the way that people, the teenagers are interested in, you know, experimenting with not just gender identity but gender expression –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: – and very comfortable being out seems, you know, very relatable to some students. What I always find the most interesting in my writing queer YA is, I have students from all different parts of the country, so some students, like,  will be reading a book that deals with homophobia, and they’re like, This is crazy! You know, and then one student’ll be like, No, this seems, this seems about right, or we’ll read one where the character really is completely embraced and it’s out, and some students’ll be like, Yeah, that sounds right, and some to, to be like, Why aren’t their parents more mad at them? So that there is this very big divide, depending on, you know, where they’re coming from.

Sarah: Gosh, that’s sad.

Molly: It is sad; in a weird way it is – I feel like when I was a teenager and reading those books, even though I, you know, I think where I grew up there wasn’t a ton of homophobia; that’s just kind of what I saw in media? And so I expected a baseline? I think what they’ve grown up, even, you know, wherever they’ve grown up in – they’ve seen a lot of depictions of characters and teenage characters being out and being accepted, so there’s this idea that that exists somewhere, even if they, you know, haven’t experienced it maybe until they get to college, so the divide, I see all the, as progress, because I think the, you know, group of students, they’re, like, out and accepted, totally normal, has increased, you know, since I was in high school.

Sarah: One of the things you said that resonated with me was the idea that, especially with Annie on My Mind, you mentioned that they read so young, and you mentioned that they’re not comparing themselves to adults, and they’re not on social media, so they’re not on camera all the time, and I think that’s a real dividing line in how we conceive of childhood right now. Do you have books on sort of both sides of that divide, where there is social media in some and there’s not in others?

Molly: The ones that I teach?

Sarah: Yeah.

Molly: Yeah, so a book that has remained on my syllabus for as long as I’ve been teaching is Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, and it’s set in the ‘80s, and my students have – so, I keep it because almost uniformly I’ve had very students, few students who do not love this book.

Sarah: Oh, that’s, that’s – isn’t it great when something is that long-lasting?

Molly: Yes. But it also, they all do have their, like, they seem – so they start – ‘cause it progresses – I believe they start at fifteen. And again, the students are like, They seem so young. Like, they’re out, you know, kind of like taking off their shoes in the street and just playing in a way that does read young. And I’m like, Well, what are they going to do? Again, these two characters, for various reasons, are not, you know, watching a lot of movies or TV, at least that we see. They don’t have social media, and they, I think the most extreme thing – and this is true, you know, to a certain extent in Annie, Annie on My Mind – the two characters, before they meet each other, don’t have a lot of friends.

Sarah: Yeah.

Molly: So the idea that they’re not even really comparing each other to their peers –

Sarah: Yeah.

Molly: – you know, just makes them feel a little young.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: And then, I don’t know that it’s social media or anything that makes them, the book that comes to mind, I think it’s just because it’s one of the more recent titles on my syllabus is Cemetery Boys?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: And that one, I think the characters seem very mature because they have a lot of responsibilities.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: You know, one of the characters is kind of a de facto leader of a group of teens and younger teens who are all, you know, kind of not supported by family for various reasons. And then the protagonist is trying to assert themselves in this kind of family hierarchy. The, they’re trans, and the magic in their family line, how it expresses or how it’s meant to express itself is gendered? So the family, even the family members that are kind of accepting of his gender identity, it’s like, Well, you know, that’s not how you were born, so that’s not how the magic is going to express. So the fact that he is really fighting not just to be accepted as who he is kind of in the larger world but in the fantastical world of his family and his family power. So they have a lot riding on them?

You know, in Annie on My Mind and Aristotle and Dante, all those, the four main characters between those two novels are very much dealing with, you know, realizing who they are and kind of simultaneously almost recognizing that they are queer and also that, you know, there’s a lot of prejudice –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: – against queer people, especially in the ‘80s, which I don’t ever once say, like, And other than that they’ve got nothing to do with that!

