McCafferty, Megan

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Megan McCafferty

Personal

Born in Bayville, NJ; married; children: a son. Education: Graduated from Columbia University (with honors).

Addresses

Home—NJ. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. E-mail—[email protected].

Career

Writer. Former editor for magazines, including Cosmopolitan, YM, and Fitness.

Awards, Honors

Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers and Popular Paperback lists, American Library Association (ALA), Best Book, Ottawa Sun, Book for the Teen Age, New York Public Library, 2001, all for Sloppy Firsts; Booklist Editor's Pick for one of the best novels of 2003, for Second Helpings.

Writings

Sloppy Firsts, Crown (New York, NY), 2001.

Second Helpings, Three Rivers Press (New York, NY), 2003.

(Editor) Sixteen: Stories about That Sweet and Bitter Birthday, Three Rivers Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Author of You Think Your Life Is Crazy, serialized online by Twist, and The Annabele Chronicles, serialized online by Elle. Contributor to periodicals (sometimes as Megan Fitzmorris McCafferty), including Details, Glamour, Maxim, and Seventeen.

Adaptations

Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings were optioned for films by Madonna's production company, Maverick Entertainment.

Work in Progress

The third Jessica Darling novel, working title, Charmed Thirds; a novel about a singer in a wedding band.

Sidelights

The world of teenager Jessica Darling is circumscribed by parents who are utterly clueless, an older sister who marries and becomes pregnant—much to Jessica's dismay and wonder, the loss of a best friend, a churning attraction to mysterious Marcus Flutie, and the dangerous and sometimes hilarious society of the girls at her Pineville, New Jersey, high school. Jessica is an insightful and sometimes obsessively observant narrator of all of these situations in two novels by Megan McCafferty, a former magazine editor turned author. McCafferty introduces Jessica in the debut novel, Sloppy Friends, extends the fun in the 2003 sequel, Second Helpings, and continues to work on the angst-ridden teen in a planned third volume. McCafferty has also written a prequel short story about Jessica, "Fifteen Going On. . . ," included in a collection of stories she edited, Sixteen: Stories about That Sweet and Bitter Birthday. On her Web site, McCafferty deals with the usual question about how close she is writing to real life. According to McCafferty, none of the events in her two novels actually happened the way she depicts them. However, she also noted, "there isn't one word that wasn't somehow inspired [by] real life." McCafferty further explained, "The great thing about fiction is that you can start off by telling the truth, then start making stuff up like crazy whenever you feel like it. That's exactly what I did. The truth is, I wish I had been more like Jessica back in the day. She is way more ballsy than I ever was."

A New Jersey Girl

Born Megan Fitzmorris, McCafferty—like her protagonist—grew up in a small town along the Jersey Shore. In McCafferty's case, the town is Bayville, New Jersey. Instead of an older sister as in the books, however, she has two brothers. As she noted on her Web site, she wanted to be a writer "for as long as I can remember." As a first grader, she filled a writing notebook given to her by her teacher. She also demonstrated stage presence, soloing as a singer in the first-grade pageant. "Thus, writer or singer were the only two jobs I've every considered," McCafferty commented, "neither of which could be considered practical career paths." Favorite books for the budding writer included Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. After first reading that book, she dreamed of finding a female narrator who would move her as much as Salinger's Holden Caulfield. Moody as a high school student, McCafferty busied herself with extracurricular activities, taking part in school theatricals, the school newspaper and literary magazine, the student council, and track and cross-country.

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After graduation from Columbia University, McCafferty wrote for magazines as a freelancer under the name Megan Fitzmorris McCafferty. Placing her work in glossy journals, including Glamour, Details, Seventeen, and Cosmopolitan, she produced articles for and about young women. For example, writing for Cosmopolitan, she penned "Take Your Climax to the Max," a sex primer for women. Writing for that same magazine, she also produced "Hollywood Starve Wars," an exploration of the thinness obsession among Hollywood starlets and much of the rest of American society. As she noted on her Web site, some of these articles now are "really embarrassing." Later she became senior editor at several magazines, and placed fiction in Elle, Twist, and Seventeen, the last of which published "True Blue," a tale which McCafferty, in a Seventeen interview, described as "one of those relationships where . . . you know it's not healthy but you do it anyway." Ultimately, however, her desire to find a female protagonist a la Caulfield got the better of her. Unable to discover one in other people's fiction, she decided to write her own, hoping, as she noted on her Web site, to create a "contemporary coming-of age story that transcended the teen-angst genre and appealed to readers of all ages." She wanted to get close to what for her was the reality of high school years.

