Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka have double experience in the literary love department. First with their amazing novel Always Never Yours, a sex-postive Rome & Juliet inspired tale, and their very own romance. These two co-authors are real life fiancees! They were high school sweethearts and Austin even proposed in a bookstore. If that's not #goals I don't know what is. Read this article for all the cute details! I also had the honor of catching up with these two lovely authors at the Y'all West book festival in Santa Monica a couple of months ago, and they were so sweet. You can check out my mini interview I did with them on my instagram story highlights and click here to read my review of their novel (*Spoiler Alert* I loved it.) Enjoy the interview!
Emily & Austin
Megan is a very sex-positive heroine, can you elaborate on your choice to portray your character in this way and the importance of such a character in the YA industry?
Sex positivity in YA was an important inspiration from the start of our process with ANY. We feel YA’s greatest contribution is inclusiveness, permitting readers of diverse viewpoints and personalities to find themselves on the page. We wanted to provide this type of literary recognition for women who feel confident in their desires. With ever-present negative pressure on every expression of women’s sexuality (victim-blaming, school dress codes, et cetera) we hoped to write a character who encouraged and validated sexually comfortable female readers.
Both of you are no strangers to the literary world, with Emily as the acclaimed author of the Last Oracle series and Austin as a former Hollywood Reporter writer. That being said, what motivated you two to join forces to write A.N.Y and how did your respective literary backgrounds help you with this joint endeavor?
We decided to work together because we have complementary strengths, which very much owe to our respective writing experience and upbringings! Emily, brought up by screenwriters, understands the fundamentals of story structure and, in our writing process, works closer on outlining and pacing. Austin worked in journalism on writing for interest and efficiency, and consequently works closer in our writing process on prose, word choice and voice. We both love refining concepts and figuring out exactly how to design engaging ideas.
Did ANY change much from the first draft? If so were there any scenes that you had to cut, that you didn't want to?
The book did not change from the first draft in terms of structure—the changes were in character depth and direction. They were new scenes and ideas, not things we removed. The introductory chapters were expanded to establish and elaborate on Megan’s world and identity (and introduce a completely new character—we wonder if people could guess who!) and we embellished the ending to provide tenser, fuller resolutions with a couple important characters.
We write trim drafts, and our wonderful editor draws out new complexities and details in our characters and their world.
If you could spend the day with any of your characters, who would you choose and what would you do together?
Honestly, we would love to hang out with Megan and Owen for the day. Not only are they our central characters, they’re the ones we’d find highly entertaining in person. We would want to go to a movie because we think Owen and Megan would be very opinionated about whatever we watched, and we would love to hear them argue (and inevitably flirt).
Then we would grab dinner, but not pizza. If you’ve read ANY, you know Megan and Owen have had…enough pizza.
Are we going to see any more of Megan or Owen in the future?
We definitely will—though we can't reveal how and when! We loved revisiting them!
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A big big thank you to Emily & Austin for doing this interview! It was so much fun and I look forward to all their future projects.
About the Authors of A.N.Y
Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka met in high school and fell in love over a shared passion for Shakespeare. Austin went on to study English at Harvard so he could continue to impress Emily with his literary analysis, while Emily studied adolescent psychology at Princeton. They live in Los Angeles, where they’ve combined their interests and decided to write stories of high school, literature, and first love.
To keep up with Austin & Emily, check out their website and social medias. :)
Emily: Instagram: @wibbs_ink & Twitter: @Wibbs_Ink
Austin: Instagram: @austins_b & Twitter: @Asiegemundbroka