Jennifer Belle on complicated teenage girls, and writing with Madonna

What does Charles Portis’s 1968 novel, True Grit, twice made into a Hollywood western,  have in common with Kay Thompson’s whimsical children's book, Eloise? Here to tell us is Jennifer Belle, the author of five novels, including most recently, Swanna in Love, an indelible, and often very funny portrait of a 14-year-old girl trapped in an artist’s commune in Vermont with her bohemian mother and her mother’s alcoholic lover. Belle is no novice at crafting novels that push readers outside their comfort zone, and heartily defends the right of all novelists to do the same. Here she talks about her early fame,  hanging out with Madonna, and why the campaign to cancel Jeanine Cummins, author of American Dirt, transformed publishing for the worst.