Deserved hype

As 'Prep' soars, author maintains modesty

Erika Gonzalez, Rocky Mountain News

Monday, June 20, 2005

Curtis Sittenfeld once reviewed the work of a new author in the online magazine Salon. The author was young, pretty, hyped and - to Sittenfeld's dismay - actually good.

Which made the writer easy for Sittenfeld to hate.

Two years later, Sittenfeld is the much-buzzed-about rising star. Her debut novel, Prep, is enjoying brisk sales, earning glowing reviews and has been optioned for a movie.

In other words, Sittenfeld has become the one who's easy to hate.

"I'm sure there's a little bit of sniping behind my back," says Sittenfeld, on the phone from Boston, one of many stops on a busy book tour. "I just wrote a piece for the Atlantic Monthly and I do basically say that somehow, if I wasn't me, but I read about myself, I might have found myself disgusting or annoying."

But after spending a few minutes talking with Sittenfeld, it becomes difficult to imagine her serving as the subject of anyone's scorn. In conversation, the 29-year-old author is modest, down-to-earth, self-deprecating and far more social than Lee Fiora, the protagonist of Prep, with whom she's often compared.

Prep follows Lee - a lonely fish out of water - through four years at an exclusive, New England boarding school where kids named Cross and Aspeth rule. A Midwesterner of modest means, Lee spends much of her high school years making herself invisible, feeling it's safer to simply observe the fascinating and sometimes cruel world that surrounds her.

"I was definitely not isolated in the way that Lee is isolated," says Sittenfeld of her teenage years, which also were spent at an East Coast boarding school. "I participated more in the life of the community."

Because of her background (like Lee, Sittenfeld has Midwestern roots and left home because of romantic notions of prep school life), Sittenfeld often is asked whether Prep is a memoir.

"If people really want to think that, then they can," says Sittenfeld, who tonight visits the Tattered Cover. "Most of it is not true."

Sittenfeld's boarding school experience likely would have made a much happier book. First, her name seems tailor-made for prep school circles, where girls are often named after boys and boys usually carry surnames as first names. Named after her mother, Elizabeth Curtis, Sittenfeld says her classmates never made an issue of her unusual moniker.

More important, it was during her high school years that Sittenfeld began to distinguish herself as a writer. At 16, she won the Seventeen magazine fiction writing contest. And in her senior year, she had an opinion piece published in The Washington Post.

"From the time I was 4, I've been writing stories and I've just never stopped," says Sittenfeld. "In some ways, I've had the most predictable career path of anyone I know."

In fact, Sittenfeld (who attended Vassar but completed her undergraduate degree at Stanford) almost got a kick-start in college. An editor from a publishing firm contacted her after seeing some of her work in a magazine, but ultimately rejected the submission.

"At the time I was disappointed," Sittenfeld recalls. "But now I think, 'Thank God.' The worst thing for me would've been to have a book come out when I was 20 years old. I think writers need time to mature."

After college, Sittenfeld won the Mississippi Review's annual fiction contest, but made a living working as a reporter for Fast Company magazine. She earned her MFA at the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Still, despite her education and the awards, Sittenfeld says she never felt pressure to become a writing wunderkind.

"I don't think it was a foregone conclusion that I would be a great success," says Sittenfeld, who just recently quit her job as an English teacher at a private school in Washington, D.C.

Even today, with Prep on the best-seller lists and a two-book deal with Random House under her belt, Sittenfeld still doesn't seem ready to claim the title of literary star. Although she has more obligations, she says life simply hasn't changed much.

"It's not like Lindsay Lohan and I are having drinks," she laughs.

Still, Sittenfeld recently got a reminder that her book is starting to have an impact - at least among younger readers. She learned the book has been assigned as summer reading for a private boys school.

"I guess the boys voted and the choices were Great Expectations, Native Son and Prep and they chose Prep," says Sittenfeld, still sounding a bit surprised.

"As an English teacher, I'm appalled. But as an author, it makes me want to dance a little jig."

Curtis Sittenfeld

• When and where: 7:30 p.m. today, Tattered Cover, 2955 E. First Ave.

• Cost: free

• Information: 303-322-7727 or www.tatteredcover.com

gonzaleze@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5350