Mona Awad’s We Love You, Bunny is proof that literature needs more evil women

She tells me about her early student days, when she received over-the-top praise for her first poem and her professor told her, “You’re a poet.” She stopped writing and dropped out of the class. “I was just afraid to be a disappointment with the next thing I wrote. I felt like I could only go down from there. I worried that what I’d written was a fluke and that I didn’t actually have real talent.”

Margaret Atwood considers Awad her “literary heir apparent”. If we were considering contenders for “it”—that mysterious talent, charisma, voice, whatever makes someone exceptional—Awad would definitely be in the running. Her work has brought people together in strange ways. “Friends and strangers find each other, people form communities, they even reconnect with family because of Bunny. These are the stories I hear again and again as I go on the road in every city. I love that because ultimately, that book is about love. About the transformative power of love. And so is We Love You, Bunny.”

Art is central to Awad’s life and writing, and it shows. She cites Frankenstein, The Hare’s Bride, Beauty and the Beast, and the works of Shakespeare as inspirations for We Love You, Bunny. We talk about poetry, and she observes, “The strangest thing about poetry is that it’s impossible to sell it. It’s very difficult. People don’t buy it. But when you get married, when you’re dying, in these really incredible moments in your life, these transitional, huge moments, you want a poem. It’s work that allows you to meet the biggest moments in your life. But novel writing is something else.”

She’s already at work on a new novel, a dark romantic bookstore comedy inspired by Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Bunny is also being developed as a film. And yes, there will be a third Bunny book. She plays coy at first, “There might be, yes. No, there will be. Oh, there will be.” When I ask if I can guess the next book’s plot, she smiles secretively. “Sure.” Hearing my guess, she smiles wider. “It’s a pretty good one. I’m impressed. That’s all I’ll say.” We would love to tell you, Bunny, but it’s our little secret, K?