E. Lockhart

Author of The Boyfriend List, The Boy Book, and Fly on the Wall, Dramarama, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and How to Be Bad.

I am the author of two books about Ruby Oliver -- The Boyfriend List and The Boy Book -- plus Fly on the Wall, Dramarama and two books for Spring 2008: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and How to Be Bad. My books have been translated into 9 foreign languages.

I have had nine official boyfriends, if you count the boy who asked me to go with him at a 7th grade dance and then basically never talked to me again. I have never been on a sports team of any kind and got excused from gym class by going to ballet lessons. I have a tattoo, cut my own hair, and have worn the same perfume since high school (Kiehl's Chinese Flowers). In my office is a photo of a particularly fat bull dog, an official business card from “Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective”, and the 1920s flapper dress I wore to the prom.

For more information, please visit the FAQ page.

Twenty-one things you don't know about me, even if you've read through this whole website:

1. I have wanted to be a writer since I was eight years old.
2. I wrote two novels in third grade.
3. I was the fastest typist in my 8th-grade typing class. We learned on manual typewriters.
4. Now I write everything on computer, sometimes with my eyes closed.
5. Favorite lipstick: Bobbi Brown Cherry.
6. Movie star crushes: Ben Chaplin. Daniel Craig. Taye Diggs.
7. First car: a white 1964 Volvo with a push-button starter.
8. I make a lot of home movies.
9. I am a vegetarian and for a number of years ate a vegan diet (no animal products whatsoever) because I object to the way animals are treated in the meat and dairy industries. I will probably go back to eating vegan again someday, but for now:
10. My favorite ice cream is Häagen Dazs dolce de leche.
11. I swam with sting-rays once.
12. I like wax museums.
13. I used to like roller coasters, but now I'm scared of them. Even so:
14. I love amusement parks. My favorite ride of all time is Pirates of the Caribbean.
15. I used to cry after my fiction writing class in college, because the criticism was so harsh.
16. The teacher of that class was so bored by my work he admitted to me he didn't even read the final drafts of my stories.
17. I have never kept a journal for more than a couple days. I like to write for an audience, even if it's only an imaginary one.
18. My advice to aspiring writers: read, read, read. Read the great novelists, especially. Try Great Expectations. Pride and Prejudice. Jane Eyre.
19. More (contradictory!) advice: follow your reading bliss. Gnaw your way through the local library's sci-fi or romance collection, if that's what does it for you.
20. I am difficult to recognize. Despite a large and unusual tattoo, people often forget they've met me, or tell me I look very different from the last time they saw me.
21. My first name was the most popular name for American baby girls in the year 2003.

(this list is an idea I got from a very cool interview with Libba Bray, author of A Great and Terrible Beauty)