Poured Over: David Levithan on Boy Meets Boy

“I was very, very unintentionally smart in that I started it as a short story, I genuinely believed it was a short story, which was good, because if I hadn’t sat down and said, I’m now going to write my first novel I’d probably still be working on but because it was a short story that got longer and became a long story, and then became a novella. And then like, Oh, I’m writing the book that I want in the world, both as a person and as an editor.” David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy is one of the most charming rom-coms we’ve ever read, and David joins us on the show to talk about his development as a writer and editor, the power of story, his creative process, his writing partnerships with Rachel Cohn (Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares) and others, his literary influences, Heartstopper, what he’s learned from his readers and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end the show with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and his guest bookseller, Rhys.

Featured Books:

Boy Meets Boy (B&N Exclusive Edition) by David Levithan

Every Day by David Levithan

Answers in the Pages by David Levithan

The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.

Check out our exclusive B&N Reads guest post from David Levithan.

Full transcript for this episode of Poured Over:

B&N: I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and I’m so excited that David Levithan is here today, a lot of you might know him as a writer, some of you might know him as an editor. And we’re gonna have a really big conversation about both of those things, but Boy Meets Boy was originally published in 2003.

David Levithan: You know, God have the years passed.

B&N: I thought it was … 2003. So here’s the thing, you were really ahead of your time with this book. And it is charming, and it is smart. And it’s lovely. And these kids are in a lot of ways really average, but can you just set up Boy Meets Boy, for the few listeners who might not have had a chance to experience this book yet.

DL: It’s basically a dippy, happy, romantic comedy about a boy named Paul who is living in a town where there is absolutely nothing even remotely wrong with being gay. In fact, it is quite celebrated. And he has a best friend Tony, who lives in to the town next door where it is more not celebrated and more of an issue. And Paul meets a boy and as the title attests, and suddenly is thrown both into love dilemmas, but also is trying to help Tony, sort of get to the more accepting place that Paul already is that.

B&N: I love these characters. I love these kids. I even love the dance they put on. I don’t really want to spoil it. It’s also a very quick read. But adults, if you have not read this book, go out and read this book. This is not just for the short set, but part of why I bring it up is we have this exclusive edition. But also it’s just a very nice world that we’re not quite at yet. I mean, essentially, you wrote the book you wanted as a reader, you wrote the book you wanted as an editor. Yeah, you wrote a book that people needed. And it started as a story you wrote for friends on Valentine’s Day, which I find utterly charming. Can we talk about what brought that on? I mean, this is almost 200 pages, this is not something you just sort of knock out on a Thursday.

DL: Well, I mean, I was very, very unintentionally smart in that I started it as a short story, I genuinely believed it was a short story, which was good, because if I hadn’t sat down and said, I’m now going to write my first novel I’d probably still be working on it, but because it was a short story that got longer and became a long story, and then became a novella. And then like, Oh, I’m writing the book that I want in the world, both as a person and as an editor. That’s really how it began. And I did have this tradition and still do 30 something years later, that starting in high school every year for Valentine’s Day, I write a story for my friends as a way of reclaiming it not just for couples, it’s not just about romantic love, it can be all kinds of love. Again, the year that I wrote, Boy Meets Boy, it started as a short story, and then just got longer and longer. And it really began. It was a conversation I had with my best friend from high schools other best friend, his name was Rodney and we met and one night we were talking about our experiences of being gay. And whereas I’m from a liberal family in New Jersey, had a gay uncle, it was never really a question. I never felt a deep shame. He was from a very religious household in the Midwest and had had to come up against a lot of resistance and a lot of shame to his identity to the point that he moved away. And so the book is really about Paul is really coming from my perspective. But Tony is really coming from Rodney’s perspective. And it’s about sort of how do you make a more inclusive place? How do you get the people who are facing the resistance and shame to understand that those are things that are being put upon them, they’re not things that are natural to them.

