We chat with author Bridget Morrissey about In What World, which follows two high school rivals who begrudgingly reunite as adults to investigate the disappearance of their beloved former teacher, only to wind up traveling through a series of alternate realities together.
Hi, Bridget! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hello, my name is Bridget Morrissey, and I am the author of several novels for adults and teens, including In What World, That Summer Feeling, and the USA Today bestseller This Will Be Fun, cowritten under the pen name E.B. Asher with authors Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
My love for writing stories started as soon as I knew how to write. When I was in the first grade, I used to write plays for my classmates and me to perform on the playground during recess, and I would come home and work on even more stories just for myself. I am the youngest of five, and there’s a sixteen-year age gap between my oldest sibling and me. I vividly remember one of my older sibling’s friends being over one day and finding a play I wrote called something like The Death of a Star and that friend drawing a bloody knife through the text for me. I thought that was the coolest thing ever, and it really made me feel like a legitimate writer.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: I can’t pinpoint the first book I remember reading, but I do remember being very viscerally affected by Racso and the Rats of Nimh by Jane Leslie Conly when I was maybe eight, and violently sobbing in my room as I finished it, so that’s the first time I remember a story really moving me.
- The one that made you want to become an author: The Hunger Games. There is a direct correlation between finishing that series and writing my first actual novel.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: A few months ago, I read There’s Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib, and I find myself thinking of that memoir often. I think about the craft side of it, because it is a genuine literary feat and so stunningly composed, and then just the small, very human elements he manage to put into words in that memoir.
Your latest novel, In What World, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Sapphic. Multiverse. Rivals. Theater. Healing.
What can readers expect?
They can expect a lot of those five words listed above! It’s a romance, but it also explores grief, how our dreams change as we age, letting go of old habits to make room for new beginnings, and all the ways in which we all need each other.
Where did the inspiration for In What World come from?
I’ve been trying to write a book like this for a really long time. I absolutely love time travel and asking myself what my life would look like in another version of reality, and that prompt is the driving force behind this book’s hook. I am also a theater kid, and this story is very much an homage to the beautiful madness that is teenagers who do musicals and who those teenagers become in adulthood. When I put those two elements together, In What World was born.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
In every alternate reality that Marlowe and Priscilla visit, they come face to face with another version of themselves. Getting the chance to not only write two main characters, but write several other iterations of those same characters is exactly what I love about writing. I got to play around with so many different sides of their personalities and really poke at the vulnerabilities they are both trying desperately to hide.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
In What World is my tenth published novel, but at the time I drafted it, I think it was like the sixteenth or seventeenth one I’d written. The more books I write, the harder I am on myself, so the challenge is often in just letting myself get the words down, because I am already self-editing and feeling frustrated that the sentences aren’t flowing out of me exactly the way I want. Recently, and it sounds so simple but it’s been radically helpful, I have been just chasing the joy of writing as I draft and giving myself permission to keep going even when I know the story isn’t exactly right yet. The only way out is through!
What’s next for you?
I’ve got a few books coming, but there are only two that the world knows about yet! That’s I Put A Spell On You, which comes out on January 12, 2027 and is the second book in my witchy YA romance series. This one centers on Piper and Ivy as they exchange hate-to-love letters over the month leading up to Valentine’s Day in their holiday-obsessed small town. Then in fall of 2027 we’ve got the next E.B. Asher cozy fantasy novel, Last Night In Lyris. We’re calling this one fantasy The Hangover meets the opposite of dark academia, about three magic university flunkies who have to figure out how to save their city from a dark curse they may or may not have caused while they were drunk. It’s zany and romantic and super fun!
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?
I’m very much looking forward to Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka’s Just In Time, which comes out at the end of the year. I love everything they write, and I know they’re gonna serve me up a perfect time travel romance! And I just finished American Fantasy by Emma Straub, and it’s quickly become one of my favorites of the year! Such a perfect encapsulation of what boy band fandom looks like for women in their forties. I want everybody to read it so we can all talk about it!
