For the third installment of my Pride Series, I took the liberty of switching gears and interviewing author Erin Baldwin, whose debut YA queer novel, Wish You Weren’t Here, is causing quite the buzz in the LGBTQIA community.
Wish You Weren’t Here is a witty, relatable, feel-good YA queer story. Beautifully written, Wish You Weren’t Here, tells the story of childhood rivals who fall in love at sleepaway camp. The story was nostalgic for me, in that it transported me to the summer before freshman when I had my first girl crush. The novel did a great job of evoking the innocent and pure emotions of first love and how it completely enveloped you in a sense of both invincibility and euphoria. It is the kind of YA queer novel that a lot of us have been yearning for and one that I personally will read over and over.
Check out the interview below!
Gabrielle Bisaccia: Let’s start with probably the most important question I have for you…How are you surviving in Colorado without delicious New Jersey pizza?
Erin Baldwin: It’s a nightmare out here! You know how when you ask a kid their favorite food, they always say pizza? I totally got that when I lived in New Jersey. Now that I don’t live in New Jersey, I’m wondering how kids enjoy this!
GB: I love how vibrant and creative your Instagram is…It’s clear that you are an artist in every sense of the word from your inspiring costumes to your creative tattoos. As someone who has been getting tattoos since they were 16 and has an ever-growing collection, I’m always interested in picking the brain of a fellow tattoo enthusiast. How many tattoos do you have, and which is the most meaningful to you?
EB: I was just counting them as you were asking, and I think I have ten. I was a travel nurse, so I lived across the US, and I got one for every place I lived. My favorite is this one on the back of my arm of a desert. But the one that’s most meaningful to me is this one that says “Much” for my younger sister who passed away in 2020. My family was never super close and there’s a big age gap between us; my older sister is seven years older than me, my younger sister is six years younger than me, and the sister that passed away was three years younger than me. After she died, I wanted to get a tattoo for her, and I didn’t know what to get because we were never super close. Her name was Amie. She died in January of 2020, and she was studying disease pathology and toxicology, so she just missed the biggest event in her field by about a month. While everybody was cooped up after, a lot of people were looking through their stuff and a few months after her funeral, I was getting messages from people who were telling me what they found from Amy. One of the things someone found was a letter that she had written one of her friends who lived in Australia. The letter ended with “Much Love, Amy”. I wanted to get that, but it felt disingenuous because we didn’t say I love you; no one in my family has ever said it to me, and I’ve never said it to them. Then I thought it would be really funny, and Amy would have thought it was really funny too, to just get “Much ,”. If she were still alive and I had that tattoo and fell asleep, I would wake up with “Much Stupid, Idiot” written on my arm. That one is probably the most meaningful because I think it perfectly represents our relationship and whenever I see it, it doesn’t make me sad to think about her, it makes me think, ‘What would she have written on this today?’.
GB: I also saw that you have two adorable cats. Can you tell me their names and if you had to describe each of their personalities using one word, what would that be?
EB: This is going to sound obnoxious, but they don’t have names, they don’t want names, and they don’t need names. I call them “The Baby Boy” and “The Baby Girl” and they’re brother and sister. I just adopted them in November, and they aren’t even a year old yet. They are both menaces and if I had to pick one word for each of them, both words would be menace! They are wonderful though. The Baby Boy is a Momma’s Boy; he’s so snuggly and always wants to be on me! The Baby Girl can be snuggly, but she’s much more independent. She’s very curious and anywhere in the house that she can be, she’s been. She sits on top of my kitchen cabinets sometimes and surveys me. Nobody warned me about orange cats!
GB: I read on your website that you’ve visited 21 countries. Can you tell me your top three and why?
EB: Number one, shockingly, is Budapest. I couldn’t believe how much I loved Budapest! It was amazing; the public transportation was great and there was so much cool stuff to do. During one of the world wars, Budapest was bombed and there’s sort of the shell of all these old residential buildings and they have bars in them called The Ruins Bars and they are so sick! I also went caving under the city and that was cool. I was really blown away by how much I loved Budapest. Ireland is probably up there too. I had a really good time there and everyone was friendly to me. Peru would be the next one; I hiked Machu Picchu, and it was cool. I like anywhere where I can have an experience that I can’t have here.
GB: You’re a sort of jack of all trades who’s held many jobs in vastly different professions. Which was your most rewarding job?
EB: It wasn’t technically a job, because I was volunteering, but I do count it because it was the most rewarding and the coolest, I think. I have a problem with impulse control, so when I was in college and starting to make money working three job, I woke up and opened Facebook and was scrolling and saw an article that somebody I knew posted. It talked about the Syrian Refugee Crisis and this island off Greece where a lot of refugees fled through Turkey by boat, to enter the EU. A lot of the boats were capsizing and because smugglers, who just wanted to take people’s money, would sell spots on these unsafe boats to desperate refugees and provide unsafe lifejackets. Instead of lifejacket material, there would be sponge inside because it was cheaper. So, if you fell into the water, it would absorb water and drown you. The boats of people who were trying to cross in the winter when the seas were rougher in the Mediterranean, would capsize and they would drown and wash up on shore of Lesbos. They needed all these people to be there to do CPR and I was in nursing school. I thought about it for about an hour and then I bought a ticket to go to Greece. So, I went to Greece, and I was out there for my winter break working with a bunch of relief organizations, like Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross, in the refugee camp. It was heartbreaking, but I met all these cool people and I got to have all these cool experiences, and I ate a lot of feta cheese!