B&N: You have always worked in, essentially what’s called children’s publishing, but I mean, you’re writing for young adults, you’re editing for young adults. I love the fact that you’ve also ghost written Star Wars projects, which I didn’t know about until very recently. I mean, you really are a book guy. This is what you do. It is always what you’ve done. You have written movie tie-ins to like for things that I didn’t even know had movie tie ins for that. And it’s really wonderful to see because also, we’re gonna really focus obviously, on the main parts of your work, but how did you end up in this piece of the business?

DL: The editorial job came first I started scholastic as an intern when I was 19 years old. There was a listing in my career library back at my college back when the career library had binders with three hole punched listings. I mean, it’s it’s a go to career days, we’re talking to people today. And they’re just like, You do realize those are all online now. And I’m like, man, it’s not quite as exciting as going into a library and pulling down a binder and flipping through and being like Morgan Stanley? No. Like medical internship? No. Scholastic? Oh, I could do that. And I just really fell into it and just loved it and discovered that even though I was taking whatever Chaucer and Victorian poets basically my next step was to be paid to think like a 13 year old girl and that worked out pretty well. So that’s how I entered the world. I’ve always been a reader, so it was not a huge leap to work in children’s books and And I was basically an editor for 10 years before I had my first book published. And in that time, I really did get to see the landscape, get to see what voices were on the shelves and what voices weren’t on the shelves, and what kind of narratives were on the shelves and what weren’t. And so with Boy Meets Boy, as a gay reader, I was looking for those YA novels that were happy that were entrenched in misery. And while there were a couple there weren’t enough. And that certainly fueled me to write what I wrote.

B&N: Looking for Asian American writers in the library, you know, yeah, I feel you on that. Because there were some great writers don’t misunderstand me. But at the same time, you’re always like, well, aren’t there more? This is it? Wait, that’s half a shelf? What’s going on? What do you think the biggest change has been since you’ve been in the business? I mean, what’s the thing you feel the most, when you look at the landscape and how it’s changed and where it might be able to go?

DL: I would have to say it is the more inclusive voices and the extreme broadening of voices that are part of the literature that again, that comes from the success of the literature. It is the power of the Hunger Games, and Twilight and Harry Potter that allows us to broaden the way that we did. But if you look at the shelves now versus 2003, when my first book was published, or whatever, in the 80s and 90s, when I was a YA reader, it is so demonstrably different. And I think that now why is predicated on having the diversity of voices, not just something that is not central to the mission, it is absolutely central to the mission. And I think the literature reflects that. And I think what that does is it inspires a whole lot of people who ordinarily wouldn’t have thought, oh, I want to write a white novel. Now. That’s where they go first, they loved it as a reader. And then when they hit their 20s, they’re suddenly writing why, and there’s no debate about it, that we are the port of entry for their literary career.

B&N: What do you love most about the work that you do as a writer, and as an editor, I mean, I’m treating them as sort of separate things, I realized they are siblings, they’re two halves of a whole, they are ultimately different disciplines.

DL: The thing that is in common is it is just getting stories out into the world that I want to be out in the world. And certainly, I as a writer, there are things that mean a lot to me that I want to be out in the world. But I also know that there are only a few of those that I myself can write. And I’m in this amazing position where I get to bring people into the fold to write all the stories, I want to be there. But I know I am not the right person to write. That is certainly the commonality is just thinking about the reader thinking about sort of having this consciousness of sort of what the teen reader needs right now, and trying to address that. And then I think where diverge is is that when I’m working on my own stuff, again, it is totally, I’m in my head, I’m in my own voice, I am thinking as me, and then when I’m editing it is it’s like I think I’m taking on the cloak of the voice of the author and not making them sound like me, but instead making them sound like the best possible versions of themselves.

B&N: When you’re talking about this thing you just mentioned about what teen readers need. Now, we’re not talking about something that shifts every six months. I mean, we are sort of talking about this gentle rolling change that happens over time. But what is it that kids are looking for first? And I have to say I’m asking this question with a bit of a smile on my face, because I’m pretty sure I know what the answer is going to be. But I think it’s a really important point to make that kids know what they’re looking for. They know what they want.

