Mona Awad, novelist and creative writing teacher, is known for blending fantasy and horror with modernized elements of classic fairy tales. Her novels “Bunny,” “Rouge” and “All’s Well” became BookTok sensations – particularly the former, which deals with a clique of girls in a New England MFA program. Awad returns to the story of “Bunny” in her newest book, “We Love You, Bunny,” a direct sequel. We spoke with Awad ahead of a Friday event at Lovestruck Books in Cambridge’s Harvard Square. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why did you want to return to the world of “Bunny”?
From the moment that I finished the first book back in 2017, I just missed the world of it so, so much – which is crazy, because it was a really big stretch for me to write that book, it was a leap into the surreal, into genres that I’d never really written in before, dabbling in horror, dabbling in fairy tale. I should have just been thrilled that I’d managed to finish the thing. A few years went by, and readers started finding the book online and making all of this art based on the book and tagging me in it. It was really readers that gave me permission to return. But I’d always wanted to return; I’d missed those bunnies.
What drew you to writing horror?
I didn’t know I was doing it. It was just that the story called for a scary moment. I think it was the fact that I was playing in fairy tale, and what a lot of contemporary readers of fairy tale might not realize – because we’re so exposed to these Disney versions – is that fairy tales in the 18th and 19th centuries were actually really violent, quite terrifying. The moment you are engaging in fairy tale, you are engaging in horror. I think that’s how I found my way into it, by going into the shadow side of fairy tale. And also by something I do in all of my work, playing with the idea of what’s in your head versus what’s really happening, which is a tension all four novels play with. Which narrative is the right one? Are they really making boys out of bunnies and axing boys in their attic? We’re never quite sure.
What fairy tales have really inspired your writing and “Bunny” in specific?
I thought a lot about “Beauty and the Beast,” which is the most popular fairy tale in the world, and for good reason. “Beauty and the Beast” explores all of our collective anxieties about desire and how desire is also often accompanied by fear, which is why our mates take these animal forms – but we can transform them with our love into something more familiar and beautiful for us. I think, too, “The Little Mermaid,” which I love and is in every book I write. At its core, that story is about somebody who is longing to change and wants to go beyond the world that they know, but to do that has to make a big sacrifice. There’s a real cost to transformation, and all my books explore that longing to move beyond the body or the world that you know; that sense of unbelonging that might need you to long for that; and the shadow side of getting what you want.
Where did the idea for “Bunny” come from?
I did go to an MFA in New England, and I did think to myself “this would make a great horror novel.” So that’s one thing. I knew I wanted to write about that experience, but also I had been longing for quite some time to write a fairy tale-esque teen story, and what I had in my head was that it would be this gang of Snow Whites and be told from the perspective of this outsider girl – and I realized that the MFA novel and this teen novel were the same thing: When I finished the MFA, I realized it was so much like high school. And creative writers live in their heads, where it’s all about the world of the imagination, so there’s permission in the MFA concept to bring in the magical.
I love the use of popular culture references in your books. Was there anything you were particularly planning to refer to in “I Love You, Bunny?”
The bunny boy is said to look like Jacob Chamalord, which is an actor I invented. But here’s your Easter egg: Jacob Chamalord is actually Jacob Elordi and Timothée Chalamet, and I just didn’t want to date the book by saying one or the other, and I also didn’t want the reader to have a precise idea of what he looks like, because I want to leave room for projection and fantasy. But the pop references are in there for anyone who’s looking.
What do you hope readers take away from the novel?
Ultimately what I think the book is trying to say is that love is real, no matter what shape it takes, and that love is truly a transformative act, and that creativity, when you’re engaging in it ethically, is always an act of love.
Smut Salon Celebration for “We Love You, Bunny” from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday at Lovestruck Books, 44 Brattle St., Harvard Square, Cambridge, with Bunny-themed bingo, a 20-minute chat with Mona, and a chance to get your burning questions answered by the author herself. Every guest will receive a signed and personalized copy of the book, plus access to craft stations and a specialty Light and Sunny cocktail at our bar. $45, now waitlist only.
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