Best known for her screenwriting career and going viral for her observation of The RomCom Look, Alanna Bennett has now added another line to her resume – book author.
In her sharp and funny debut, The Education of Kia Greer, Bennett peels back the layers of a famous family to tell a coming-of-age story that’s highly specific yet deeply relatable.
Inspired by shows like The Kardashians, the book explores what it means to grow up in the spotlight and in a life you didn’t choose for yourself. As a member of a reality show family, Kia has spent her whole life under a microscope. But behind her seemingly glamorous and perfect life is a teen who longs for the ordinary: high school parties, college applications, first love, and the freedom to make mistakes away from the spotlight. When Kia meets Cass, a rising music star whom she quickly falls for, she finally glimpses the kind of life she’s always wanted. But as she navigates a world shaped by beauty standards, family expectations, and the weight of fame, she learns how hard it is to reclaim your agency when everyone in the world thinks they know you. But what if that’s not what you want? Who tells your story then? How do you reclaim your identity and autonomy and live a life true to yourself?
Through an email interview with Nerds and Beyond, Bennett discusses these themes and more, touching upon how her experiences with pop culture shaped the book, why mental health is such an important topic to explore in YA fiction, and what conversations she hopes to open through the book.
But beware – book spoilers ahead!
Nerds and Beyond: In both the author’s note and online, you’ve talked about how The Education of Kia Greer was inspired by your time watching The Life of Kylie. What specifically resonated with you, and how did that influence Kia’s character arc?
Alanna Bennett: Two main things from watching the Kardashian shows and their spin-offs inspired The Education of Kia Greer. The first was that I knew, even as a loyal viewer, that I would never know the full story of what the women on this show were thinking, feeling, and experiencing. I think it’s fully impossible to, because the show itself and the press around it are just small slices of their lives, and they’re slices that are curated by producers, media with an agenda, or by the celebrities themselves. The other thing that made me want to pursue a story loosely inspired by Kylie was that the realities of her childhood and adolescence were so extreme. What would it be like to be raised in an environment that extreme when you were not old enough to choose it for yourself? When you finally do approach the age where what you may want longer term becomes clearer, how do you navigate that when you’re already a household name? Kia and the rest of the characters in this book are NOT the Kardashians. That said, the extremes of their lives were a fascinating jumping off point for me to build a character study.
Nerds and Beyond: Kia’s journey is deeply tied to reclaiming her agency. Why was that such an important theme to explore in your debut novel?
Bennett: I think that even if your environment is less extreme than Kia’s — or, perhaps, if it’s extreme in different ways — every person at some point or another has to confront what THEY want THEIR life to look like. It’s very possible that your version of a happy life looks very different from what your parents wanted from you or for you, and it might also look very different from what the general public expects from you. In a social media age, we are all much closer to being Kias than we might think; if you’re online at all you are faced day by day with other people’s aspirations and expectations, and it can be complicated to navigate that. I wanted Kia’s to be a path of cathartic self-discovery.
Nerds and Beyond: How much did your own experience watching and writing about pop culture influence the way you wrote about the media’s fascination with the Greer family?
Bennett: My experience as an entertainment journalist and culture writer influenced me greatly. At Bustle and BuzzFeed, I reported on or aggregated so many stories about celebrities with these huge personas. The focus of my writing wasn’t gossip, but it absolutely played a part — celebrity gossip plays a part in so many of our lives. It struck me, again and again, how there could be so much I seemed to know about a person, but that unless I met and got to know them deeply, there was so much everyone online would NEVER know about these celebrities we can’t stop talking about. I wanted to write from the perspective of someone who lives a life where the world thinks they know her, but they really know nothing at all. And for the record: I love me some gossip. I probably always will. But we must gossip responsibly, and we must admit what we do not and will never know.
Nerds and Beyond: Kia’s story is about the tension between performance and authenticity. How do you think social media and public life have reshaped how teens find their identities today? You and I are both chronically online, but we grew up in a world so different from the one today’s teens encounter!