Sarah: Yeah, everything’s…

Molly: …is an enormous thing, but they are, you know, they have supportive parents, they are, you know, not in any kind of economic strife, so they, you know, beyond figuring out who they are in the world and how they’ll be accepted, they’re, they’re going to school and they don’t have to – so often in YA, especially, I think, in modern YA, a teenager is asked to do really adult things that they have to –

Sarah: That is so true, especially in fantasy.

Molly: So fantasy, you know, they have to save the world, but even realism, you know, because of problems with their family, they’re raising younger siblings –

Sarah: Yes.

Molly: – or even, even if it’s just for themselves, you know, if they don’t get the scholarship, they’re not going to college and they can’t see, you know, what’s going to be next for them. Or even, you know, it could be not economics at all, and it’s pressure they put on themselves, right. If they do not get the lead in the play, then that’s the end of their career; they will never have their dream. So just this idea that, you know, for some characters, I think they can read as young when they’re not, they don’t have that enormous pressure on themselves. Which I, I often, when I’m, you know, talking about characters in class, I’ll say something that’s like, Oh, you know, this isn’t healthy in real life. If these characters were real teenagers, like, we’d be trying to get them help. It’s interesting! It’s interesting in the book, so let’s talk about that, but this isn’t, this isn’t healthy in real life. [Laughs]

Sarah: You’re, yes. I’m aware of some YA, but it’s not the area in which I’m fluent, and to have you look at it not only critically but also academically in terms of how you’re going to teach it, that’s a whole other level of looking at a book.

Would you be able to share some of the other books that are on your syllabi?

Molly: One of the ones that, again, is a, a student favorite is a graphic novel YA, Nimona, that just got made into the –

Sarah: Yes!

Molly: – animated movie? Students love that one.

Sarah: Yeah, Nimona was a very prop-, popular book. Nimona and The Prince and the Dressmaker.

Molly: Yes. I’m very, I, I don’t, I haven’t heard any updates, but I was very excited; that one, the last I heard, is getting turned into a musical.

Sarah: Oh! Wow, that’s perfect!

Molly: Yeah, so.

Sarah: That’s extremely perfect! I also think Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe was a movie recently, wasn’t it?

Molly: Yeah, yeah, it was, and also, even though the book – oh God, I think the book’s over a decade old – just a couple years ago the sequel came out, that that was exciting.

Another one I teach in my queer YA writing is If I Was Your Girl? Which, that one, you know, it’s a very well written book, I like it a lot, but one of the reasons I like to teach it is there is an author’s note at the end where the author basically explains the protagonist is a trans young woman and the author’s like, I made certain choices about how this character, how quickly she was able to medically transition, you know, all these things that aren’t necessarily realistic? Because I wanted to make sure readers and cis readers, you know, were able to, you know, see her as a girl, and just kind of that, part of what the author wanted to do was of course speak to trans readers, you know, to bring them, you know, a character that they could relate to, but that she had a goal of, you know, talking to cis readers as well –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: – kind of, you know, expand understanding, you know, ultimately, hopefully, expand empathy, and it just, I think, is a really important conversation to be had, ‘cause I always tell my students, Listen, you know, if you are writing from a specific perspective based on your identity? You don’t have to explain it to people outside that identity. If you’re just like, you know, This is my book about being, you know, a person of color, you know, specific culture, and I don’t care if this speaks to white readers, I’m like, That is fine! And that is a choice you can make, or if you’re like, I really want people outside of my identity or outside my community to learn and understand and actually, I see this piece of fiction as a piece of education, that’s fine too! Or if somewhere in between, but it is something that you should think about –

Sarah: Yes.

Molly: – you know, before and as you’re writing.

Sarah: Yes. And also, I, I can understand compressing the timeline of transition to increase the impact. And, like, if a random YA fantasy heroine can suddenly be equipped with full-on skills with three different swords, we can compress the timeline of transition. Like, it’s fine. [Laughs]

So are you mostly teaching queer YA at this point?

Molly: No. So that’s, that’s one class I teach sometimes in the spring at NYU, and every fall I teach just the general YA class at –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: – SVA and NYU, and then I’m also teaching, you know, general kind of English comp. I teach a class on creative journaling at SVA, which is fun. So just a wide variety of writing classes.

