Stephenie Meyer Infuriates Her Alma Mater's Newspaper

Posted on November 27, 2008

Bestselling author Stephenie Meyer has legions of fans of her Twilight series. The movie version of the first book made $70.6 million last weekend and is on track for more box office gold. But there is one organization that is not impressed with Ms. Meyer: her alma mater's newspaper. The Brigham Young University newspaper asked for an interview, but was told by her publicist that she's taking a rest. That didn't go down well at all.

In a column entitled "Stephenie Meyer: Too cool for this school?", Joshua Flake lets her have it with both barrels.

Meyer graduated from BYU in 1995 with a bachelor's in English. Because of this inside angle, The Daily Universe requested an interview with the 34-year-old author last week However, we were snubbed. After a few hours of searching, our reporter finally tracked down Meyer's publicist's e-mail address. But the publicist sent us an e-mail telling us Meyer was on much deserved time off. That's publicist-speak for "She's not going to grant you an interview, so don't bother us."
I'm willing to give Meyer the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure her publicist didn't even pass the message along that her alma mater's newspaper requested an interview. If Meyer has time for a self-indulgent cameo appearance, she has time for a 15-minute phone call.
We don't fault Meyer for being a little self-indulgent. She has achieved a degree of success few thought possible after J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" turned normal people into ravenous fans. We would, however, fault Meyer if she thought she doesn't need to talk to us. We may not be ABC or MTV or some of the national media outlets that have interviewed her, but we are her school. It'd be a shame if all her new-found fame and fortune has made her too cool for us. After all, some might call her books a fluke.

And it continues on in the same vein. Authors, the moral of this story is this: try to make time to talk to your alma mater's school newspaper. Or be prepared to suffer the wrath of the editor.