Hailing from the Chicago suburbs, Ann Zhao graduated from Wellesley College in December with a degree in linguistics and a minor in women’s and gender studies. “Dear Wendy,” her debut novel, charts an online feud between college students Sophie Chi and Jo Ephron as they unknowingly become friends in real life. Sophie runs the popular Instagram account “Dear Wendy,” on which she offers relationship advice to fellow students despite knowing she’ll never fall in love herself; when Jo creates their “Sincerely Wanda” account, a rivalry emerges between Wanda and Wendy. This young adult, dual-POV novel brings two aromantic and asexual characters to the forefront and puts a twist on the classic enemies-to-lovers plot, with Zhao’s interpretation a kind of “enemies to friends” plot. “Dear Wendy,” which Zhao wrote during her first year of college and sold to Macmillan in her second year, comes out April 16; she speaks at Porter Square Books the next day. We interviewed Zhao on March 22; her words have been edited for length and clarity.
It’s not often we see a book center an asexual and aromantic character, no less two. What inspired you?
I really wanted to see more characters in fiction that reflected my own identity. Representation of asexual and aromantic characters in media is becoming more common: There’s Todd from “Bojack Horseman” and Isaac from “Heartstopper,” both prominent characters in well-known TV shows who are asexual. But it’s still relatively rare to see.
“Dear Wendy” feels like an enemies-to-lovers plot but without the love. How would you describe the relationship between your protagonists and how the book as a whole?
Sophie and Jo have this trajectory of becoming best friends, and I intentionally wrote that to mirror a romance plotline. There’s this series of books and guides called “Save the Cat!” by Blake Snyder that include resources for writing novels and screenplays, and he has this outline for a type of story called “buddy love,” which centers around two people who discover that they are better together than apart. It can be used for a romantic story, but it can also be used for a non-romantic story. Sophie and Jo are better (as friends) than they are apart. I like to call it a platonic comedy, or just a comedy novel. We don’t use the term “comedy” much in fiction writing, compared to how much we use it in TV or film, but if “Dear Wendy” was a TV show or a movie, that’s how it would be categorized.
Did your own college experiences find their way into the book? Do you see yourself in Sophie or Jo?
Yes! I wrote a lot about my own college experiences. There are little things, like Sophie lives in the dorm I lived in my freshman year, and Jo lives in the dorm that a bunch of my friends lived in. Jo gets motion sickness on the bus to Boston, which was something I would struggle with too when I took the bus from Wellesley to Boston. But there’s also a lot of stuff that I made up. I wrote it during the pandemic lockdown, so my experience on campus thus far had been really muted and really different from how it would have been without the pandemic and from how Sophie and Jo experienced it. I had to figure out a lot of what they would have been doing if not for the pandemic, and I spent a lot of time in revisions with my editor to hone the experiences that they have. In the first draft of the book, I never had them leave the town of Wellesley, because I was not allowed to leave the town, but I had to learn how to amend their experiences accordingly.
What do you hope people can take away from “Dear Wendy”?
I really hope that people are entertained by it. If I get a laugh out of you, I consider that a success, because like I said, I think of “Dear Wendy” as a comedy. But I also hope that it can help people who want to know more about the asexual and aromantic experience. There aren’t a lot of books about it, and even in the books that do exist, the characters are usually still discovering their identities or feeling unsure about how to express them. In “Dear Wendy,” Sophie and Jo are pretty confident in these identities already, so I hope people can take away a more nuanced view of the experience than many other books offer.
How does it feel to have your story out in the world? What would you say to other young aspiring writers?
It’s really exciting to have a book published this early in my life. It’s also scary, because I sort of just wrote it for fun, and I put a lot of my own feelings into it. It’s weird knowing that people are consuming it and will be picking it apart and critiquing it. I never read my reviews; I don’t touch Goodreads. Sometimes a friend will text me a review that they saw that they really liked, and then I’ll read that, but otherwise I never do, because I have this fear of knowing that people are actually reading it. I know this is part of the job, and obviously more people reading it is a good thing because it means more copies of the book are being sold, but it’s still tough!
My biggest piece of advice is just to work on the book, finish the book and be proud of the fact that you have written something – before even thinking about publication or the industry at all. I work best when I’m not stressed, when I’m just writing for fun, and it’s a lot more enjoyable when I’m not worried about what other people are going to think of it or whether it’s going to do well as a piece of commercial work. I think you just have to think about it artistically and enjoy the process for yourself. I’m working on another book, but it’s not contracted for publication; I’m just working on it on my own time. I’m hoping it goes somewhere, but I’m just focusing on the process for now.
- Ann Zhao speaks at 7 p.m. April 17 at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Porter Square, Cambridge. RSVP here.
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