Author Interview: Emily Layden

Scandal breaks as the Atwater girls begin the school year. As families drop off their daughters at boarding school, Atwater students and families notice yard signs on their drive to the picturesque campus, referring to a rape at the high school two decades ago.

Over the course of the book, we meet nine young women and read about their experiences. I recently had the chance to ask the author Emily Layden about her debut novel, All Girls. This is Part I of II of our interview.

What inspired you to write All Girls?

I spent most of my twenties working at various boarding and independent day schools, the majority of them all-girls. It’s an immense privilege to talk about books all day, but the best gift of all came in the form of my students, who gave me daily lessons in the wisdom, empathy, and optimism of teenage girlhood. The truth is that teenage girls drive our discourse and shape our culture—they tell us what’s cool, what to wear, what music to listen to—but are rarely given credit for their full personhood. After years in the trenches with them, I felt that they and their experiences deserved to be seen and taken seriously.

I read in your acknowledgements that you are a former teacher. How did you transition from teacher to writer?

I come from a family of educators: Both of my maternal grandparents were public school teachers and administrators; my mother is a college dean. But if teaching is in my blood, so too is writing: My dad is a successful writer who has published close to forty books. In my brain they are symbiotic pursuits: both require a unique ability to listen, to observe and pay attention, and—perhaps most of all—a great amount of empathy.

All Girls introduces nine distinct characters, with diverse backgrounds and unique interests. Did you imagine writing a cast of nine from the beginning? Did characters shift during your writing/ editing processes? How so? 

I never imagined this book as a single-protagonist novel, in part because there were too many stories I wanted to tell, and it seemed unreasonable and unrealistic to burden a single character with all that I wanted to say. I felt I could achieve deeper wells—a greater exploration of a single issue, e.g. mental illness, trauma, sexuality—if I used multiple vignettes. So while I didn’t necessarily begin with nine characters in mind, I did set out to depict a community—in all its range and depth—not just a single person.

Throughout your novel, information about Atwater and its staff is leaked on various social media platforms. How do you think social media is changing schools and its students?

I think that what we’re seeing—not just in my book, but in real life!—is that social media can be a real tool for accountability. The girls at Atwater—despite the fact that their school was built for the advancement of women and girls; despite the fact that it is literally founded upon the principle of empowerment—struggle to be heard, so they turn to social media to assert their voices.

But I think that’s kind of exactly the point: Social media is a last resort for these girls. They would have preferred to have been able to speak authentically with the adults who are charged as their protectors; their thoughts and feelings needed to be validated in real ways. I hope that the knowledge that social media can be deployed in this way helps to create a system where real-world Atwaters—institutions of prestige and power—value the people they serve in meaningful, tangible ways. 

Be sure to pick up a copy of All Girls today! You can find the book to order here: Bookshop.org UK, Bookshop.org US or Book Depository. I particularly enjoyed the book's discussion on the changing dynamics of consent, power and students' voices through its various female characters. Layden's writing reminded me of the Netflix series, Tiny Pretty Things.

Un grand merci to Emily Layden for her thoughtful answers.

Check back here next week for Part II of our interview.

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À tout à l’heure, bookworms!