Today's Ypulse Youth Advisory Board post comes from Liz Funk who at the impressive age of 20 has just had her first book, Supergirls Speak Out: Inside the Secret Crisis of Overachieving Girls, published! She stopped over at "The Today Show" this week as a part of her publicity tour, and we asked her to share the experience with our readers. We'll be running a Q&A with Liz (and giving away a few copies!) next week. Remember, you can communicate directly with any member of the Ypulse Youth Advisory Board by emailing them at youthadvisoryboard at ypulse.com… or just leave a comment!

Two Checks On The Bucket List: My Morning On 'The Today Show'

In April of 2007, my agent and I were sitting in the conference room of Simon and Schuster's Touchstone/Fireside imprint, talking with a team of editors, publicists, and sales staff about my proposal for a book about perfectionist girls and how perfect the topic would be for "The Today Show." We discussed how this is a topic that Meredith Viera would probably love, given that she has a teenage daughter and how she frequently discusses topics pertaining to teens girls on the show. (A few days prior to my pitch meeting at S&S, Viera had discussed how, unaware of its adult themes, she brought her daughter to see the highly sexual musical "Spring Awakening," and it was super-awkward).

Anyway, almost two years later, my book came to fruition in the form of a paperback tome with a very cute cover that I hope will appeal as much to parents as it will to teen girls, college students, and twentysomethings. Thanks to my amazing publicist, my best-case-scenario publicity goal also came to fruition, and I was booked as a guest on "The Today Show" two days ago, talking about Supergirls Speak Out.

Although I'd already had a little bit of an "I've arrived!" moment the day before when I walked through the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, paying homage to the place where I wrote a great deal of my book and contemplating that the next day Meredith Viera would be interviewing me about my book on national television, my real moment took place in a makeup chair in the basement of the NBC building in Rockefeller Plaza at 7:30 am on Tuesday having my hair blown out and my makeup done five feet from where singer Lily Allen was being coiffed (she was the musical guest of the day).

It was game time at 8:15am as I perched up on one of the stools alongside a Berkeley psychologist who also writes about teen girls and got mic-ed up. Meredith Viera came to sit with us a few minutes before the camera started rolling and chatted with us: she told us about her daughter who celebrated her sweet sixteen the previous Saturday, and she complimented my silly name ("Liz Funk").

After the cameras started rolling, the entire segment felt like a heartbeat, even though it actually lasted almost four minutes. After it was over, I took off the microphone, and was led into the hallway, where I shook hands with Matt Lauer and happily contemplated how I'd checked two things off my bucket list in one morning ("meet Matt Lauer" and "go on the TODAY show.")

For more coverage of YA books and publishing, check out the Ypulse Books Channel sponsored by the NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL: FIND BEAUTY CHALLENGE! (LB Teens).

About Liz Funk

Liz Funk is a freelance writer and college student. She has written for USA Today, Newsday, the Christian Science Monitor, the Huffington Post, Girls' Life, and CosmoGIRL!, among other publications. Liz' first book, Supergirls Speak Out, about the pressure on girls to be perfect, will be published by Simon and Schuster in March of 2009. She writes a blog for the Albany, N.Y. newspaper the Times Union and she edits the teen culture and politics blog GirlHeadQuarters.org. Liz is a senior at Pace University and lives in Manhattan. Her web-site is www.lizfunk.com.

Categorized under: Books & Print, Youth Advisory Board

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