Jennifer Weiner lives in Philadelphia with her husband and her dog, Wendell. Good in Bed, her first best-selling novel, has been published in fourteen countries and was an international bestseller. She is also the author of In Her Shoes. Visit her Web site at www.jenniferweiner.com.

Felicia C. Sullivan: First off on a personal note, I have to say CONGRATS! on the birth of your beautiful Lucy Jane! As a reader of your blog, http://jenniferweiner.blogspot.com, I have been privy to your journey. Although authors typically have websites, but not blogs, what encouraged you to start one?

Jennifer Weiner: Well, first of all, I’m glad you’re enjoying the weblog. Even though I can look at the hit counter and see where my readers are coming from, I have this deep-seated fear that the only one reading the thing is my Mom. I have to credit my husband with the idea for the ‘blog….I didn’t even know what a weblog was until he told me. But I really loved the idea. When I went on my first book tour I’d file regular diary entries, and have my webmaster post them. I really enjoyed writing them, and I got a wonderful response from my readers, and from other writers who enjoyed getting a glimpse at what they were in for. The weblog seemed like the logical next step, as a way of keeping my readers up to date on how my quote-unquote public life was going. Also, after GOOD IN BED was published I left my newspaper job, and I really missed the immediacy of journalism – the ability to weigh in immediately on the pop-culture phenomena of the moment, instead of having to wait a year or more until my next book came out.

FS: A lot of the hot buzz in the publishing scene circles the validity of book reviews (re: articles in The Believer, Steve Almond’s article in Poets & Writers) as well disgraced journalists landing book deals. Although different topics, there is a great deal to said about the link between the two – the concept of belief in non-fiction authors, albeit reviewers or writers. What is your take on either or both of the controversies?

JW: Two great questions that both address the myths of objectivity and truth. I think that what they share is the common notion of the writer becoming the story. I’m sure that Steve Almond isn’t the only author who’s noticed that reviews of their books wind up being much more about what’s going on in the reviewer’s head – or personal life – than in the pages of whatever he or she has written

So every review of, say, James Frey’s A MILLION LITTLE PIECES turns into a piece on what the reviewer thinks about addiction and recovery. Every article about Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez centers upon what the writer thought about Alisa’s resignation letter to the LA Times, not her novel. And plenty of reviews of GOOD IN BED were more about the reviewer’s issues with food – and with fat people – than anything I’ve written. (More than one review wrote about Cannie, the main character, as “gorging herself on junk food and vegging in front of the couch” – two things that my protagonist never, ever did!)

Same goes with the fabulists landing six-figure deals….once again, the reporter, who’s supposed to be transparent as, heh heh, Stephen Glass, turns into the story.

And I think this has something to do with the evolution of journalism as a profession. Once upon a time, she harrumphed, climbing aboard her soapbox, journalists were working Joes, in the same social strata as the cops and the firemen and the ward politicians they covered. And then came Watergate, and Woodward and Bernstein, and suddenly every smarty-pants debate champ with an Ivy League degree wanted to save the world via the printed word.

The trouble is journalism demands invisibility. You tell stories, you don’t make them. You report on celebrities and stars, you don’t become one yourself. For the Jayson Blairs and Stephen Glasses and Ruth Shalits of the world – young people who’ve been told all their lives how smart, how worthy, how impressive they are – it’s hard to be the one behind the notebook (or the television camera) instead of the one in front of it. These days, journalism is just as enmeshed in the star system as any other industry, and editors are just has avid to discover the next young, attractive, bright and shiny thing – and never mind that the young, attractive, bright and shiny thing who’s suddenly netting the plum assignments doesn’t have, say, experience at a small-town paper or as a copy editor, or a perfect understanding that good reporting does not involve importing other people’s sentences or making stuff up.

The bottom line is that readers wind up feeling cynical and betrayed which is bad for the business of book reviewing, and of journalism in general.

FS: Both Good in Bed and In Her Shoes are wonderfully witty, infectious novels about charming, but strong women and their relationships with other women, relationships with their bodies and with men – however with fresh, spot-on humor. You have such affection for your female narrators – what drove you to create Cannie, Maggie and Rose? Were you drawing on anything close to home?

