by Amy Cox Williams

Summer break means suntan lotion and alarm clock-free mornings, but it also means fresh possibilities for friendships, pranks, stolen kisses, and romance. Especially at summer camp.

At Southpoint, the rhythms and rituals of summer are sacred and familiar: the opening night bonfire, the bugle calls that guide campers through the day, morning activities with your “fish” group, Field Day and Skit Night, and the pranks exchanged between the girls’ camp and their brother camp across the lake. Set against this idyllic backdrop, Kathryn Williams’s second novel, The Lost Summer, follows 17-year-old Helena Waite as she returns to her childhood camp, but this time as a counselor. With her best friend still a camper and her longtime crush now a romantic possibility, Helena is in for a summer at Southpoint unlike any she’s experienced.

We recently caught up with Williams, author of The Debutante, for the following Q&A:

To begin, tell us about your path to writing for children and teens. Many authors I’ve interviewed say they didn’t set out to write for a specific audience—did you have a similar experience or were you intentional about writing for teens?
I always wanted to be a writer, but after college I went the journalism route. After a stint as an intern and reporter-researcher at Newsweek, I was trying and not really succeeding at freelancing in New York. A very kind editor at The New York Observer gave me the chance to write a personal essay for the paper about being Southern in the city. It was noticed by an editor at Hyperion Books for Children who wanted to do a young adult novel about the opposite—a girl from the North who moves south. At first I was still hung up on wanting to be a “serious journalist,” but then I pulled my head out of my tush and realized this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do what I’d always wanted to do. So I actually didn’t start out even thinking I’d be a novelist. I hoped to try my hand at it one day, but it seemed a very daunting avenue to take. I like to say that my career—and my teen audience—found me.

Then, as I got into the writing process and tried to get my head into the space of a teenage girl, it just became so much fun. The teenage years are this hyped-up microcosm of the whole human drama. There’s love and hate and anxiety and introspection and avoidance—all the themes you’d find in literature written for adults. It’s such an important time in a person’s life. And when it comes down to it, at 27, I still feel relatively close to that age myself. I can recall the emotions and experiences. When I can no longer do that, I’ll stop writing for teens. The last thing I want to be is that writer so desperate for the teen voice that she sounds like your mom: “Hey, peeps, I’m down with your cool Facebook, for shizzle!”

Your latest YA novel, The Lost Summer, is set at a summer camp in Tennessee. Did you go to a camp like Southpoint when you were growing up?
Yes. I went to a wonderful camp in western Virginia for 10 years, as a camper and a counselor. Camp very much shaped who I am, and I’ve stayed close to the directors and friends I made there. I started The Lost Summer wanting to write a book about camp where the setting was almost a character in itself, but the fictional Southpoint quickly took on a life of its own and became different in many ways from my real camp. For example, at my camp there was no “Brownstone” across the lake (which was really a pond in our case); although there was a boys camp before ours and a half-dozen male counselors who stayed on to do maintenance work. They were my inspiration for the Brownies. However, with the exception of general camp life and a few small scenes (I was the camper who thought a spider had laid eggs in her chin), The Lost Summer is not a recollection of my own camp experiences, although they were a jumping off point. Any success I have in the physical and emotional descriptions of Southpoint I owe to my camp.

Helena isn’t prepared for the changes she’ll encounter at camp as a counselor—including her first sexual experience. With her honest portrayal of sex in Forever, Judy Blume opened the door to this topic in YA literature more than three decades ago, but since then, Forever has frequently appeared on the list of most banned books. Only in recent years have young adult authors returned to the topic of sex. What are your own thoughts on the debate?
There was a lot of debate with my editor about how to treat the scene where (spoiler alert) Helena loses her virginity to Ransome, and whether to include it at all. I was adamant that it is a large and not gratuitous part of the story and of the development of Helena’s character. It’s funny you mention Forever, because in preparation for writing this book and that scene in particular, I reread that book. I think Judy Blume handled the tenderness and awkwardness of those moments with such honesty and heart.

I feel the same way about sex in YA novels as I do about teen drinking and other “no-no’s.” Let’s be honest with our readers, first of all, and our teens in general. Of course there are many shades of gray, but I think it’s a great disservice to always fade to black or pretend teen sexuality and experimentation don’t exist. There’s a place in YA literature for “issue” books, but to always turn it into a morality tale . . . nothing will get a teenager’s eyes rolling faster. I believe real-life repercussions are often more subtle than catastrophic. Of course there are many instances of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, or drunk driving that ends tragically, but more frequently, the consequences are emotional and psychological. In The Debutante we see my main character, Annie, get a little drunk twice. Both times she gets loose lips and ends up saying things that she regrets and that have the potential of damaging relationships that are important to her. In this book, Helena has sex before she really considers what it means; her heart is broken from the reality that sex does not necessarily bring two people closer and that once that innocence is lost, it can’t be restored.

I’m a pretty straightforward person and writer, so I guess my stance on the debate is let’s not glamorize it, let’s not ignore it, let’s equip teenagers with as honest and real accounts of things like sex and drinking and drugs as we can in this relatively safe environment (books).

The Debutante and The Lost Summer both take place in the South—would you characterize yourself as a Southern writer?
That’s a good question, and I don’t know the answer yet! I love the South. I am so intrigued and tickled by all of its intricacies and contradictions and living, breathing clichés. I’ve lived here for 23 years of my life and still have only scratched the surface of what it is to be a Southerner. But when I think of Southern writers, I think of greats like O’Connor, Faulkner, Welty, Williams, Harper Lee, even contemporary writers like Lee Smith and Kaye Gibbons—and I am not so bold as to insert myself in that pantheon. The South will likely always figure somehow in my books because it moves me, but at this stage as a writer, I wouldn’t limit myself to certain themes or geography.

Who is Lucy Ruggles?
Lucy Ruggles is my wicked alter ego that I keep locked up until someone ticks me off. Only kidding. “Lucy Ruggles” is the pen name I use when I do novelizations or more commercial work. Actually, Lucy Ruggles hit the New York Times bestseller list with the junior novelization of Camp Rock. I’d let you talk to her, but the fame and fortune have kind of gone to her head.

What’s next for you?
I’m working on two books right now, one about a girl who is dealing with her mother’s breast cancer. While that sounds very serious—and is—I actually want it to be funny. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, and I’ve found there’s a lot of potential for humor at the edges of grief. The humor and the writing have helped us both deal with this change. And the second one is still under wraps. I’d also really love to write a collection of personal and humor essays for the YA market one day.

Anything else you’d like to add?
It's actually The Lost Summer (not Last). Don’t feel bad. [Ed note: In the original e-mail Q&A, I had the title wrong in my questions even though the book was right in front of me.] This was queried several times by my copyeditor, who I continually had to assure that it was “Lost” and not “Last.” Titles don’t often come easily to me. They’re usually the last piece of the puzzle to fall into place. We had several options floating around for this one, some longer and playing off the words to the bugle song “Taps” (which is now the epigraph), but we felt they were too somber. Originally I wanted The Last Summer, but there is a book recently published by Ann Brashares called The Last Summer (of You and Me), and I didn’t want them to be confused. So I changed it to The Lost Summer. I really like the play on words. In some ways, this is a “last” and “lost” summer for Helena.