We chat with author and illustrator Brian Selznick about Run Away With Me, which is a profoundly romantic YA novel about two boys finding each other and falling in love over one summer in Rome.
Hi, Brian! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi! I’m a writer and illustrator. I make books (like The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Wonderstruck and The Marvels), write screenplays and work in the theater. I’ve also been a professional puppeteer and once wrote the story for a ballet. My husband David Serlin is a professor at the University of San Diego, California. We live in New York and California.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
In elementary school a friend and I used to record ourselves on a tape recorder telling stories together about people in our school and doing funny voices, and then I started writing fantasy narratives about underwater cities, horses with horns and wings and children who could fly.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Fortunately by Remy Charlip
- The one that made you want to become an author: The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Borrowers by Mary Norton, with illustrations by Jo and Beth Crush
Your latest novel, Run Away With Me, is out now and marks your YA debut! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Three centuries of Queer love
What can readers expect?
Two sixteen year old boys, one Italian, one American, fall in love in the summer of 1986 amid the ancient wonders of Rome. Time peels back and we meet three other Queer couples throughout history, all of whom have to find ways to be happy within societies that either have no idea they exist or actively don’t want them to exist.
Where did the inspiration for Run Away With Me come from?
In January of 2021 my husband won something called the Rome Prize for his work writing about Italian architecture, and we had the incredible chance to move to Rome for eight months. It was the height of the pandemic and it was something of a miracle we were able to get there. We were able to experience Rome with no tourists and almost no Italians were going outside either, so everything was almost completely empty – the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel. It was like a dream, even though it was also very scary in many ways. We became friends with the other people who had won the Rome Prize and their families, and they told us about their work. Someone was studying obelisks, someone else was studying mosaics that showed the dreams of Pope’s in the 12th century, and everything inspired me. Eventually I started keeping a map with all my favorite places and favorite stories, and then I began to imagine to boys falling in love and visiting all these places. The story continued from there.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I came out when I was 26 and did not have a teen age love story myself, so it was really interesting to write about what it would have been like to fall in love when I was 16. The story is told in first person so it was like I was writing about myself even though I was not, really. But I did give one character my asthma, and I also gave him an operation on my chest that I’d had when I was ten, so there were many overlaps with my own history. The first time I really fell in love was when I met my husband when I was thirty, so it was like I was imaging love happening half a lifetime sooner.
Can you tell us about your process when it comes to incorporating illustrations?
I think in pictures, but I always write first. For my book The Invention of Hugo Cabret I didn’t know how I was going to illustrate the book when I started, so I wrote the story and then decided it might be interesting to try to tell the story like a silent movie since the story has a lot to do with film. So i went back into the story and removed any text that I thought I could show with pictures. I was also thinking alot about the Wild Rumpus scene in Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak when the drawings take over the whole book and there is no more white space and no more words. For Runaway With Me my original intention was to try to write a book with no pictures, which isn’t radical for a novel, but would have been radical for me since I’d never done that before. But talking with my editor David Levithan we realized that drawings could be used to enhance the experience of the story, which is what I am always trying to do when I use images. So the opening became a dream-like tour of an almost empty Rome (you can see one person in many of the drawings) which parallels my experience in the empty city even though this is not a pandemic book. But it means that by the time you get to the text you feel like you’ve already been to Rome, even if you’ve never actually been there. There are also drawings at the end of the book but if you can resist looking I’d say wait until you get to them while you’re reading, and don’t peek ahead!
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to end the book. The story takes place over ten weeks during the summer of 1986 and I knew the only real villain would be time. Once the two boys meet, they’d know the exact day the American boy would have to leave Italy, so the book becomes a kind of countdown. But I couldn’t figure out how to write them saying goodbye. In order to see how I overcame this, you’ll have to read the book!
What’s next for you?
I am writing another Queer young adult romance because I really loved the experience of making Run Away With Me. I’m also working on a few other projects including an adaptation of some of my other books for theater and film.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
Since I’m new to Young Adult books, I have a lot to catch up on. Luckily my editor David Levithan has been writing some of the best Queer Young Adult books for many years, starting with Boy Meets Boy in 2003, so I know many of his books. One upcoming book that I’m very much looking forward to is Futbolista by Jonny Garza Villa. I feel like I’m landing on a whole new planet and I can’t wait to explore!
