I came of age online in the late ‘90s. Some of the friends I made on listservs and LiveJournal at the time are still friends today, in “real life.” I was blogging and keeping a diary online years before I even had a cell phone. In retrospect, participating in a space that was public but still felt anonymous has undeniably shaped my identity as a writer.

I wonder if coming-of-age novels are changing because coming-of-age itself is changing as adolescence becomes increasingly protracted. (Some critics have raised the “second adolescence” phenomenon when referring to my novel’s twenty-two-year-old