Enter Jessica Darling

McCafferty's first novel, Sloppy Firsts, appeared in 2001 and relates—in sometimes humorous detail—the emotional hardships of a teenage girl. The novel's heroine, Jessica Darling, falls into confusion and despair after her best friend, Hope Weaver, moves away from Pineville, New Jersey, following her brother's death from a drug overdose, and leaves Jessica to fend for herself in a world seemingly full of teenage girls preoccupied with shopping and the opposite sex. While attempting to fathom the desires of her peers, Jessica also contends with her father, who demonstrates a bizarre fascination with Jessica's track team, and her mother, who shows an equally bewildering enthusiasm for the pending wedding of Jessica's older sister, Bethany. And serving as a basso continuo to these other concerns is also Jessica's growing affection for Marcus Flutie, an intelligent and somewhat mysterious boy who is destined to break her heart. All of this is related in a humorous and sometimes poignant journal-entry format that charmed critics and readers alike.

Named to several reading lists, Sloppy Firsts was praised by reviewers in journals from Voice of Youth Advocates to Cosmopolitan. Rachel Mulligan, writing for BookReview.com, noted that McCafferty's book "is to novels what Clueless was to movies: a fresh look at the overdone subject of high school." Mulligan went on to note that McCafferty, eschewing "cliches or sappiness . . . manages to pull on the reader's heart." Similarly, a reviewer for Kiwibox.com found that "McCafferty's writing is truly riveting—you'll not be able to put this book down."

McCafferty's fans had to wait two years for their next Jessica installment, Second Helpings, in which the teen has moved on to her final year at Pineville High and is experiencing a serious case of senioritis. Jessica, however, faces many of the same dilemmas as she did in her first outing. Hope is still cut off from her, living in a distant state and Marcus continues to be mysterious and very appealing, even

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though he broke her heart in the first book. She is hopeful that Len Levy, her competitor for class valedictorian, might be the one to make her forget Marcus. Jessica continues to be a member of the Clueless Crew at school with only Bridget, a movie star in the making, as a confidante. She cannot seem to escape this social niche, even though she does make an effort at losing her "brainiac" image, coming across vapid and shallow as school begins in her senior year. However, she ultimately goes back to her more intelligent and insightful role. Sister Bethany is beginning to show signs of her pregnancy, and added to these woes is the fact that graduation is around the corner and her parents have turned their attention to the appropriate college for her. Jessica wants to go to Columbia University; though after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York, her parents are not keen on the idea.

Dubbing Jessica a "lovably cynical heroine" in a Booklist review, Kristine Huntley further noted that she makes a "smart, tentative, and funny" narrator of the "competitive, gossipy high school world." A contributor for Publishers Weekly called Second Helpings a "hilarious, candid sequel to Sloppy Firsts." The same reviewer further commented that, while the "material is typical teen fare. . . , Jessica is a captivating, intelligent, acidly funny . . . narrator." Similarly, a critic for Kirkus Reviews, felt that Jessica "is one of the more endearing offspring of these post-Bridget Jones Years." The same writer noted that events in Jessica's life "are tossed across the page with breezy bravado," and that author McCafferty "has the post-'90s teenage mindset down to a tee." For Cara Nissman, writing in the Boston Herald, McCafferty managed to delve more deeply into character than other similar writers. "Unlike in many of books of the teenage-angst genre," Nissman wrote, "the qualities of the characters in this tale are more than skin deep." Nissman also praised the "hilariously sardonic diary entries with cutting descriptions." And a contributor for Booklist likewise commended the "wry comical insight" of this second novel.

If you enjoy the works of Megan McCafferty

If you enjoy the works of Megan McCafferty, you might want to check out the following books:

Ann Brashares, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, 2001.

Cathy Hopkins, Mates, Dates, and Inflatable Bras, 2001.

Carolyn Mackler, The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, 2003.

Sonya Sones, What My Mother Doesn't Know, 2001.

McCafferty is married and has one son, providing a domestic life that keeps her busy. In addition to her writing schedule, she also conducts writing workshops at libraries and school, sharing her enthusiasm for the printed word with hopeful young writers. "Start writing and don't stop," she advises such prospective writers on her author's Web site. "The only way to find your unique voice is to practice, practice, practice." She also counsels young writers not to be too hard on themselves and to allow themselves to ramble and experiment. "Today's babble could be tomorrow's book."