DL: Yeah, what I have found, I always reduce it down to the phrase emotional truth. That YA readers, they want something that feels true to that. It does not have to be their own experience. I think there is something that is extraordinary about when something feels emotionally true, and you relate to it. But also it can be it feels emotionally true. But it’s something that’s happening to other people in your life or other people in the world. I started an imprint push at Scholastic that was all first time authors writing for teenagers. And we actually did survey. We went to schools and talked to them about what do you like in books, and it was fascinating because the word that came up the most was real. They wanted it to be real. And what was interesting is they applied that to Harry Potter. They applied that to a horror novel. Like it wasn’t real that it has to be realistic. It had to be real that they felt like while they were reading it that these were real people doing real things with real emotion. And I think that YA at its best does absolutely tap into that.

B&N: Who were you were a teenager reader?

DL: I was a middle aged woman as a teenage reader. I loved Alice Hoffman, Anne Tyler, Margaret Atwood. I don’t know where this came from. I wish I mean I don’t wish I mean again, it would be great to be like I loved Salinger and Jack Kerouac but honestly Anne Tyler was my jam. So that was where I was. And again, this was in the late 80s. So there wasn’t thriving YA literature. There were some great books coming out, but there was not enough to sustain a voracious reader like myself.

B&N: Boy Meets Boy, obviously kids are not running around with cell phones. And I really, it was such a nice sort of step back. Because I mean, and I say this as someone who carries two phones, it was really nice to not be able to Google something or find directions immediately. It really does force these kids to be creative when they’re speaking to each other, which I found very nice. But I bring up the tech piece for a couple of different reasons. I mean, obviously, we’re in a moment where we’ve been able to build community in a lot of ways because of tech. And the fact that a kid in Wyoming can talk to a kid in Cleveland, there’s a bigger sense, I think, of what is out there in the world. And we’re also obviously, as a result, seeing a lot of backlash, because we’ve been able to build communities, in some cases, their intersectional communities and other cases, we’ve been able to do what we can, what do you think the biggest change would be for Paul and Noah and Kyle and Joni and all these kids, Tony, if you were to set Boy Meets Boy, now, how does that change the story? How does that change them?

DL: It’s an interesting question. I mean, again, I think the conversations would largely still be had, they just be different. I do think one of the things deliberately, that Boy Meets Boy is the sort of these towns are isolated from the rest of the world. But there’s not a consciousness of the rest of the world going on. And I wanted to keep it small. It really is looking at the small view. And and I think it does make it much easier to isolate the small view, technologically into the early 2000s, rather than now. And I think it’s interesting, because I had just had a really great conversation with a friend about Heartstopper, which I love, like I absolutely unabashedly love everything about Heartstopper. He loved it. But his comment, which ironically, he texted me was, like, God, there’s so much texting in Heartstopper, I get it. But I’m like, well, that’s how we communicate, I can’t read a novel set now without texting each other, rather than passing notes. But it is interesting, because I do think that there is a different patter and pattern to the way that you flirt with each other the way we communicate with each other because of texting and phones. Again, if I were rewriting Boy Meets Boy now, again, I think the banter would still be there. But some of the banter would probably happen later at night with the two of them in their respective bedrooms texting each other rather than having to actually be present in order to do it. And I do think there is something sweeter about them having to be present,

B&N: Boy Meets Boy starts with an idea. Here’s the story you wanted to read, the story you wanted to edit, the story you wanted to put out into the world. But I want to jump ahead a little bit you have written how many books now?

DL: A pop quiz, let’s say I believe it’s 27 counting collaborations with other people.

B&N: We’ve got a wider range of characters and voices and everything else. And I want to go to every day for a second. Because I love the concept behind this book. And I love the voice of this book. And you set up a really tricky thing for yourself, which I’m gonna let you explain because I don’t want to give something away by accident. But I love the concept behind this. I want to talk about this book. But I also want to talk about how this book started. Because it started with an idea.

