I really had to barrel though that and be like, “whatever I don’t care.” And then it turned out it wasn’t true, most lesbians aren’t like that. Then I found people in 2016 who were like, “bisexuality’s valid and you’re totally fine.” And I was like, “ WHAT?” I was used to saying, “I can’t hang out in these spaces, lesbians don’t like me,” which is sad. As a bisexual, I remember lesbians shutting me out, or they’d talk in front of me about going to lesbian night at the bar and they wouldn’t invite me.
I didn’t have close queer friends - women, I had gay guy friends - but I didn’t have women friends until like four years ago.īefore that, even in college, I wasn’t that close with other queer women. Raskin: It definitely brought back memories of insecurity and not being able to walk through the world with confidence … it’s a little sad to know that the younger version of your wasn’t as strong as she could have been.ĭoes queerness complicate life after college, or open doors?ĭunn: I took a long time to find a queer community, which I think Gen is struggling with, too. I always joke, “if I didn’t meet Allison, would I be dead?” ĭid writing the book open up any memories you hadn’t thought about in a while? Allison was a little but of an influence toward, “hey maybe this isn’t so great.” And that influence has carried on to today. When we did meet I was very similar to Gen - I was a mess and hooking up with inappropriate people and way more party-heavy. These girls are 22, and Allison and I didn’t meet until Allison was 24 and I was 25. But when you’re younger, you need those connections to bounce things off someone.ĭunn: It’s definitely similar to how our friendship was. As I’ve grown older, I can experience something and not immediately have to call another person and tell them about it. Raskin: Ava’s character is very heavily dependent on Gen in a way that I, at 30 years old, am not. Were there elements you felt strongly about including in the book?ĭunn: The STI storyline is something we really wanted to focus on.ĭunn: I was a journalist, mostly in high school, and I had the experience of not having a lot of queer community around. It makes it more intimate… It gives them room to be more flawed - in a private conversation with your friend, you’re going to be a little darker and a little shittier than if you were saying something publicly.
#Allison raskin young series#
Why write the book as a series of messages?ĭunn: I think part of it is you’re hearing directly from them so they’re unreliable narrators. We maybe should have outlined, but we didn’t! A lot of it was doing things in the moment that made us laugh. For a lot of the book we had a Google doc open and both typed in it.ĭunn: We knew some of the plot points we wanted to hit. We didn’t divide it up by character or anything.
Raskin: It’s more standard than you might think. What was your writing process for the book? We jumped ahead to a milestone where friendships can either fade away or get stronger. Raskin: We had a great time with I Hate Everyone but You, and to us it felt like the story of those characters wasn’t over because it was the story of their friendship and their friendship wasn’t over.
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