Sarah Dessen was born in Evanston, Illinois, on June 6, 1970 to Alan and Cynthia Dessen, who were both professors at the University of North Carolina, teaching Shakespearean literature and classics. As a teenager, Dessen was very shy and quiet. She became involved with a 21-year-old when she was 15 but cut all contact with him shortly after. She has admitted in an interview that "for many years afterward, I took total blame for everything that happened between me and T. After all, I was a bad kid. I did drugs, I lied to my mom. You can't just hang out with a guy and not expect him to get ideas, I told myself. You should have known better. But maybe he should have. When I turned 21, I remember making a point, regularly, to look at teens and ask myself whether I'd want to hang out with them, much less date one. The answer was always a flat, immediate no. They were kids. I was an adult. End of story." Dessen attended Greensboro College in Greensboro, North Carolina, but dropped out not long after to enroll herself at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, to take classes in Creative Writing, resulting in her graduating with highest honors in Creative Writing.
Career
Dessen waitressed at the restaurant Flying Burrito in Chapel Hill while launching her writing career. She would write during the day and waitress at night. She later went on to quit her job as a waitress after the publication of her first book, That Summer, which was published in 1996. Following the publication of Dreamland, Dessen taught at the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill and wrote what would later become This Lullaby. Dessen's Along for the Ride made the New York Times Best Sellers List in 2009. After its publication, Dessen was referred to as a "best-seller machine". In November 2019, an Aberdeen News article quoted a Northern State University alumna as stating that she became involved in selecting books for the university's book club program "so could stop them from ever choosing Sarah Dessen." Dessen posted the quote on her Twitter feed, decrying it as "mean and cruel," which led to statements of support from other writers including Jodi Picoult, Jennifer Weiner, Siobhan Vivian, and Roxane Gay. The blog Jezebel criticized Dessen's reaction. Northern State University issued an apology for the alumna's comments. After Dessen's tweet and the reaction of the other authors, it was reported that the Northern State alumna had removed her social media accounts due to harassment and was worried about the effect on her career. Dessen and Gay subsequently apologized for their role in the harassment.
Awards and honors
Some of her novels have been among the ALA's "Best Fiction for Young Adults" selections: That Summer, Someone Like You, Keeping the Moon, Dreamland, This Lullaby, Just Listen, and Along for the Ride. Someone Like You was also one of the two winners of the 1999 "School Library Journal Best Book" award, and Keeping the Moon was the sole winner the next year. In 2017, Dessen was awarded the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her novels Dreamland, Keeping the Moon, Just Listen, The Truth About Forever, Along for the Ride, What Happened to Goodbye?, and This Lullaby.
Themes and writing style
In 2017, Dessen was interviewed by Anna Gragert. During the interview, Gragert asked Dessen about the style she uses in some of her books, otherwise known as "effortless perfection". Dessen describes this term as the young girls in her books being able to have friends, look good, be a good student and have your life together and make it look easy. At the start of the book, the reader is supposed to relate with the main characters and throughout their changes in the book, the reader should see that it is okay to not have everything together and not be perfect. Gragert asked Dessen about her anxiety coping mechanisms because writing tends to cause an author to be anxious. Dessen said that she likes to exercise and read in her free time because all writers are going to be anxious, it's part of the process, but it also opens their mind more because they see the world differently than readers.
Film adaptations
The 2003 romantic comedy-drama filmHow to Deal starring Mandy Moore, Allison Janney, Dylan Baker, Peter Gallagher and Trent Ford was based on both That Summer and Someone Like You. On May 30, 2019, it was announced that Netflix had purchased the rights to adapt three of Dessen's books into films: This Lullaby, Along for the Ride, and Once and For All.Along for the Ride will be the first adaptation, and Alyssa Rodrigues is the executive producer for the films.