Sarah: That’s cool! How do you, what is on your syllabus for creative journali-, journaling? I almost said creative journalism. We have enough of that; we don’t need more. [Laughs]

Molly: So that, that is one, that is a class that I inherited, so I took some ideas from the teacher who designed it, but we look at the journal of Keith Haring, which is always fun, ‘cause Keith Haring actually graduated from SVA, so I always get to tell students, like, Hey, he was, you know, he sat right here where you are. We look at the journal of Kurt Cobain; that’s also published. David Sedaris has a bunch of journals out, so we look at his. Sylvia Plath’s journal is really interesting. She writes not just very lyrically, but a lot of her writing is about kind of her successes and failures as a writer. Like, there’ll just be an entry that’s like, They rejected all my poems. I don’t know what to do. Am I a writer? And then like two pages it’ll be like The New Yorker’s publishing both my poems! It’s an awesome day! And then there’ll be a journal entry on, like, soup. And, like, I had some good soup today.

Sarah: Look, soup and publishing are very important! [Laughs] I wrote about soup. I mean, I would write about soup.

So with your classes, your, is, it’s partly exploring the genre as in exploring the form of writing, but also giving the students the tools and opportunity to write their own, as well. Yeah?

Molly: Yeah, in the, in the writing YA, they write about thirty pages of a novel-in-progress, and then they do a second draft of that as well. So it’s, normally they write fifteen pages, then they write a second draft of those fifteen pages, and then they write the next kind of chronological fifteen pages, and then another draft of that.

Sarah: That’s very cool. Now, I would love to know more about your book Thanks for Listening, because you wrote about the advice friend, and I myself am the advice friend, so I read the cover copy and was like, Oh crap! [Laughs] I know this story! Please tell me more about your book.

Molly: Yeah, so Thanks for Listening is about Mia. So she’s a senior in high school, she’s been doing drama, stage crew for kind of her whole high school life, and now she’s the stage manager. She’s a senior, and she feels like all the people, even though you’re supposed to listen to the stage manager, she feels that no one listens to her, no one takes her advice. She has a friend who is an actress and another best friend who’s a musician; she feels they don’t take her advice. Her, she’s very close with her brother; he doesn’t take her advice. So she’s just very frustrated. So one night she’s kind of scrolling through a TikTok equivalent and sees someone who is anonymous, kind of has a filter on, giving what she thinks is terrible advice, and all the comments are like, So true, so wise! And she’s like, Oh! I can do better advice than this person.

So she starts an anonymous advice account and gets her older cousin, who’s a bit of a computer wiz to work some algorithmic magic so even though, you know, her account doesn’t have any followers, her, people in her close proximity, so people in her school district start getting it. So her friends and people in drama start sending her questions, but they don’t know it’s her, and they, they all try to, you know, put filters, but because she is such an observant person and she’s kind of like a quiet person who’s been watching, they all kind of have tells which, how they phrase something or their gestures. So she basically knows who every person is who’s asking for advice, and so she kind of becomes a bit of a puppet master ‘cause she, she knows who they are, but they don’t know who she is?

And also at the same time a new girl comes to school who was previously at the music academy in their town, and she starts her first romantic relationship, and she is ace, so she kind of wonders what, what does that mean? How do I navigate this? You know, will this, this – so, you know, the, the person who she starts a relationship with is not ace and actually, it’s kind of a plot point that she is quite sexually experienced, and so Mia’s like, Oh my God, she’s going to have these expectations that I’m never going to be able to meet! So that is a journey that she has to go on as well.

Sarah: I think it’s so interesting that you are playing with the fact that for anyone who’s been the advice friend, you give people good advice and they don’t listen, but if someone they don’t know as well gives them the exact same advice, they’re like, Wow! Did you hear what this per- – I, I do this to my husband all the time. Like, he’ll tell me something like, You know, you should do this, and Oh, that’s interesting. And like two weeks later: Do you know somebody else just told me I should do this? That’s a really good idea! And they’re like, I said that too. So it goes, it goes both ways. But that happens to me all of the time, and there is a power in anony-, in anonymity. I’m having such trouble making words today.