DL: And basically it started with a question and it’s our premise and a question that the book is about someone named A who since birth, every day wakes up in a different body and a different life and has managed to sort of float along and just sort of live life day by day because they never thought was going to change. But then in the first chapter, they meet a girl, Rhiannon and suddenly risk making an attachment to somebody else. And suddenly that opens up all sorts of questions when suddenly you want to attach rather than just connect. And so for me, the premise was change body every day. And then the question was, What would life be like if you were not defined by your body, that you didn’t have a race, a gender, you didn’t have parents, you didn’t have DNA. It was all nurture, no nature. And you didn’t have to worry about how other people were defining you, by the way they looked at not your intersection. And that was fascinating for me, because I will fully freely admit that I did not understand the implications of that when I started writing. And it was only as I was writing that I realized what was interesting to me about the reaction to the book was that even though everything changes, 95% of the questions I got, and the conversations that were had about the book involve gender. And again, the book came out 10 years ago now or almost 10 years ago, the concept of being non binary, the concept of Fluidity of Gender was something that was not especially in the high schools I was going to was not something that was necessarily being discussed. And it was really interesting to me that I had actually built to this trojan horse of a book for discussions about gender. And that is the thing I’m most proud of for the book is that it has led to that and I’ve heard from a lot of non binary readers and trans readers who said, this was one of the first times I saw myself in a book, even though it was a speculative conceit. It got to the truth of the way that I see myself and that was one are thrilled to hear.

B&N: As you said, you know, we’re talking about emotional truth. But in some cases, it’s you find yourself in the details of someone else’s life, right? I’m not a teenage gay boy from New Jersey. And yet there was plenty for me in Boy Meets Boy, because I’m a human being and your characters are human beings. And every day, I mean, what a wild idea for a book. And it’s the voice and I can’t let go of A’s voice. And I got really attached to this character, obviously. But how do you know as the writer, how do you know when you’ve hit the voice that you need? Because your books are all very different from each other? Yes, there’s a lot of love. There’s a lot of heart. But ultimately, they’re still very different from each other. So how do you know when you found the right voice for that project?
DL: It’s a great question, because it is something I think about a lot. And I have a very strange writing, the expenditure of time that I spend writing a novel is very peculiar in that I will spend six months writing and rewriting and rewriting the first three chapters just to get the boys to understand what the foundation is, I’m a classic pantser of a writer, I don’t outline I don’t necessarily know what the ending will be when I start, or sometimes I think I know the ending does not end up being the ending. But for me, the thing I need the most is to know the character. And so I will do that, once I hit that point where I’m reading it, I’m like, I’m in that groove, I actually can see through this person’s eyes, whether it is the first person or third person, then I will just let loose and I’ll write the rest of the book in three months, sort of get in that zone, it’s repetition, it’s going back and just trying to feel my way to the voice. I wish I could say there was one of my books where the voice was there immediately. And I didn’t have to do that. I always have to do that. And especially the more books that I write, the more I wanted to feel different from what’s come before and a lot of that is through idiosyncrasy.

B&N: Of those 27 books, a handful have been partnerships with Rachel Cohen and John Green, and now Jennifer Niven as well. I just want to talk about what shifts for you. Because I mean, here, you’ve just said, you’ve got all of this time setting up the voice before you even sit down to write the thing itself. Obviously, Boy Meets Boy started as a short story. But when you’re sitting down to work with someone who also is established in his or her own career, everyone has a process everyone has sort of an idea and a starting point and everything else. How does that change the work you’re doing? How does that change the voice?

