It was a Friday night and authors Gayle Forman, Libba Bray, and E. Lockhart were up to some hijinks as they joined forces for a launch of Forman’s I Was Here (Viking) at Housing Works Bookstore Café in lower Manhattan on February 27. In the spirit of subverting gender expectations, they sported mustaches for part of the talk, and may have set a record for the number of times YA authors have dropped the f-bomb during an hour-long panel discussion. Luckily, there was a “swear jar” placed on the table for the three and the money they dropped in each time they used colorful language, went to supporting Housing Works, a nonprofit group that provides outreach to homeless people and those whose lives are affected by HIV/AIDS.

The authors launched the conversation, moderated by Maria Russo of the New York Times Book Review, by discussing friendship – their own and the way they write about female relationships in their novels. Bray, Forman, and Lockhart first met because they all used to write at the same New York City coffee shop a few years back. While they would be engaged with their work, they became a steadfast presence in one another’s lives. “I’d go to this café and they’d be there like a nice boyfriend is there for you,” Lockhart said. And when one day the coffee shop closed, they mourned together, as though they had been dumped. And by that time, an abiding friendship had been born. Over the years, they have exchanged drafts, shared ideas, and shared stages.

Forman has always held a personal and intellectual interest in the intricacies of female relationships, which she feels can be “delightfully deep.” One of Forman’s inspirations for writing I Was Here, she said, came through thinking about the role that friendship plays in women’s lives. She had observed over the years that, while her relationship with her romantic partner has been steady, she has experienced the loss of female friends over the years. Such friendships can “fall apart spectacularly,” and these losses can be just as devastating as romantic ones. Yet, “we don’t get to talk about them on the same terms,” she said. I Was Here focuses specifically on the “heartbreak of when friendships fall apart.” In the case of the friends in the novel, one commits suicide and sends a note via email on time delay. The book takes place in the aftermath of the tragedy.

Yet Forman, Bray, and Lockhart’s friendship is clearly going strong. Noting what she views as the striking level of congeniality the authors share, Russo raised the question of whether they ever get competitive with their writing and careers.

While they agreed that no one is above feeling competitive once in a while, the mutual affection and support of their friendship far outweighs any desire they might have to one-up each another. Forman said, “When you truly love somebody, their success feels like it’s your own.” She noted that, as she gets older, she increasingly feels the “burden of pulling on a mask” when it comes to relating to other individuals. “We can be our ugly, naked selves” together, Forman said of her friendship with fellow panelists.

The authors also agreed that this sense of affirming support that they experience from one another may also be unique to the YA world. Lockhart expressed that, when she used to write for adults, she would attend a party and leave “hating everybody and myself,” due to what she perceived as being a “tornado of ambition and self-loathing” that sometimes stalks the adult literary scene. Those forces of negativity are “amazingly absent in the YA world,” she said. The reason, she believes, is that YA authors don’t feel the need to prove themselves to one another. Instead, it’s about the fact that they are writing for an audience that “actually has needs” and “those needs are far more important than anyone’s literary success,” she said.

With so much information constantly coming at readers through the Internet and other media, there’s a lot of static to break through as authors. Teen readers can be voracious, often devouring all of an author’s books in a short span of time. On the flip side, teenagers are growing up and their tastes change rapidly. “Your audience is young and they will outgrow you fast,” Lockhart said.

Additional topics the authors addressed included what they perceive to be “institutional sexism” relating to the way books are gendered and their hopes that publishers, booksellers, and librarians will cease thinking of YA novels in terms of “girl books” or “boy books.” The same goes for novels that feature diverse characters. There’s a persisting notion that “you have to be that to read that,” said Forman. Russo also wondered aloud whether the role of fiction is to provide readers the opportunity to hear a voice they might not ordinarily hear? “That’s what fiction is,” she said.

A question from an audience member raised the issue of backlash arising from some areas of the literary world directed at YA books – claims that YA titles don’t carry the same merit as many books for adults. From Bray’s perspective, this backlash falls back on the aggressors. She believes it’s a natural result of the enormous success of YA literature today. “It’s very easy to resort to shaming,” in light of the genre’s recent growth, she said.

Lockhart added that stereotypes about YA fiction are narrow-minded and unfair. Criticisms could be waged at any genre if you were to look solely at “its most commercial elements and use that to discredit the rest.” Forman added that much of the criticism of YA comes down to sexism, saying: “anytime something is embraced by girls, it gets bashed.... I’m not going to bash Twilight.”

The authors concluded their talk by offering some no-nonsense tips for writers in the audience. For Bray, it really comes down to just doing the work: “I deliver the word count,” she said. Lockhart piped in: “You sit down and you write the stupid book.”