JW: Well, Cannie Shapiro, the heroine of GOOD IN BED, is basically a smarter, sharper, quicker version of me – the me who comes up with great one-liners right on the spot, instead of three days later when nobody cares any more. She was born of a bad break-up….I basically spent six months moping pathetically, and then decided that I was going to tell a story to make myself feel better, and that the story was going to have a heroine who was a lot like me – plus-size body, messed-up family and all – and an ex-boyfriend who was a lot like Satan, and that I was going to write really honestly, because I didn’t have an agent or an editor or a publishing deal, and I was writing in the privacy of my apartment and wasn’t sure I’d ever even have to – or want to – show anyone what I was working on.

With In Her Shoes, I’ve always been interested in the sibling dynamic – the way two people can come from, literally, the same place, and grow up eating the same stuff for dinner, living in the same house and sharing the same vacations and end up so completely different. That’s close to home, too – I’m the oldest of four children, and we’re all very different – and I think that Rose has aspects of me (certainly the fashion-and-makeup cluelessness).

FS: Anything new we can look forward to in 2004?

JW: Sleep! Yes, long luscious hours of uninterrupted slumber on high thread count sheets, and…oh, wait. Sorry. That’s what I’m looking forward to in 2004, as soon as my daughter – who’s now four weeks and three days old – learns how to sleep through the night! As far as the rest of you, you can look forward to my new book, JEZEBEL BRIGHT, which will be published by Atria books in the spring of 2004. And sleep.

FS: Hundreds of zines pop up every year – some with print aspirations (as in Small Spiral Notebook), however all have the goal of gathering a large audience for good work. What is your take on the trend towards on-line publishing? On-line literary sites like Book Slut or Moby Lives?

JW: I’m a fan of literary and journalism websites, because I love their immediacy – how news can break at The New York Times in the morning, and by noon I’ll be able to read dozens of letters, blog entries, website posts, all kinds of takes on the news of the world.

In terms of online publishing, I think the jury’s still out, insofar as I am the jury (and also the greatest living writer of my generation….just ask Neal Pollack!) I think it’s great that the Internet has insured that any writer who can string together sentences can, technically, find an audience for what they’ve written with online publishing and publishing on demand, but is online publishing going to revolutionize the way printed material is sold in bricks-and-mortar stores? I don’t see it happening. Agents and editors still serve an important quality-control function, and for every book that makes the transition from being sold online to being published by a publisher, there are hundreds – maybe thousands – that don’t ever make it out of the relative obscurity of the Internet.

FS: Your so generous to offer detailed advice to aspiring authors on your website: http://www.jenniferweiner.com/forthewriters.htm Anything else you can offer after the success of two novels for our readers?

JW: Well, the thing about success – and I know that Anne Lamott’s probably already said this smarter and better than I will – is that it doesn’t cure all of your insecurities the way you probably dream that it will, and that it can engender its own set of unhappiness. If you get sent on a sixteen-city book tour, there’s always an author who gets to visit seventeen cities; if you get a film deal, you can bet someone will get a bigger one, so even if you’re happily published, there are still people you’ll be jealous of. The bad reviews will still break your heart and keep you up nights (Erica Jong wrote about never being able to remember her good reviews, but feeling as if all of her bad ones had been seared into her soul, and were written in a voice that sounded exactly like her mother’s). And not everyone in your life will react to your good fortune with good wishes. I’ve had colleagues and fellow young female journalists be positively vicious (although never, ever to my face).

All that being said, walking into a bookstore and seeing your book there – or, better still, getting an email from a reader who said that your book changed her life, took her mind off a hard time, or helped her feel better about herself – is still the absolute best feeling in the world.

FS: Who are some authors that can be found on your bookshelf?

JW: Authors whose books I will always buy the week they come out include Stephen King, Susan Isaacs, Peter Straub, Alice Hoffman, Anne Tyler, Andrew Vachss, I read lots of chick lit – Marian Keyes, Laura Zigman, Jane Green, Anna Maxted, lots of Red Dress Ink and Downtown Press books – because I find that the plots and characters tend to speak to me, and to keep up with developments in the genre.

Right now in my stack are Dani Shapiro’s FAMILY HISTORY, Jeffrey Eugenides’ MIDDLESEX, THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE and Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s THE DIRTY GIRLS SOCIAL CLUB….plus a bunch of books on parenting newborns!

FS: Who wouldn’t be caught dead on your bookshelf?

JW: I’ve never been able to get through a Danielle Steel book. Same with Mary Higgins Clark. I know there are people who love them, the way I love Stephen King, but for some reason, neither of those authors do much for me.

FS: Any closing comments?

JW: So…very…tired…..