Caitlin Moran on Her Raunchy Teen Heroine

By Allison P. DavisFollow @allisonpdavis - Vulture

Photo: Mark Harrison

Caitlin Moran, author of the 2010 memoir How to be a Woman, is back this fall with a  novel: How to Build a Girl. It’s a coming-of-age tale she describes as “a bit like Little House on the Prairie, but with really big penises and getting too drunk.”

Her heroine might not appear to have much in common with the Katniss Everdeens of the YA universe: Johanna is overweight, foulmouthed, and obsessed with sex. She’s not on a quest to save the world; she just wants to make a career as a music writer and escape small-town British poverty. But Moran still has grand, YA-epic-style plans for Johanna. “This is going to be a trilogy,” she told the Cut. “The next book is called How to Be Famous, and the last book is How to Save the World. In the last book, I intend to show girls how they can start the revolution.”

Moran spoke to the Cut about healthy hobbies like masturbation, and why she loves people who look like potatoes.

Why decide to tackle fiction? Why not just write another memoir?
You have stuff like the Hunger Games, Divergent, and Twilight and we’re seeing a lot of strong female characters but they’re all in terrible dystopias. It’s on their shoulders to save the world or they’re completely ostracized from society or mankind is completely broken down. It’s great that we’ve got them, but I wanted to show that it’s equally difficult to be a teenage girl even in a time when society isn't  broken-down. Just in the times when you’re trying to find a pair of trousers to wear to kiss someone and trying to work out what the rest of your life’s going to be. That’s a difficult enough quest to be on as a teenage girl.

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