Canwen Xu

Thank you.

I'm so excited to be here.

I actually listened to this show when I was querying and preparing to query.

So it's really exciting for me to kind of be on the other side now.

Oh, wow.

That's amazing.

Yeah, so I knew when I started writing that I wanted to write a story that took place at Columbia, my alma mater.

And the reason is that it was just such a unique experience with so many different characters, so many characters.

people who seemed so confident, but at the same time, really insecure.

And it was just at this very transitional point of everyone's lives, where looking back, I'm like, I felt I was trying to find my place in the world.

And everyone else was actually trying to find their place in the world as well.

But back then, I thought everyone else had it figured out.

And I was the only person who

who didn't have it figured out.

And I knew I wanted to write about a female friendship.

I'm kind of putting that in quotation marks because I know that term is overused.

But I wanted to write about, you know, the dynamic between two young women who

one who maybe has her life figured out a little bit more, one who has her life figured out a little bit less, even though on paper, it might seem the opposite.

That was just kind of, I think I started with kind of a vibe.

And I also wanted to incorporate these elements of, you know, being on a college campus where,