Today's Author Spotlight is on Casey Lewis and her non-fiction debut Dorm Living: Get The Room — and the Experience — You Want at College. Regular Ypulse readers and Teen Fashionista followers will remember Casey as our former Campus Editor and won't be surprised to see she's applied her stylish eye, quick wit and wealth of experience as a current college student and longtime blogger to her first book.

All the more reason the incoming crop of college students and their parents should pay attention to her advice on how to get the most out of their freshman year inside and out of their dorm rooms. Dorm Living is on sale now, but we're giving away a free copy to the first three commenters to share their most memorable experience with dorm life.

2010 Ypulse Mashup attendees can also catch Casey on the 2010 Totally Wired Youth Entrepreneur panel!

Ypulse: First off, congratulations on the book! Can you tell us a little about how the idea for a guide to dorm living and decorating came together?

Casey Lewis: Thank you so much! Last spring, I came across a fantastic dorm room in New York Magazine that I just loved, so naturally, I blogged about it. A few weeks later, I was contacted by a book publisher who came across my blog because of this tiny two-sentence post I had written about the dorm. She liked my writing style, and she asked if I would be interested in doing a proposal about having a great lifestyle while living in a dorm room.

I was finishing up final exams and getting ready to move to New York City for a summer internship, but I had a window of three or four days and typed up what I hoped was a book proposal. To my surprise, she loved it and my first week in the city I snagged the book deal. It made for an exhausting summer, interning until six or so and then writing until midnight, but it was an incredible experience.

YP: What was your personal dorm experience like? How much did you draw on that for the book? What other type of research did you do?

CL: I have always had an interest in design, but I never knew too much about decor–until last summer, of course. I was suddenly reading twenty decorating blogs a day and buying magazines like Better Homes and Gardens and ReadyMade.

I was able to draw on my experience living in a dorm, not because my room was so expertly decorated, but instead because I was able to write about what I wish I knew when I was a freshman. When I first started school, college was an overwhelming experience for me. I was going from my very small hometown (pop. 3,000) to an enormous state school (pop. 30,000). I was living in an all-female dorm with lots of city girls. I was suddenly sharing a room–one a fraction of the size of my bedroom at home–with a girl I had never met. So what I was hoping to accomplish was writing something that would have been helpful to have at that point in my life.

Because the book covers things like how to avoid being a broke college kid and how to get great grades and still have fun (both things I had to research for the book and my own life!), I read every college guide, blog, and article I could get my hands on. More than anything, though, it helped that I am still a college student, and that I was actually living in a dorm room while I was writing the book.

YP: Are there any brands or resources for incoming students that really get it right when it comes to helping make the process easier? Which ones and why?

CL: Target has so much to offer to a new college student that it blows my mind. The home decor department is incredibly sophisticated, and you can literally get everything you need for freshman year, from dishes to bedding, from clothes to food. I also think PB Teen is a great brand and though it's obviously aimed at teenagers, their home goods are incredible and I would transfer schools if it meant living in one of the model dorm rooms from their catalog.

YP: Even though it's only been a few years, did you notice any changes between freshman year experiences today and those earlier on in the decade? If so, what were they?

CL: I think, for the most part, the college experience changes very little over time, but if anything, the prevalence of social networking has enhanced it. A decade ago, students didn't have Facebook and Twitter to connect to the degree that they do now. Freshman year, not knowing anyone, Facebook helped me enormously when it came to putting a name to a face. (It also made me quite the computer geek, but those seeds were already planted.)

For more coverage of YA books and publishing, check out the Ypulse Books & Print Channel sponsored by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, publishers of Fang.

Categorized under: Author Spotlight, Books & Print

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