Leigh Kazmaier

About 40 students attended the event, “One on One with Megan McCafferty” on Oct. 7 in the New Library Auditorium. McCafferty, author of the popular Jessica Darling series that includes “Sloppy Firsts,” “Second Helpings” and New York Times bestsellers “Charmed Thirds” and “Fourth Comings,” is also a former magazine editor for Cosmopolitan, YM and Fitness. The free event was organized by the College’s Ed2010 chapter.

During the event, McCafferty discussed her writing career and read an excerpt from her fifth and final Darling novel, “Perfect Fifths,” which will be released April 2009. McCafferty took cues from her own life to shape the series. Darling, the heroine of McCafferty’s novels, is a New Jersey native who enters the fast-paced magazine industry after graduating college; McCafferty was born and raised in Bayville, N.J., before entering the editorial world.

Attendees included fans of the series and students interested in magazine careers.

“Her books are such a guilty pleasure,” Caroline Guentart, sophomore international studies major, said. “She’s fantastic,” she added.

When McCafferty walked into the auditorium, she received an impromptu round of applause.

McCafferty, 35, charmed the audience from the start with her youthful and candid demeanor. She began her presentation by reading a short story she wrote in first grade titled, “What If All the Vegetables Learned to Dance?” The story was a chapter in her first book, appropriately titled, “I Love to Write.”

Sharing her early literary work is a common practice for McCafferty, who keeps what she calls a “(retro)blog,” in which she posts her middle and high school creative writing and excerpts from the diary she kept from the ages of 10 through 25. She is currently posting acts from a play she wrote in eighth grade titled, “Life is Tough” that she said is “terrible.”

“I really, really wanted to be a writer,” McCafferty said. “My dream of dreams was to write stories like Judy Blume that lots of little girls would read.”

For McCafferty, magazine editing ended up being an unhappy detour from her true passion. After graduating from Columbia University, McCafferty was the only one of her friends without a job. She “mortified” her parents by working as a stand-girl at Lucky Leo’s in Seaside Heights.

McCafferty finally landed a job as assistant to the editor-in-chief at YM, a position she described as “like Anne Hathaway in ‘The Devil Wears Prada,’ only without the fashion closet.”

Promoted four times in five years, McCafferty was a senior editor at Cosmopolitan when she realized she no longer liked her job. She quit in fall 1999 to “give (writing) a shot.” Six months later, she had written “Sloppy Firsts.”

Fans were shocked when McCafferty read the third-person opening of “Perfect Fifths,” since the other novels in the series are written as journal entries. According to McCafferty, two sections of the novel are written in third-person, one in verse and one completely in dialogue.

“I’m very happy with how (the series) ends and I think readers will be happy too,” she said.

Perhaps no moment during the event surprised audience members more than McCafferty’s impromptu song-and-dance rendition of “The Copacabana” at a fan’s request. On her blog, McCafferty, a self-proclaimed “thwarted performer” and Barry Manilow superfan, promises a prize to the first audience member who asks her to sing. The audience member promptly received an autographed cover of “Perfect Fifths.”

McCafferty stayed around after her talk signing books and talking with fans.

“I really feel like the audience could leave thinking they can also follow their dreams,” Nancy Sai, senior journalism and women’s and gender studies major, said.

Nicole Saylor, a visiting sophomore Ed2010 member from Temple University, marveled at McCafferty’s positive attitude.

“She has a personality that really captivates us as a group of teenage girls looking to go into the magazine industry,” she said. “She really embodies a teenage girl completely.”