DL: The way that I always collaborate, is by going back and forth. I’m usually the instigator and just saying what we’re going to do is, write chapter one, I’m gonna send it to you, you react to that, send me chapter two. And we will do the same thing that we will go back and revise our chapter. So that is going forward. It’s not that sort of everything is written in stone, you do have to hone it. That is how you find the voice for me is you start out again, I probably read my chapters over, but especially the chapter one a lot of times before I send it to my collaborator, then it becomes a response to their voice. I mean, again, percent collaborate both with is Rachel Cohn. We absolutely ricochet off of each other. And that is so much. And the fact that we are on this adventure along with our characters, we don’t know where they’re going, they don’t know where they’re going. Let’s see how it works. That is what fuels us. And that’s what makes it so exciting and so much fun. More specifically with Jennifer with Taking Me With You When You Go, we were two characters, a brother and sister, one, her character, the sister has escaped this sort of bad family situation that they’re in and left my character, the brother behind. And so the whole book is them writing to each other and trying to sort of contain some secrets, but also sort of fill them in on each other. And that was probably the most purely Hanser experience I’ve had of the collaboration because I genuinely did not know where her character was. So you have my character being like, where are you to her. It’s all in the book. But that really, it was we felt very much like we were the characters that that the interaction between them really became our interaction as authors in a very palpable way, because of the uncertainty and then not knowing what’s going on. And the desire to surprise one another. That really is great. And again, it helps you hone your voice when you are sort of in tandem with somebody else.
B&N: Do you have to turn off the editor button in your head when you’re working with someone else?

DL: There’s no way to turn it off entirely. I mean, I’m very, very, very lucky because I’ve mostly worked with the same editor Nancy Inkel from the start and still do. The editor in my head is her it’s not me. I know I always talk about obscure cultural references. I always refer to the William Hurd movie, The Doctor, which is basically about him playing a doctor, a surgeon who gets sick and it’s very frustrating for him because he cannot perform surgery on himself. And so I, as an editor know that I cannot perform surgery on my own work. And I think that accepting that was very easy because again, I love my editor. So when I’m collaborating, I am in author brain. So I’m not trying to manipulate it or just give editorial comments. I’m just there for the ride.

B&N: Have you ever abandoned the project early in the?

DL: There are some projects that are coming slower than others. But basically, if I get past that chapter three point, then odds are I will finish the book at some point. And it was interesting with my new book answers and the pages, I came into the pandemic, I knew what I was going to write next. And it was a very dark, very research intensive, very not in a good place story. And like, within a week or two, the pandemic, I was like, There’s no way that I have the mental energy to actually write that book. And so what I ended up doing a few months later was I went on a writing retreat with a friend, and I opened my laptop and I opened up every single folder, and every single file on my laptop, I was like, I want to see things that I’ve started that I just let fall by the wayside, and answers and the pages was something I’d written three pages of, and in the census, we started, like, you can’t measure time anymore. If you’d asked me I would have been like, oh, yeah, that was like a year or two ago. And of course, the timestamp on it was actually five years. But I had this idea. And just immediately I was like, oh, that’s actually the book that I want to write. And so I just started, so sometimes things can lay quiet for a while. But if I’m ready to pick them up, I’ll pick them up again.

B&N: You published Boy Meets Boy in 2003. That’s your first book. So what have you learned from your readers since then? And what have you learned from your writing partners? And what have you learned from the writers who you added?

