Blake Lively

When Ann Brashares took a leave of absence from her job at a book packaging company in New York
to write a young-adult novel about a magical pair of jeans that fits each of four girlfriends, despite their
different body types and figures, it must have seemed innocent enough.
But "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," released in 2001, became a best-selling phenomenon,
spawned fan clubs and Web sites and three sequels, the last of which, "Forever in Blue" -- and the last
"Traveling Pants" novel forever and ever -- was recently published in a printing of 500,000 copies.
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Brashares will be in Memphis Monday for visits to the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library at 3 p.m. and
Davis-Kidd Booksellers at 6 p.m. Line tickets are required for the event at Davis-Kidd and are available
with the purchase of "Forever in Blue" (Delacorte Press, $18.99).
The other books in the series are "The Second Summer of the Sisterhood" (2003) and "Girls in Pants:
The Third Summer of the Sisterhood" (2005). The first book was made into a movie released in 2005
starring Blake Lively (Bridget); Amber Tamblyn (Tibby); Alexis Bledel (Lena); and America Ferrera
(Carmen).
Brashares, 39, lives in New York with her husband, artist Jacob Collins, and their children, Sam,
Nathaniel and Susannah.

Q: Did you have any idea, any hint, when "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" was published in 2001 that it would become an international phenomenon? That there would be translations into 30 languages, fan clubs, Web sites?

A: It's kind of what you dream of but not anything you could anticipate. These books are not autobiographical except in the sense that people tend to have similar experiences and feelings, but when you open up your interior world, you wonder if your brain works like other people's brains. The nature of the human heart is universal and timeless, but when you realize that the connection is there, that it has been made on this scale, that's the best thing.

Q: Your editor, Wendy Loggia, said in an interview in Publishers Weekly that "The Traveling Pants" series "has all the elements that teen and tween girls want." As the author of a four-book series about adolescent girls, what do you think they want?

A: You can't make a good formula. I guess I was more guided by my intuition. What girls want is partly what I want, good stories and characters they can connect to. I write emotionally, I get into the head and heart of a character. It's comforting to know that people think like that. At that age, you have so many doubts and fears. They want to find the ability to rise above that. They connect to friendship and love and all the issues of figuring out who we are.

Q: Taking four girls -- Lena, Carmen, Bridget and Tibby -- from early adolescence to their freshman year in college means covering a lot of emotional and psychological ground. And physical, in the sense of growing awareness of sexuality. I mean, in "Forever in Blue," there's a pregnancy scare. How do you write for your audience of young girls and cover these topics frankly and sensitively?

A: Those are definitely issues we thought about because there's a gap now between the age of the girls and the age of the readers. The earlier books were a little bit less sexual. I mean, in the first book, Bridget has her first sexual experience and it really ends up hurting her, she's just too young. But now that they're in college, it's not honest to sidestep the issues. I want to represent the characters well and how they will deal with these problems, but, again, I worry about the age of the readers. I want parents to know that. The books are never, ever gratuitous or explicit. Sex is a big deal, of course, and I don't want to be discouraging or moralistic, but I want readers to be aware of how fragile these things are.

Q: And now the "Traveling Pants" series is complete and you're writing fiction for adults. How's that going? How different does it feel?

A: I just finished a book, "The Last Summer (of You & Me)." It was a little difficult at first. I was self-conscious about the kind of writer I am, but I had to write what the next thing had to be. It was important for me to drop the self-consciousness about my status as a writer.

Q: What happened to "The Girl of Lost Things"?

A: Ah, my lost girl. I wrote that between the third and fourth "Pants" books. I was going through a hard time personally, and the novel was too sad and dark. It was painful to write and painful to read. I didn't feel confident enough to put it forward. Maybe I'll go back to it someday.

Q: It's all over the Internet. Amazon.com still lists the publication date as May 1, 2006, and kids are writing in wondering if it is or is not the fourth "Pants" book.

A: These things take on a life of their own on the Internet. It's an alternate reality.

Q: How do you feel about touring? I mean, you don't really have to. You have a huge established fan-base and a string of best-sellers in the series.

A: Well, you can't take anything for granted. Yes, it's hard to go away. My 5-year-old is unhappy with it. But it's important to support a book and gratifying to meet readers and find out how they feel and what the books meant to them. I'm always afraid to have expectations.

Q: In each of the "Traveling Pants" books, you give a fond acknowledgement "first and always" to Jodi Anderson.

A: She thought of the initial premise, talking about one of her experiences one day with me, sharing a pair of jeans one summer with her friends in college. That was definitely the beginning of the "Traveling Pants." Jodi played an important role.

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