Bennett: In the modern world, everyone with a social media profile has a personal “brand.” Some people cultivate theirs more than others, but we navigate our day-to-day lives knowing that, to some degree, we are being watched. That comes with a whole lot of people having opinions on what they’re seeing, and there’s no way that’s not affecting young people. For some people, who they present themselves as online could be the unfiltered truth. For others, like Kia, there’s a massive gap between her performance of Kia Greer as a brand and her authentic self. I hope that people can relate to that dynamic social media can create with ourselves, and that they’re kind to themselves as they continue to navigate it.
Nerds and Beyond: One thread that stands out so strongly is Kia’s relationship with her younger sister Lark. It’s such a well-done sibling dynamic – loving and supportive, but also competitive and snarky. And Kia feels such a sense of protection around her, especially touched on strongly toward the end of the book. Tell me a little bit about your inspiration there; did you draw from real-life relationships with your siblings or friends?
Bennett: I sadly didn’t draw from a real relationship for Kia and Lark, but I did draw from one I aspire to. I don’t have any younger siblings, but I love watching and reading close sibling relationships — the type where you can talk all over each other, steal each other’s things, fight constantly, but still have that person be your very best friend in the world. I wanted Kia to have someone she felt comfortable, and silly, and safe with even as she feels uncomfortable with so many other aspects of her life.
Nerds and Beyond: Kia’s mom, Melora, is also a commanding figure in her life. And it’s clear she wants a better life for her daughters than the one she had. How did you approach building this character? What did you want to explore about the impact of having a mom and a manager (a “momager,” if you will)?
Bennett: I am nothing like Melora, THANK GOODNESS, but I did give her a couple of tiny pieces of my own backstory. Like me, Melora grew up in poverty, in an unstable environment, and it shaped how ambitious she is as an adult. Now, let me clarify: This is where the similarities between Melora and myself end. I wanted Melora to be an antagonist of sorts in this novel, but I also wanted her to have layers. I wanted to understand at least some part of what is driving her to control this world and this family to the degree that she is. Personally, I think it comes from a fear that she’ll lose everything she’s spent decades building and be that poverty-stricken, abandoned little girl she grew up as all over again. I wanted Kia to have someone she loved and thinks she would do anything for — and then I wanted Kia to burst out of complacency and make her own choices.
Nerds and Beyond: Cass, her boyfriend and rising music superstar, also plays a huge part in Kia’s emotional growth and journey in becoming who she wants to be. It’s clear the romance is part of her story, but not the biggest part. How did you approach balancing that relationship of loving someone else alongside learning to love yourself and the personal growth therein?
Bennett: Cass was part of this story from the very beginning, and a very crucial part. I always call this a coming-of-age romance, and I phrase it that way because that’s the ranking through which I think of these stories. Kia’s coming-of-age comes first, but then there’s Cass. The coming-of-age and the romance in this book are so deeply entwined that there’s no separating them. Kia and Cass’ first love changes Kia’s life in a thousand different ways, so I wanted to give them enough space to explore all they needed to — and then it always, always came back to Kia herself.
Nerds and Beyond: Kia struggles with anxiety, depression, and body image while living life under a microscope. Tell me about writing those emotions in a way that felt honest and grounded but not overwhelming for a reader.
Bennett: There was a very, very early version of this book that could have been much darker. I think there’s so much body horror inherent in a world that normalizes plastic surgery to the degree that Hollywood does. And for the record, I’m not trying to make some anti-plastic surgery stance! But it’s just a fact of the matter: If you’re getting a nose job, or an eye lift, or lipo, there’s literal body horror in the process and recovery from that. Early versions focused more on those elements, but I ended up scaling things back as I landed on who Kia was as a person and the exact journey I wanted her to go on. This is a young woman who feels trapped in her life but doesn’t see that there are other options out there for her. To me (an anxious and depressed person), that sounded like a recipe for anxiety and depression. This is a girl who lives under a microscope, and in a family where plastic surgery is just this casual thing you do sometimes. Of course that would lead to body image issues. But I didn’t want to write a bleak novel; I wanted Kia’s story to be one of hope, of finding a path through life that makes her happier and fits who she is as a person.