GB: I read that you were born in the Philippines. Do you go back often? Do you still have family living there?
EB: I haven’t been back in a long time. My mom and my sisters just went two months ago, but I just couldn’t take time off work and I had just gotten my fur babies. My family goes back a lot; my younger sister was born in Hackensack, New Jersey but she’s been there way more than I have. It just hasn’t worked for me, time wise. I went every summer until I was a sophomore in high school, so I have been back a lot in general. I don’t have any family there; my mom was an only child, which is strange for the Philippines, because usually Filipino families are big. Both of her parents have passed away and she doesn’t have any siblings, so she has “family”, in that, somebody you knew as a child
GB: Besides your own of course, do you have a favorite YA queer novel?
EB: Right now, it’s probably Skater Boy by Anthony Nerada. He was a 2024 debut and first of all, the cover is gorgeous! It’s so interesting and different than other YA covers. It’s based on the song, Sk8er Boi by Avril Lavigne. So, a skater boy and a boy who does ballet fall in love and it has strong pop punk angst vibes, which I love. I was a very big Fall Out Boy girlie, so it brings me back! It’s so well written.
GB: Let’s talk about your debut novel, Wish You Weren’t Here. First off, congratulations! The novel has been met with very positive reviews and a lot of buzz. Did you know the impact the novel would have on the LGBTQIA community?
EB: I hoped that it would be something because while there have been a lot of sapphic books recently, I feel like still the space is kind of dominated by male romances. There isn’t really that sapphic touchstone yet in the community. When I was a teenager and on Tumblr, But I’m a Cheerleader was the big thing. There was never the Heartstopper of sapphic books. I wanted to create a Disney Channel vibe where the gay undertones were gay overtones. It’s not a story about coming out trauma, it’s not about coming out at all really or being queer, that’s not what the book is about. It just is, in addition to Juliette having a mental breakdown constantly! I hoped that people would resonate with it in that way and the fact that it has is really nice.
GB: Where did you draw inspiration for the novel?
EB: I didn’t go to camp growing up, but I worked in one as a college student after I got fired from a smoke shop. I just felt something there that I didn’t have in other parts of my life. I’ve always hated Halloween because the idea of dressing up is so embarrassing to me. When I was in high school, I was so anti dressing up that I went as a pedestrian for four years for Halloween! It felt so humiliating for people to see me in a costume, I don’t know why. Then I went to camp, and all these people wore costumes, and I even won an award for a costume! I thought that it was actually cool, and I felt like a completely different person, being able to do things I enjoy without feeling embarrassed about it. I just thought that was a really interesting feeling; I love camp and I love the vibes of camp. It ties into what makes summer camp a good setting for stories, which is, no phones, no parents, just you and your friends in the woods, kind of in charge of your own day, which is not an experience you get to have a lot as a kid. It just felt like a really good place to set a story. I’m really glad I did, but I had all these editors, when I first wrote it, who said that nobody buys camp books. There are a lot of thrillers set at camp, but not a lot of summer camp stories.
GB: Were the characters of Juliette and Priya based on anyone fictional or real?
EB: It’s hard to remember because I started writing it in 2020, but I think I just made them up. There are parts of their personalities that are characters from TV shows. I’m a big Sabrina the Teenage Witch fan, the one with Melissa Joan Hart, and reading back through it, I realized that there was a joke almost directly from the show. I sometimes don’t even realize when I’m quoting it! Even the cadences of the characters, and way they set up a joke, I could pinpoint to a specific season and episode of the show. I think there are a lot of influences that I don’t even realize are influencing me. Also, I grew up in Jersey City, which is super diverse. It was the most diverse city in the US eight years in a row. Growing up in a diverse community, I felt that there wasn’t a lot of sapphic romances out there that featured women of color. I wanted to create this world where there could be a camp with so many people of color, which isn’t reality because it so expensive. I wanted Priya to be this person of color who was not a token character. She was just very cool and fun but also struggled with perfectionism. I also took little bits from a lot of people who I grew up with and kind of merged them together into Priya and Juliette. Their big personality traits were from my own mind though.
GB: Do you think you’re going to stay in the YA queer romance genre, or would you consider branching out to any other sub-genres in the queer space?
EB: I have a lot of ideas in my brain, a lot of cool things that I would like to do. I have an idea about a Truman Show retelling that is queer speculative fiction. I also have an idea about an adult polyamorous fantasy. I would branch out, and some of the stories are queer and some of them aren’t. I’m really good at coming up with ideas, but I’m very bad at following through on them, so we’ll see!
GB: In closing, are you currently working on your next novel? If so, what can you share with our readers?
EB: Wish You Weren’t Here was a two-book deal with an option. The second book is not a sequel, and it will come out in the summer of 2026, which feels very far away! I am lightly working on other things too. I’m hoping with the option, I can sell a sequel to Wish You Weren’t Here because I have a really fun idea for Lucy’s book, and I’ve written some of it already. I’m currently working on the second book and when we get off this call, I will continue to work on it because it’s really kicking my butt! It’s a lot of research that I did not anticipate. It’s set in a lot of different countries and it’s very complicated to write. What I can say is that it focuses on a reality TV show with a big cast who are constantly traveling and constantly doing challenges.
