Jamie Beth Cohen is the author of Wasted Pretty (Black Rose Writing 2019), a YA coming-of-age novel that explores growing up as a girl in a pre-#metoo era. Cohen earned a BFA in English from George Mason University and a master’s degree in higher education administration from City University of New York. Her work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun and Washington Post, at Teen Vogue, in the anthology Crossing Limits: African Americans and American Jews, and elsewhere. She lives in Lancaster County, PA.
Two nuns and a penguin approach you at a bar, and you tell them you’re a writer. When they ask you what you write about, how do you answer?
I’d probably quote my own bio and say, “I write about difficult things, but my friends think I’m funny!” Seems like a punchline to a joke, right? Hopefully they’d laugh, and if they let me expand, I’d explain that because I’m both a fiction writer and a non-fiction writer, I get to write about a wide range of topics I find interesting. My published non-fiction includes essays on parenting, feminism, Judaism, politics, end of life issues, and more. My published fiction generally centers on teens and twenty-somethings going through growing pains. My debut novel, Wasted Pretty, published by Black Rose Writing in April 2019, is the story of a sixteen-year-old girl who is noticed for her appearance for the first time and all the things that are exciting, annoying and, in her case, dangerous about that moment.
Points is a blog primarily for drug and alcohol historians. What do you think this audience would find most interesting about your work?
Alice, the main character in Wasted Pretty, is not a big drinker, but her best friend Meredith is. Meredith experiments with diet pills and recreational drugs as well. But Chris Thompson, the college guy Alice has a crush on is sober. He crashed and burned during his freshman year, largely due to excessive drinking, so he’s working hard to put himself back together. The more time Alice spends with Chris the more her friend’s substance use bothers her.
Also, Alice’s dad is a gambling addict in the throes of his addiction. There are interesting parallels and counterpoints between what Chris went through as a teenage alcoholic and how he’s handling it and what Alice’s dad is going through as an adult who does not have a handle on his addiction.
Additionally, in one scene, Alice wants to make a “bad” choice. She knows it’s wrong, but she’s determined to do it anyway, so she gets drunk, as if to have some plausible deniability after the fact. However, she’s not prepared for the reality that her bad decision has unintended and far-reaching consequences.
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