Amy Andelson and Emily Meyer: Reading List

We’ve been best friends since middle school, so we have to pinch ourselves daily that we have built a career working with each other (sometimes in our pyjamas) being creative in ways we’ve never thought possible these past ten years. We started as screenwriters, then branched into TV and are so excited to take this next leap into writing YA fiction.

Endless daydreaming with spurts of productivity punctuated by internet procrastination and meal planning.

Emily: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng because I loved Everything I Never Told You. Amy: Marlena by Julie Buntin, because Emily told me to and we love stories about female friendship.

A lot of Lurlene McDaniel (she was 25 years before her time in the sick-lit craze). Also a lot of holocaust historical fiction — Number the Stars by Lois Lowry and Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene. Guess we had a taste for the macabre. But also, like all 80s kids, we read everything from Baby-sitters Club by Ann M. Martin to Judy Blume.

Doggy-ear all day every day (and margin notes too).

For as long as we can remember. But our friendship formed when we bonded over all the classic angsty adolescent books like Catcher In the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Maggie Cassidy by Jack Kerouac, and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

We keep copies of some of our early elementary school works in our office — Amy’s always had a penchant for the noir (“Donald Duck Threatens Suicide on Top of a 7-11 in West L.A. After an Oscar Snub”) while Emily stayed in the realm of realism with “The Kitchen Mess.”

At 16 we’d re-read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. She is full of timeless wisdom that could have been of great comfort in those awkward in-between years. At 25 we’d gift ourselves The Waves by Virginia Woolf — it’s a beautiful story about a group of friends navigating the time between childhood and adulthood.

We think best in motion, so oftentimes our ideas come out of long walks or drives we take together. Our process for writing books is pretty much the same as our screenwriting process. We outline everything together, split up sections to write separately, trade and polish each other’s pages, and then move forward. We do edits and notes together. Writing Layover was such a creatively freeing process.

Reading as much as you can all the time is helpful, but particularly knowing the seminal books from your genre well. More than anything it is important to stay inspired and look for stories and characters everywhere.

Edith Wharton, Henry James, Joan Didion, Frank O’Hara, and Norah Ephron.

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin — we keep seeing it on lists everywhere and can’t wait to dive in.

Escapism. And the connection you feel when an author manages to articulate a truth about the human experience.

Marlena by Julie Buntin — we can’t stop talking about it, we were blown away.

We could get down with the Jane Austen party circuit.

Write all the time. Amy’s grandma used to say this to us, but keep a notebook with you at all times. It shows our age — now you’d just use your phone, I guess, but you really do never know when inspiration will strike.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. We loved the book so much that the first thing we ever wrote together was a contemporary adaptation of the classic novel set in high school. The movie was never made but the screenplay sold to Sony when we were 24 and launched our careers.

Everything Edith Wharton.

Far From the Tree by Robin Benway — we’ve heard such great things and obviously love reading YA.

Photo by Matt Sayles