Nerds and Beyond: Kia makes the choice to have an abortion – a decision rarely explored with such sensitivity in YA fiction. Why was it important for you to include this topic, and what message did you want to send about agency and mental health through including it?
Bennett: It was important to me to include an abortion in this story for about a thousand reasons. One is that we are living in a post-Dobbs America, and it is our responsibility to stare that in the face. I learned so much about sex and my body from the young adult novels I read growing up, and I wanted to be part of that legacy. I also wanted to portray a medical abortion (the kind with a pill) in detail, since a lot of people are simply uninformed about what actually goes into the process. Above all, though, Kia’s story is about choice. It’s about choosing the path that is right for her, despite pressures from her family and the world to go another way. An abortion fit right into that story as a turning point — a moment where Kia realizes that this is indeed her life, and she does not need to be defined by or ashamed of this moment.
Nerds and Beyond: Kia’s relationship to her identity is shaped not just by fame but by how she’s perceived in contrast to her lighter-skinned sister, Lark. Why was it important for you to address colorism directly in this story?
Bennett: Colorism shapes the lives of Black people, and especially Black girls, all over the world. Kia’s in the public eye, and in a very public family, and people are constantly reacting to their every move and picking favorites. Colorism is part of the fabric of Kia’s experience, so it felt disingenuous not to include her relationship to that in her story.
Nerds and Beyond: There’s a line in the book where Kia reflects that even Olympic champions like Gabby Douglas and Simone Biles had their hair scrutinized. Why did you include that detail, and what broader conversation were you trying to open about Black girlhood and public image?
Bennett: I wanted to hone in on the ways that Black girls and Black women in the public eye have so much more bullshit to deal with than their white counterparts. The macro- and micro-aggressions that Gabby Douglas and Simone Biles had to deal with while competing at the Olympics and getting married — moments that should be two of the best moments of your life, and the former of which statistically so few people in the world will ever achieve — it pisses me off, quite frankly. I wanted to shine a light on the unfair way that Black women and girls are graded in the public eye.
Nerds and Beyond: Did you ever hesitate to tackle these issues in a YA novel, or did you feel like it was a necessary space for them?
Bennett: I grew up devouring YA, and it is such a natural place to have hard conversations. I learned about rape culture from the Laurie Halse Anderson novel SPEAK; I learned what a beautiful first time with sex looked like through Meg Cabot’s READY OR NOT. I don’t hesitate to include what might be seen as hard issues in my work because I am trying to write characters that feel real and relatable. Everyone is going through something. And hopefully we can build empathy or feel seen by reading about fictional characters going through things, too.
Nerds and Beyond: You’ve said Kia is not Kylie, but that she is a lot of you. How much of yourself did you knowingly write into her?
Bennett: There are so many ways that Kia is different than me, but I did give her some of that shy Beth March-y quality I see in myself. I also gave her my depression and anxiety (sorry about that, girl), and a yearning for a big and bright future that I definitely felt as a teen.
Nerds and Beyond: Kia ends up going to Oberlin, where you went to school. Why was it important to you to include that setting, and what memories did it bring up for you?
Bennett: I wanted Kia to end up in a flyover state, in some small town so far from Hollywood that she barely even recognizes it as the same country she grew up in — and I wanted THAT to be her happy ending. Having spent four years in Ohio, it felt like the perfect place. I picture Kia absolutely thriving at Oberlin, a place I still love with my whole heart.
Nerds and Beyond: The book ends on a note of transformation and hope. Do you see yourself returning to Kia’s world in the future to explore how she further grows? And what message do you hope those themes impart to readers?
Bennett: I don’t currently have a sequel planned, but I do have ideas for returning to Kia and to this world. I personally don’t think coming of age stops when you turn 18, so there’s plenty of road ahead for our girl and those around her.
The Education of Kia Greer hit shelves May 13.
