1. What’s your backstory?

I was the Weird Girl growing up (what writer isn’t? Well, the guy ones maybe) who took three years off before going to college. I traveled and wound up working as a maid in an Amsterdam hotel and therefore gained valuable Life Experience. I then went to college in Oregon and after that moved to New York to become a Journalist, writing about and for young people for Seventeen magazine, eventually backing into my calling as a young-adult novelist. But before all that, I was thisclose to becoming a flight attendant. Have you been on a plane lately? Dodged a bullet there!

2. Everyone has a “thing.” What’s yours?

Oh, I wish I could give you something really cool and romantic about traveling and music. But really, my thing is this: I get shit done (am I allowed to say shit? If not, say stuff). My husband calls me the “charismatic leader’s right-hand man” for my ability to take care of business. Also, I am nice.

3. Everyone also has a karaoke song. Name yours (and don’t be shy).

“Papa Was A Rodeo” by the Magnetic Fields. If you ever find it in a karaoke bar, please call me.

4. Who are your biggest influences?

Are we talking literary influences? I’d have to say the obvious things like music and Oregon (which was odd given I only lived there for five years but it seared into my literary DNA). Teenagers. In life, I will have to nod to even more clichéd forces, like my family. Really, if we are talking about who exerts the most power and influence over my everyday life, I would have to credit the two three-foot creatures I live with. The taller creature, too. But the little ones are the boss of me.

5. What is it you most dislike?

Inconsideration. It’s kind of a small world for all of us nearly 7 billion people so you kind of have to live with one eye open toward how your actions affect the guy next to you. And yes, upstairs neighbor who for some reason likes to move furniture after midnight, that includes you.

6. Whose job would you like to steal?

Roger Ailes of Fox News. There are some changes I’d make over there.

7. What was your best date?

It was after band practice with this band I was guest starring with (just getting to start a sentence with “it was after band practice” gives me a thrill because in spite of the presence of music in my books, I am so not a musician). I was supposed to go home but me and the guitar player wound up on this meandering date, going bowling, playing air hockey, pool (I lost at all three). Dinner at Taco Bell. We had the tiniest kiss goodbye. Seventeen years later, I’m still with that guy.

8. What was your worst?

A Halloween party in which I painstakingly glued alphalpha sprouts to myself to perfect my Chia Pet costume. My date was dressed as Kurt Cobain (Oregon, 1990s) and was clearly channeling the spirit of Kurt because he got mad at me and threw beer on me, thus ruining both my outfit and my mood.

9. When I wake up in the middle of the night its because I’ve had a nightmare that I’m ___ .

Driving a car across the Manhattan Bridge except there is no bridge and I’m driving over water and a wave is about to swallow me up when—Mama Uppy, the voice of a two-year-old wakes me up and it’s 4:47 a.m. and once the kid goes back down I’m wide awake, even though I’d happily return to the nightmare and take my chances with the East River at this point. And yes, I’m describing this very morning.

10. I feel my best when I’m wearing ___ .

a sundress in the hot sun. Clean hair is nice, too.

11. Please settle the debate: New York or LA?

Well, I grew up in L.A. but I live in Brooklyn, so does that offer some clues?

12. What’s on your playlist at this very moment?

The New Pornographers. Regina Spektor. Belle & Sebastian. Bon Iver. Iron & Wine. American Analog Set. Magnetic Fields. Sufjan Stevens. That’s a sampling. It’s a long list.

13. What are you watching on TV?

I watch The Office and 30 Rock on Hulu. I get Mad Men on Netflix (so I’m behind). I am waiting patiently for NBC to start airing episodes of Friday Night Lights and am not happy at all about the arrangement in which only DirectTV subscribers got to watch the season already.

14. If you alone held the power to pick the Oscar for Best Picture, would you give it to Avatar or The Hurt Locker?

I’ll answer this one without even taking the merit of the films into account: The Hurt Locker, for several reasons: Because I want to see Kathryn Bigelow accept the Oscar. Because it would spare us a James Cameron acceptance speech. Because Summit (THL’s studio) is producing the film version of If I Stay and I’m a team player. And because if there’s an underdog, I’ll root for it.

15. Given the chance, would you rather hang out with George Clooney or Robert Downey Jr.

So a three-way is out of the question? Really? I’m a Gemini so the two of them would suit me perfectly.

16. If you were a character on any movie or TV show, past or present, who would you be?

When I was younger, I liked to think I was Samantha from Sixteen Candles—I even intentionally bit my lip like Molly Ringwald did and have a scar because of it— but I never had Jake Ryan hanging on to my panties. These days? Mix about one-third Carrie Bradshaw and two-thirds Liz Lemon and there’s me. Oh, wait, nobody who reads this actually knows me so I can totally lie. I’m like Lola in Run Lola Run. Or Nikita in La Femme Nikita. Hot. Muscled. Foreign.

17. What is your drug of choice?

Sleep.

18. What’s the last thing you think about before falling asleep at night?

How much of my drug of choice will I actually score tonight?

Gayle Forman is an award-winning author and journalist whose articles have appeared in Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, and Elle, among others. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. Her New York Times bestseller If I Stay, about a 17-year-old girl in the 24 hours after a catastrophic car accident, will be available in paperback on April 6. A film version is currently being produced by Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke and Summit Entertainment.

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