In a recent interview with Laurie Halse Anderson at the Santa Monica Public Library, the author  proved to be a humorous and down-to-earth woman, despite the gritty details of her novels. 

Anderson, the author of national best sellers such as Speak and Fever 1793,  writes about actual events in her historical fiction novels, and problems that teenagers deal with every day, such as nutritional eating habits and disorders.  

  In her most recent novel, Wintergirls, which debuted on March 19, her main character Lia, deals with the death of an estranged friend and anorexia. 

"Anorexia has the highest fatality rate of any mental disorder including depression," said Anderson during the press conference. For this reason, she focuses on such topics in her stories. She noted that 10 percent of people with eating disorders are male and "40 percent percent of all football players are binge eaters."

Her most famous novel, Speak, has been added to middle and high school reading lists all over the U.S. Speak tells the story of a girl who starts high school and becomes a an outcast of a sort, barely speaking after the traumatic event of being raped by a senior at her school. Even now, the author faces backlash for the book that was published 10 years ago.

The book became a movie in 2004, starring Kristen Stewart as the leading actress. Ironically, Stewart was also the leading actress in the movie version of bestselling author Stephenie Meyer's story Twilight, which Anderson said wasn't her "cup of tea."

Anderson loved the movie version of Speak. 

Showtime  produced the movie, which cost $1 million. Anderson believes they didn't spend nearly enough on it. The company also wanted the movie to be family-oriented, so the movie ending was somewhat different than the book's.  

Anderson also expressed her utmost sympathy for teenagers. At one point she was tearing up and apologized to them, stating that " teenagers are disrespected in today's culture," and that adults are "not nurturing enough to teens and most adults don't deal with children's adolescence well."

She feels that "teenagers are smart and desperate for adults that will help them make sense of the world."

As for her newest novel, Wintergirls, Anderson said,  "Within the first 24 hours after it was released, I received many e-mails from fans who bought and read the book." She even received a letter from a girl who was in a clinic at the time, who read her book.  "At signings," she  stated," I see kids with scars and I know that those kids must not be happy, because happy kids don't cut themselves and I just want to lean over and hug them." 

To the parents who she believes may shelter their children too much, she said, "If we don't teach our kids what the world is like, they'll be vulnerable. No one can solve their problems." 

Wintergirls took her three years to write, and out of all her books, writing it was "the most intense of all."

Anderson's mother was anorexic, and as a teenager Anderson struggled with depression on and off.  The author gave tips to those in the audience wanting advice on writing their own novels. "No one can teach you how to write a bestselling novel. I did not go to college to get a literary degree. The professors who teach those classes are failed authors and want to make it so you fail the same way they did. I actually had my first rejection letter from a publishing company laminated  and framed, to remind myself that no one gets it right the first time. I write streams of consciousness to help get ideas to form a story."