One of the best parts of our job is being able to interview some of our favorite designers, celebrities and authors. When we had the chance to interview Stephanie Clifford, author of the soon-to-be released (August 18th) novel “Everybody Rise,” we couldn’t wait.
“Everybody Rise” is a witty book about finding your place in society. It touches upon all things that 20-something year olds feel during the crucial post-college graduation time: worried, anxious, afraid, hopeful. We meet our main girl, Evelyn Beegan, who is trying to make her way around a very bourgeois class of people in Manhattan. The book takes us on a ride of Evelyn’s ups and downs of wanting so badly to fit in. “In order to fit in there, she begins lying–she changes the way she dresses, she changes the makeup she wears, she changes her hair. The lies quickly get bigger and bigger until she has to reckon with the sort of made-up life she’s come up with,” Clifford explained.
And while these moments are definitely funny, there’s something extremely real about what Evelyn is going through and that’s so refreshing. After years of being blinded by the unrealistic expectations of living on your own and trying to make it, Clifford brought to life the struggles that happen to pretty much everyone, including herself. “I was trying to get that feeling of being an outsider into the book. When I came to New York I had a really hard time. I couldn’t get a job for two years. I was barely making rent. I didn’t have enough money to go out with my friends. I felt like I didn’t see that reflected–like in stories like Sex and the City. It was like cities are so glamorous, they’re so easy.”
Credit: Elena Seibert Photography
Trust us when we say that you’re going to love this book. It’s real and funny and smart, which makes total sense because that’s how we would describe Clifford. She’s not only a reporter at The New York Times, but she’s also a mom and now an author, proving that you can have it all, even if it takes forever to get. “I wrote Everybody Rise in the mornings before work. I began thinking about it almost ten years ago and I took some notes. Then I put it aside because I was like, ‘I can’t do this with a full-time job.’ Evelyn kept knocking on my window, being like, ‘Lady, like, I’m here. Please write about me.’ So, I picked it back up about five years ago and I wrote it from 6:00 to 8:00 in the mornings before work and it ended up being like this. Even more amount of time where I got married and had a kid.”
See, patience is a virtue!
We want you to have a chance to read “Everybody Rise,” so we’re doing a giveaway of the book! Just enter using the nifty widget below!
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