Today's interviewee is a very busy person. She is the Associate Editor at Girls Life magazine, writes book reviews for various publications including the New York Times,, maintains the literature blog Old Hag, and writes several Young Adult books, in addition to releasing a new book of poetry.

What came first, the book reviewing or the blogging?
First came feature writing, then came blogging, then came marriage, then came...The Times in a baby carriage! Other publications threatening to take me away from my blog soon followed. I'm not sure this is still true, but a few years ago when the blog bubble was just peaking, editors were definitely scouting for new talent there. I don't know if they still are -- blogging doesn't necessarily translate into good print writing. My case in point.

Has working for Girls Life magazine changed your perspective at all regarding what the "young folks" read these days?
Well, before I worked for Girls' Life, I worked for the packager that created Sweet Valley High and had written ten teen novels, so I was pretty up on it. I do think there's been an explosion in teen fiction again. In my opinion, no one out there matches the good old days of Katherine Patterson, M.E. Kerr, Paula Danziger, Judy Blume, Lois Duncan, Paul Zindel, etc. But they do have prettier covers. But Girls' Life is looking for fiction! See our "How to Pitch" on mediabistro!

What do you think is a major mistake people often make when setting out to write YA books?

I think they long too much for the good old days of Katherine Patterson ... or their own high school years. Kids are interested in what's happening to them now, not a rehash of the author's own adolescence. They have iPods, the Web, summer internships, Paxil, the ability to come out -- all stuff denied to us while we sat in the basement eating Kraft macaroni and cheese and watching Dead Poets' Society for the eighth time (on VHS, natch). That kind of book works much better as an adult novel -- say, Prep or The Lovely Bones.

How did you get involved with Caketrain books?
Caketrain was one of the 9,000 places I submitted my poetry manuscript for a contest -- the way most poets first get a book or chapbook published. (Anyone wanting to learn more about the onerous process of submitting a book of poetry for publication should look at Foetry.com.)

I had some other offers, but I liked that Caketrain was just getting
into book publishing, and I liked their journal.

Have you ever heard back from an author whose book you gave a
negative review? How did that go down?
I hear back from authors (and their fans) ALL THE TIME -- the downside of having a very public website. My favorite exchange was with Wesley Stace, a.k.a. John Wesley Harding, who pointed out that the heroine of his novel, Misfortune, was not, in fact, a transvestite. That's a pretty big mistake, but I made it with ease. He was very gracious about it, though, and said that perhaps upon rereading I would acquire a new appreciation for his work. (You can see the exchange if you scroll down the "Speedreader" column on Old Hag.)