DL: Oh, my gosh, so much, suddenly, this is going to become a four hour podcast, you realize with me talking the whole time ticket postponing but but I think from the readers, I think it’s mostly just I’ve learned both as a writer and as an editor, witnessing it for the authors I edit the impact and what how much these books can mean to the reader that the right book at the right time, is life changing, sometimes life saving, that becomes part of everything I do, I mean, knowing that that power is in my hands, and that I again, have to use it wisely to use the cliche, but I think it is I don’t worry ever, that what I’m doing doesn’t matter. And I think when you approach something, knowing that it matters, you do treat it differently, and you give it the time that it needs, and I’ve had that luxury. And I think I’ve also learned, as you said, my books are very different sometimes. Boy Meets Boy is a comic novel. My second book was in verse from 20 different points of view. But I found that readers like that, they will follow you, they don’t want you to write the same thing over and over again, they actually want to see you hit things at different angles. I mean, again, thematically, there is a similarity, I still don’t know that anybody necessarily wants to read my serial killer novel. And I personally don’t want to write my serial killer novel right now. I think sometimes writers internalize like, Oh, is this bad for my career if I try something new? I think I’ve learned time and time again, it was always good for my career to do something from the writers I work with. I think it is getting to really know other writers idiosyncrasies and understand the different way they do things with you know me well, which I wrote with Nina Lacour. It wasn’t until we were on tour together that I learned that she had never written a book in linear fashion before. She always jumps around to whatever chapter or scene she wants to write. I joke with her, I was like, Oh, my goodness, this must have been hell for you. Because we started at the beginning. And we went to the end. She’s like, Yeah, it was, but I didn’t want to tell you that. But it’s interesting. It pushed her to write linearly. And then other times authors will do things that suddenly I’m like, Oh, I have to actually jump off this into the pool that I wasn’t expecting like that I will have to either do something with a form or something with a character. And of course, when you’re collaborating, the most important part is that when their characters appear in your scenes, it feels consistent. So I am writing all of these different voices and characters that I never would have dreamt of otherwise. So I’ve learned a lot from that. And then from the writers I’ve edited, I mean, I’ve now edited mean hundreds of authors at this point. And I can probably do different lessons from different ones. But I think overall, what I’ve learned and what I say all the time when asked by young writers about it is that I’ve learned ad infinitum that there is no right way or wrong way to be a writer that all of our writing minds work in different ways. I work with authors who are like me and spontaneously just run with it. I work with authors, my author Judy Bendel, who won the National Book Award for what is On Highline, she will write like a 75 page outline for a 200 page, like she is she everything she knows every single plot point, and then just arranges the pros around it. And again, the there’s no right or wrong for that. You just have to find what works for you.

B&N: It all comes together the story, right?

DL: Yeah.
B&N: What do you wish you knew when you were starting out as a baby editor and a baby writer?

DL: I mean, I think I was pretty good with my instincts, because I did the editing first and then did the writing. I think as a baby editor, I think it was more knowing that these things take time and that you have time. I started working on the Baby-Sitters Club, which again, at the time, we were publishing like two or three books a month, that is not a normal pattern or normal rhythm for prose. And it was amazing. But certainly that taught me one way of doing things. And then I learned later on that novels can take four years, and that, again, rushing an author is never a good idea. You never never get your best work if they’re writing it just because they’re stressed. I definitely learned that over my career. For writing, I think I look back now. And I realized that I was very lucky when when Bitcoin came out, because it was at a time that people were still very nervous about queer YA books, both within the industry and certainly outside of the industry. And because I had worked on so many YA books, and I didn’t know how much they mattered and what the meaning was, I was ready to fight, I was ready to go out there and speak against anybody who was trying to keep our books off the shelves, I was ready to talk to anybody who felt that a happy romantic comedy, with two gay boys was wrong, whether it was I heard from obviously, conservatives, protesting etc, etc. But also I heard from older gay men who were worried that a kid who was going through a hard time reading a happy story, it would only make them sad, again, that generationally, this again, this gay generation older than me, been through a hell of a lot. And almost all of those conversations, I went back to the people later, and they were like, You know what I was wrong, it just, you basically wrote something that I was not prepared for. And I was just worried because I thought I as a kid, in whatever 1965 would have been so upset by this, because it would have been the place that I cannot attain, whereas now it is much more attainable. So very interesting conversations, but I was ready to have them because I was like, No, we need to get this there. The reason the book is titled Boy Meets Boy is because I wanted a kid to be able to look at the shelf and know we were there. Even if they couldn’t pick up the book, even if they would have to sort of have as often was the case their straight female best friend, take it out from the library and sort of slip it to them or keep it at her house. So the parents wouldn’t see him, they would go to the best friend’s house to read it. There was always a strategy to get to the book. But I just wanted everyone to know that. Had I not been in the industry for 10 years before that, I would have felt the confidence to do that.

