Tara Altebrando

About Tara Altebrando

Tara Altebrando’s work has appeared in Mademoiselle and Seventeen. She grew up on Staten Island, New York, where she once spent a summer working as a farmgirl at a historic village. She is a graduate of Harvard University who also writes under the name Tara McCarthy. She lives in Queens, New York.

Popgurls Interview!

Check out 20 Questions with Tara Altebrando on Popgurls and you’ll learn about the inspiration for her books, what’s up next, and some of Tara’s guilty pleasures…

Radio Interview!

Listen to a fun podcast featuring songs that inspired Tara’s books, songs inspired BY Tara’s books, and an interview in which Tara says silly things like “I’d never want to be like Harper Lee.”

Q&A

How did you come up with the idea for The Pursuit of Happiness?

I spent a few summers during high school working at a historic village. The first summer, I was a volunteer who was stuffing envelopes in an office and also working in the gift shop. The second summer I graduated to the costumed staff and worked as a farm girl. It was a hoot. My mother also died that summer, so the whole experience really stuck in my mind quite powerfully. If you ever dressed up like this you’d never forget it either:

How much of the story is based on your own life?

Outside of the premise, not that much. I think some of the broad strokes are definitely things I was dealing with at that age-obviously dealing with loss and also dealing with life as a teenager-but the details are very different. I made a new friend at the village—that’s Adrienne above—but she doesn’t really have that much in common with the character of Liza in the end. The story and the characters just sort of took over and told their own story after a point. Also, for example, the whole fast food thing never happened to me. My father always made sure we were well fed! I got the idea to make Betsy interested in sillouette art because of a series of sillouettes my family had made at Disney World when I was little. Here’s mine:

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I started writing books and stories at a very young age, like the fourth grade. And I’ve kept diaries and journals-pretty much ever since I learned to write. I don’t think I realized I wanted to write novels until much later, like in my early twenties. I wrote a few really bad ones that I never finished before finally figuring out, I think, how novels work.

Why do you write under two names?

My “Tara McCarthy” books are intended for a more general fiction readership and have a bit more “adult” content. My “Tara Altebrando” books (well, there’s only one so far, but hopefully there will be more!) are more directly aimed at teens because the books deal with issues that teens can more directly relate to.

McCarthy is my maiden name. Altebrando is my married name. Someday I might just publish everything under my official name (according to the IRS)-Tara McCarthy Altebrando-but it’s kind of long to fit on a book cover!

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