Molly: So that, no one can say that word.

Sarah: Right?

Molly: There’s, there’s too many syllables –

Sarah: Right!

Molly: – and they all sound like each other. [Laughs]

Sarah: I’m having word talking trouble today, which is great. But the power of being an unknown advice-giver who has intimate knowledge of these people that they don’t know? Like, that is some big power.

So I always ask this question: what books are you reading right now that you would like to tell people about?

Molly: So, since it is the end of my semester, I’m mostly reading the books that I have been reading for class that I reread. I try to reread all the books, you know, to learn something new. And one I love that I’ve been teaching for a couple semesters now is Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also a Star? Which I’m always so impressed, by the way, first of all, that, you know, she switches back and forth between the main characters’ perspectives, but she weaves in so many other stories, you know, so many of the little mini-essays.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: They love that.

And then I just finished reading The Best American Short Stories for last year? And there’s one called “Mall of America” that has been really staying with me about, it’s told from the perspective of, like, an AI helper? Kind of an AI worker at the mall who befriends this elderly man who starts going to the mall? And I just found it very – I am someone who does not like the idea of – I mean, I think almost all writers and artists do not like the idea of AI that is destroying the environment and coming for our jobs, but I, it makes me very nervous. I don’t even like, in our neighborhood now they have the little delivery robots?

Sarah: Oh, creepy!

Molly: Yep, and I don’t –

Sarah: Creepy, creepy, creepy!

Molly: Like, every time I see them on the street I’m like, No! I, I don’t accept this! [Laughs] But it was a very, you know, the short story was a very interesting take on, you know, artificial intelligence, you know, developing a kind of humanity –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Molly: – that I found very interesting.

Sarah: Where can people find you if you wish to be found?

Molly: Yeah! On Instagram, my handle is @Mollylikethedog, because Molly is one of the top dog names in America. Most people know a dog named Molly, I have found much more common than knowing a human named Molly.

Sarah: Holy crap! [Laughs] I did not know that!

Molly: It’s not, it’s up – so again, I, I will have to check. I know that, you know, I’m sure dog names, the top change just like human names –

Sarah: Of course.

Molly: – but when I, when I first encountered this, I think I was in grad school, and it was – but what hasn’t changed, again, even if those rankings have changed, is I have so often, you know, met people and be like, Oh! My dog’s name is Molly! I’m like, Yeah, that’s, that sounds about right.

Sarah: Story, story checks out! Yep. Mm-hmm. @Mollylikethedog; that’s very funny. And what, is your website Molly Horan?

Molly: Very horrifyingly embarrassingly, I still do not have a website. It is the perpetual thing on my to-do list, but…

Sarah: I have a couple of those!

Molly: – people to find my book, so, you know, Thanks for Listening, or my first YA novel Epically Earnest, which is a YA retelling of The Importance of Being Earnest. Both should be on Bookshop.org, and they’re on Amazon, but please do not find them on Amazon. [Laughs]

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you very much to Molly Horan for talking with me and sharing so many different books and perspectives. I will have links, of course, to everything in the show notes; never fear.

As always, I end with a terrible joke. This joke comes from Brewmaster730.

What is the difference between losing your khakis in Dallas versus Boston?

Give up? What’s the difference between losing your khakis in Dallas versus Boston?

Well, if you lose your khakis in Dallas it means you can’t find your pants, but if you lose your khakis in Boston it means you can’t staht your cah.

[Laughs] All the Boston people are like, Oh, fuck’s sake. [Laughs more] I’m sorry; this one really got me.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the – [still laughing] – let me try that again. [Clears throat] Serious podcaster – nope, nope, nope, not serious. [Laughs again] On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend; we’ll see you back here next week! And in the words of my favorite retired podcast Friendshipping – if you haven’t listened, it’s a great show – thank you for listening; you’re welcome for talking!

[end of music]