B&N: Yeah, representation really matters. And whatever you can find, wherever the comfort sits, it’s really important. Books are really I mean, and I say this is obviously a kid who grew up reading a lot, because you don’t end up being a bookseller. Or an editor or writer, if you don’t have this one, kind of crazy, great love, for story. And for the people who make stories. And I don’t mean just the writers, I mean, the characters because I don’t need to read a story that only features, you know, Asian American women of a certain age from Massachusetts, like I just, that’s not what I’m looking for. It’s the emotional truth. It’s the details of someone else’s life, that ping in my own, and kind of make me go, Oh right, more of this, please.

DL: Yeah, and I think even even if we’re not reading those books with our own identity all the time, we want to know that they’re there, we want to know that, that anyone who wants to find them can find them. And again, now that is so much more the case. And again, it was 19 years ago.

B&N: And also seeing you know, kids branch out into genre to I mean, we’ve got queer genre, we’ve got you know, Asian and Black and Latina, all sorts of genres. And it’s just it’s really nice to see younger writers creating the stories that they want to read to. And you know, if genres your thing Rock on, that’s great, just tell the story and keep telling the story. And you reference a novel that I actually really love called The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt. And I realized, you know, in 2003 This is a novel book for a lot of people, you know, a new kind of thing for a lot of people but oh, man, I loved that book when it and it came out a long time ago. That book was revolutionary, in a lot of ways. And I remember that being, you know, reviewed on the in the Boston Globe and the New York Times and it felt like there was a shift, and we didn’t even call it queer literature. Then it was just like, here’s this guy called David Leavitt. And he’s written a novel about gay men, people were talking about it in circles that weren’t necessarily just queer. And it was really kind of exciting. And then all of a sudden, you had Alan Hollinghurst coming right behind it. And they change the conversation for people who never would have thought of themselves as reading quote, unquote, gay literature, right? And then suddenly, you know, here are these beautiful books with beautiful jackets being published by you know, houses that people recognized in places, not in specialty bookstores per se, like just there they are on the shelf, and you can sort of start to see the progress. And it was really kind of exciting, but to see the energy that’s going into why publishing right now is just, oh, it’s so good.

DL: Yeah, no, I mean, with David, Leavitt. I mean, I often tell the story. I mean, even though it is slightly embarrassing, in that, I mean, in one of the least shocking turns I could ever make. In on this podcast, I will confess to you that I worked in my high school library. I know, I know, who can believe that I did that. But I will say they brought in Family Dancing and Lost Language of Cranes to the high school library. The embarrassing part is, I picked them up because his name was so similar to mine. I was like, well, who’s this other David Levit? To their credit, they did not hand sell it to me being like, Hey, you, you seem to have a certain inclination. You might like this. I found it myself. I started reading it. And yet it was mind blowing. I mean, it was just across so many. I mean, it was emotionally resonant. It was sexual, which was just like, oh, wow, okay, this, okay, which I’ve never read before any anywhere close to that. And that did, it opened so many doors to me as a person and to me as a writer, without me fully understanding it in high school.

B&N: Before I let you go, I do want to bring up music because obviously music is a huge part of you as a person. Colson Whitehead, for instance, only adds new songs to his playlist. And then he mixes it up as he’s working on each book. I didn’t know if he was creating playlists for each novel. He’s like, no, no, I just have this giant playlist. I spend a lot of time traveling. And I have a crazy playlist, and it’s just one play. And I just keep adding stuff. Yep. I recently added a lot of Nina Simone and Bud Powell and Marvin Gaye, which is great, but it’s very specific listening. So when you’re working on a new project, are you creating new playlists? Are you just adding to a massive playlist and going from there?

