Ms. Brightside

It’s not every day that an author asks you to sign a copy of a book she wrote.

Imagine my surprise when author Jennifer Niven handed me a Sharpie and asked me to write inside her copy of All the Bright Places. The request somehow made me feel important, like I was part of an exclusive club for people she deemed worthy.   

When I flipped open the copy (which she explains is her second one, since the original was already filled up), I saw that many of the pages were already covered in sweet notes from readers. It was then that I realized that she had made all of these people feel special in some way, too. In that same way, her books have shed light on an issue that is often ignored: mental illness.

Mental illness has become less of a taboo topic in Young Adult novels, and Jennifer is glad that All the Bright Places has helped broaden the discussion. After all, she wrote the book as a way to fight the stigma against depression and to make readers feel that they matter, which is something that I was able to experience firsthand.

Her upcoming book Holding Up the Universe (out this October) is told through the point of view of two protagonists with wildly different backgrounds and issues — one has prosopagnosia, or face blindness, and the other struggles with obesity.

Young STAR got to sit down with Jennifer to discuss the playlists she has for her characters Finch and Violet, and some exclusive details about the inspiration for her new book.

YOUNG STAR: Hi, Jennifer! It’s great that you’re here. You have a lot of Filipino fans on Twitter.

Hands up: Jennifer Niven asked her fans to sign her personal copy of her book All the Bright Places.

JENNIFER NIVEN: Oh my gosh, I know. I love, love, love them. I’m so excited to be here because I’ve been dreaming about being here for the longest time, and I can’t wait to meet everyone at the signings.

In an article that came out about your new book, Holding Up the Universe, you mentioned how the idea came from meeting so many different kinds of people. Did that come from your book signings around the world?

It did, it really did. And also just hearing from fans and readers from all over the world just having wonderful emails and messages from them and meeting all of them in person. And just seeing the impact that All the Bright Places made just blows me away. Hearing them say, “It feels so good to know that I’m not alone, it feels so good to feel like I matter.” I think, “Oh my gosh, someone needs to tell you that every day.” Because these are amazing people, and so I wanted to do something that was kind of a love letter in that way. “You are wanted, you are loved, and you are necessary.”

What made you decide to pick prosopagnosia as a condition to write about?

I was so interested because I have two family members who have prosopagnosia, and they have varying degrees of it. I was so fascinated by how they see people and the fact that how they “learn” people is who they are on the inside, and not who they are on the outside. And that, to me, is the way we should be seeing everyone. So I thought, “I’d love to have a character who does that.” He learns people by how sweet they are, or what they do for others. And my female character’s history is that she was very overweight, and she’s still overweight. But that’s not her issue, really. Her issue is that she’s coming back to school for the first time in years and she’s trying to figure out who she is and where she’s gonna fit in that world. It was really challenging to write these two totally new characters because Violet and Finch were still living in my head because I’ve been touring with them and talking about them all the time, but once I got into them, I just loved writing them.

It’s great how the inspiration comes from your own life.

Absolutely. So much of my writing comes from me, my life, experiences that I’ve had. And it definitely rings true in Holding Up the Universe too: Jack with the face blindness or prosopagnosia, and people I know who have it who are very dear to me. And then Libby. I’ve struggled with weight issues, I’ve got family members who continually struggle with it. I have family members who have dealt with the same things Libby has dealt with, and I feel like we all deal with how we see ourselves and how others see us. I think we can all relate to that too. And in Libby, there’s loss, and I’ve dealt with loss. There’s lots of pieces of me in all my books.

* * *

All the Bright Places is available at National Bookstore. Holding Up the Universe will be available in October.