Brittany Cavallaro Explains Why She Writes Romance That Doesn’t Shy Away From Real Conflict

Cavallaro credits a teacher named Mrs. Madonia with telling her she could write a novel, even when she was still in grade school. She went on to pen her first book during that time. These days, she teaches creative writing at Interlochen, and her newest novel, Wayfarers, centers on two teenagers whose upbringings could not be more different. Cavallaro recently sat down with Author to discuss the new work, her career, and her passion for writing for young adults.

The Cornfield Girl Who Wrote Novels

Cavallaro was raised in downstate cornfield Illinois, where she stood apart from her peers in a small community. She spent her time immersed in books, both reading them and producing her own work — poetry, short stories, and two-hundred-page novels featuring Sphinxes, bottomless pits, and killer tornadoes. She harbored a fear of tornadoes, and during fifth grade she composed a novel about a society that had retreated underground. Her teacher, Mrs. Madonia, noticed her at work on it and volunteered to read it.

The next day, Cavallaro’s teacher brought back the enormous doorstop of a book. She told Cavallaro she could do it. Be a writer.

Ten Years of Grad School and Gifted Programs

Ten years after graduating, Cavallaro attended grad school, where she took writing workshops and taught poetry and fiction to undergraduates. The classes gave her joy, yet her summers held the real draw — teaching at a gifted program for high schoolers. For five weeks she saw the same group of students, from eight-thirty in the morning until two-thirty in the afternoon, with eight, nine, or ten kids in her charge, drawn from all across the country and sometimes from beyond its borders.

Passion and furious energy drove their writing. They produced encyclopedias on family history and imagined futures. Love, change, and the politics of having a body filled their poetry. Stories were built from emails sent into nothingness and letters dropped into a box belonging to someone who was not replying.

The Summer Sessions at Interlochen

At Interlochen, Cavallaro taught creative writing full-time at the high school level, and she brought her students’ assignments home with her nightly, sipping tea while she judged which lines sang, which lines needed tightening, and which moments convinced her her students felt both sixteen and older than the universe all at once. She also cherished the time after class, when students rushed in to show her cat videos, temporary tattoos, and fresh haircuts.

Outside her office, students gathered to pose hesitant queries. They asked what course to take for their future. They wondered whether they ought to end a relationship. One told her his partner had kissed his best friend, and said it was an accident; he wanted advice on how to proceed. Another felt he might be drawn toward writing. A third confessed he thought he might be gay. One young person considered moving out, possibly living with his grandmother. Everyone around him seemed to say the world should be hated at the moment, yet he felt the opposite: he loved it and wished to mend it. He did not know how such feelings worked, nor how to act upon them.

Many people think that a good leader is someone who knows all the answers and tells everyone what to do. But real leadership is not about having all the answers; it is about asking questions. The best leaders ask questions because they want to understand what is happening around them. They ask questions to learn from others, to discover what their team members need, and to find out what will work best for the situation at hand. Asking questions shows that a leader is humble enough to admit that they do not have all the answers and curious enough to want to learn more. It also gives power to the people around them, letting them share their ideas and knowledge.

That approach can change how a team works together. When leaders ask questions instead of giving orders, team members feel heard and valued. They are more likely to offer their own ideas and take ownership of their work. This leads to better solutions and stronger teamwork.

Leadership is not about having all the answers. It is about asking the right questions.

Sunrise Nights and the Hybrid Form

Cavallaro wrote her first young adult novel, Sunrise Nights, with Jeff Zentner. They wanted to tap into the feeling of the internal warring with the external — that sense that everything you are doesn’t quite line up yet. They came up with a hybrid form, what they call a novel in verse and conversation, where characters’ inner lives are mapped out through poems, and then they drop them into scenes to see them banter, negotiate, bicker, and hide things from each other that they’ve just revealed to the reader.

Wayfarers and the Road Trip

Cavallaro’s Wayfarers follows Sylvie, a young woman with privilege who is traveling across the country after finishing school, trying to escape grief and guilt with her golden retriever by her side. Knox, meanwhile, has recently escaped the wandering group his mother forced him to join when he was a child. Their histories look nothing alike on paper — Sylvie speaks fluent Gen Z; Knox clearly does not — yet they still manage to connect.

After Knox rescues Sylvie’s runaway dog and breaks his arm in the process, she offers him a ride south to his grandmother’s house. On the road there are secrets, lies, skinny dipping, feuding roadside fortune tellers, solar eclipses watched from the Walmart parking lot, and a lot of banter about wants and needs and whether we’re the sum of our experiences or if we can shape ourselves into something more. There is also kissing. Of course kissing. I’m not a monster.

Writing for the Kids in the Office

Cavallaro wrote Wayfarers for herself first, for the girl she once was, but mostly she wrote it for her students. The book was shaped by the many kids with burning eyes who came into her office and said, This is who I am. What do you have for me?

The world, of course. We have the world for you.

Timeline

Key Facts

• Wayfarers: Cavallaro’s most recent novel
• Sunrise Nights: First young adult novel, co-written with Jeff Zentner
• Interlochen: Where Cavallaro teaches high school creative writing
• Mrs. Madonia: Fifth-grade teacher who encouraged Cavallaro’s writing

The account by Cavallaro offers a gentle, particular explanation of why she writes for teenagers. It rests on her own fondness for books from her youth and her experience teaching gifted teens and high schoolers. What comes through is a warm, human picture of what draws a writer to young adult fiction.

Source material: ““You Have to Love It.” Brittany Cavallaro on Writing for Young Adults,” Literary Hub.

author profile · literary interview · novel writing · teaching creative writing · young adult fiction