And then Lia showed up in my head and started talking. It was a process of gathering crumbs of information and stowing them all away and waiting for the voice to come. I also spoke with ED survivors who were well into their recoveries. I went to pro-ana web sites (which foolishly promote anorexia as a lifestyle choice) to see what they were talking about. I spoke with them and did as much reading as I could in medical journals. My pediatrician friend helped me with the clinical details and referred me to some psychiatrists.

I realized that all these threads were showing me a clear path, and it was time for me to take my own challenge and dive into something that was difficult to see what I could make of it. She felt that there really hadn’t been a good novel written about eating disorders, and she thought I might be able to write one. The third factor was a friend who is a doctor.She had been bugging me for years (in a very not subtle way) to write about eating disorders, because she saw so much of it in her practice. They didn’t know how else to deal with the pain that was overwhelming them. At the same time, a lot of girls-and some boys-started to talk to me about cutting. I received emails and letters from kids struggling with eating disorders and they touched me deeply. The last thing I wanted to write about was an eating disorder.īut my readers convinced me to write Wintergirls. You’re stupid.” It started when I was 11 years old and haunted me for decades, tearing down my confidence and driving me to eat in an unhealthy way. I remember the voice that whispered, “You’re fat. I’ve battled a poor body image my whole life they called me “Baby Hippo” when I was a kid and “Moose” when I was in high school. I never could be classified as anorexic, but disordered eating was definitely a piece of my life. I was reluctant to take on the topic of eating disorders because it hit too close to home.

What was your inspiration for Wintergirls?

Wintergirls book