DL: I’m basically picking and choosing from my iTunes, usually, it’s very specific to what am I writing today? Like, what scene? What chapter am I in? Where do I want to start? And I’ll just click play and then go, it’s always playing, I have completely mastered the ability to have it playing and have it set the mood without me listening to it. I have friends who are like, I can’t listen to songs with words while I’m writing because it interferes and I just, they’re not going to interfere. They’re wallpaper. So for me, there’s always something and sometimes it does end up that different books get into a different artist or a different group. My book Another Day, like that was me discovering Julian Baker, and like Julian Baker was like unloop through it out. Sometimes it’s a specific song like the climax of two boys kissing happened to hit the Hand in the Hearts’ Lost in My Mind, which was like the perfect song for it. The only time I’ve ever done this, I just set the one song on loop, and just wrote the whole scene to that crying, but it worked. And I don’t know that I could have written it the same way without that song. Occasionally, there are problems. I like to write a lot to Bon Iver, they’re perfect writing music, unfortunately, in the iTunes alphabetical hierarchy, it’s very easy to be listening to Vaughn Adair, to be in that group. And then suddenly Britney Spears’ Toxic is playing and that that does take you out of the seat, I will say I am immune to it. Unless it goes from Bon Iver to Toxic then I do notice and I’m like, Okay, it’s time to recalibrate.

B&N: Okay, different kinds of recalibration. When you think back on Boy Meets Boy, do you have a favorite moment? I can think of a lot of different points where you might say that that’s your favorite moment. There’s a lot of I cannot stress enough that there’s so much charm in this novel. But was there a moment that you just fell in love with your own book? Or was there a moment that surprised you? Or did Paul do something?

DL: I mean, I’d love just about every moment of that book, which I know is not a typical author thing to say. I will say I mean, again, because I don’t plan ahead. I’m just writing and see what happens. And because this was my first book, so it was the first time this has ever happened to me. And it has now happened numerous times since I will say there’s a moment where some characters are getting ready for the dance. And one of their sisters runs and gets a camera. And for whatever reason I’m getting emotional even talking about it which is strange, but like for whatever reason, that was like, I was not expecting that to happen. I was expecting to send them off to the dance, but straight whatever that came in. It was like it has it it becomes so real. And just this really quiet, tender moment of this extraordinarily secondary character running and getting a camera just because she wanted a picture of them. That really, it was one of the most meaningful moments in the book. And it is definitely not one of the most medically meaningful moments of the book. And it’s been interesting. I, when the book first came out, I got a beautiful letter from my friend, Brian Selznick, a fellow queer author, who had read it. And it was amazing because he too, wrote in this letter, he’s like, I don’t know why. But there’s this moment, when the sister goes to get the camera that I found myself really moved. And I was like, okay, it taught me that a lot of the times those moments do translate that the things that make me most emotional end up being the things that make the reader most emotional or touch them the most.

B&N: Is love the thing that’s gonna save us?

DL: I think so. I mean, I think love in the broadest sense.

B&N: Yeah, I’m not talking romantically.

DL: No, I think that the feeling of connection, the feeling of community, I do think that is what’s going to save us. And I do think that is the counterbalance to everything awful that is happening now. And it is the thing that gives us strength is both the love of each other and the love of life itself. And I think that we are constantly having to create devices to remind people of that, and books are a great device.

B&N: They’re kind of perfect for that actually. What do you want listeners who may not have read you yet to know about you, as a writer, and your work?

DL: I think that it is helpful, and that it is never meant to be definitive that one of the great things I love about again, the evolution of my career is that a lot of the times at the beginning I was the gay voice in the room, or I was the gay voice on the panel or I was the gay voice on the shelf. And now that is laughable. I mean, now now there are dozens of queer YA books coming out every week in June that like two dozen every way. It’s amazing. So I think I definitely have something to say. And I think that it’s been interesting because the more that I write, I feel that I’m starting to have more authority in my work because I’ve observed things for longer. So there is an evolution there. But again, I write my books to be part of the community of all the other books being written. I’m so proud that that is usually how they’re read.

B&N: Yeah, that seems like a perfect place to end the show. David Levithan. Thank you so much for joining us on Poured Over. Answers in the Pages was just out last month. That’s your newest book and also the B&N exclusive edition of Boy Meets Boy is out now. Thank you so much.

DL: Thank you for having me.