Via the NY Sun (sub req’d), breaking news on lit by just-hatched chicks:

Kaavya Viswanathan is set on becoming an investment banker when she graduates from Harvard University in 2008, but a phone call that the 17-year-old freshman received from a literary agent might just cause a change in her plans.

The agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh of the William Morris Agency, told the Franklin Hills, N.J.-born Ms. Viswanathan that Little Brown & Company … agreed to a two-book deal with the teenager. The sum approached $500,000, a staggering amount for an unpublished writer, let alone someone who’d barely left home for college.

…Ms. Viswanathan said she’s already written more than 150 pages, or more than a third of the manuscript. [Ed's Note -- 150 pages for half a mil = about $3,000 per page.]

“It’s a little tough to do this writing and also juggle classes and the homework,” she said. “This is a big-time commitment. It’s not like writing an essay for a class.”