David Levithan can’t imagine his life without music. He blasts it at home and in his office, and needs it to write. “I listen to music every single moment that I can, from the time I wake up,” Levithan says from his apartment in Hoboken, N.J. “Listening to music when I work gives my language musicality. It’s always there under the writing.”
Beloved by teen and adult readers, Levithan is the author of more than 30 YA books that tackle love, friendship, and identity; feature LGBTQ+ characters; and often have music as a narrative centerpiece. He’s also the SVP, publisher, and editorial director at Scholastic, where he edits everything from the Hunger Games to the Baby-Sitters Club series. Among his own novels are the groundbreaking gay
teen novel Boy Meets Boy (his 2003 debut) and Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist—the latter cowritten with Rachel Cohn and made into a movie starring Michael Cera. His books, which include collaborations with John Green and the photographer Jonathan Farmer, have sold 2.2 million copies in North America, according to Random House Children’s Books, and have been translated into 31 languages.
Levithan’s latest, Songs for Other People’s Weddings, out in August from Abrams, is about a lovelorn Swedish wedding singer who writes original love songs for couples on their big day. An homage to artistic expression and music’s healing power, the novel is the author’s second book focused on adult characters, after 2011’s The Lover’s Dictionary. Levithan wrote Songs for Other People’s Weddings in collaboration with Swedish musician Jens Lekman, who composed 16 original songs for the book that readers will be able to access—via a link, QR code, or through the audiobook. “Let’s face it, if people had a bingo card for the next David Levithan novel, a novel about a straight Swedish wedding singer probably wouldn’t be on that card,” Levithan says. “With a collaboration, you go down roads you never would’ve ventured down yourself.”
Born in 1972 in Short Hills, N.J., Levithan was a friendly kid with the soul of a showman who always felt supported by his parents. In high school, he displayed his originality when he wrote a short story for his friends for Valentine’s Day using science terms from his physics textbook (opposites attract, magnetism). The story inspired an annual tradition that the author still upholds three decades later. “The last few Valentine’s stories have been 30 pages,” says Levithan, who has turned several of them into novels. “I’d prefer to write haiku, but so far it’s been stories.”
After graduating from Brown University in 1994, where he majored in English and political science, Levithan took a job at Scholastic. As a young editor, he edited more than 100 books in a Star Wars series and founded Push, an imprint devoted to new writers. Along the way, he discovered his purpose as a novelist. “I knew from editing YA that the right book at the right time could make all the difference,” he says. “I wanted to write queer books that had hope and joy.”
Songs for Other People’s Weddings follows 30-something J, whose girlfriend, V, moves from Sweden to New York City for a job and becomes busy and emotionally distant, leaving J, and the reader, to wonder if their two-year relationship has run its course. Will J and V break up? The question looms over the novel as J attempts to stay connected to V through texts, calls, and visits, while working as a wedding singer in Europe and New York. The novel is divided into 10 chapters, roughly one for each wedding, featuring lyrics to the songs J crafts for the couples after briefly getting to know them. “My life’s goal is to write a musical,” Levithan says, “and this book is the closest I’ve come.”
Levithan first connected with Lekman in 2005, when he emailed the artist to tell him that he liked his music. The two stayed in touch, and a few years ago Lekman came to Levithan with the idea for a novel about a wedding singer—a concept editor Zack Knoll instantly embraced. The duo worked mostly over email: sometimes Lekman would send a song that inspired a chapter, other times Levithan would write a chapter that inspired a song, until the creative lines were blurred. “We were on the same page instinctively,” Levithan says.
Lekman, a gifted lyricist with several inventive albums, has been a wedding singer for two decades and sometimes writes original songs for couples. “Over the years, in part because of streaming, music has become the content in the background of TikTok videos and on café playlists,” Lekman says. “To play at weddings is a way for me to give meaning back to my music. To feel like my songs aren’t just the soundtrack to your cappuccino.”
The songs Lekman composed for the novel are witty, insightful, and alive with feeling—and, when played alongside the book, create a reading experience like no other. “To me,” Lekman says, “music is the real main character in this story.”
Levithan incorporated Lekman’s experiences as a wedding singer into the novel—including the time Lekman passed out inside a fake wedding cake while he waited to perform. “Never in a million years would I have made that up and thought it was plausible,” Levithan says with a laugh, adding that if he could sing, he’d want to be “a gay Jewish Jens Lekman”—but rock stardom isn’t in his future. “I’m passable at karaoke, but nobody looks forward to my turn.”
Levithan keeps his editor and author lives separate—he devotes his weekdays to Scholastic and the weekends to writing. Currently, he’s cowriting The Fight of Our Lives, with Gabriel Duckels, a history of AIDS in America that he calls the most important project he’s ever undertaken. A member of PEN America, he’s committed to fighting injustice and censorship—his novels, including Two Boys Kissing, have been banned at various times—and is a founder of Authors Against Book Bans.
Warm and personable, Levithan is often the social glue among his peers, ready to host a book club or happy hour. “The m.o. of my life is that I never want to be the person at the center,” he says, “and the joke is that I always end up at the center anyway.”
Bill Clegg, Levithan’s agent, describes him as a stellar creative mind and passionate advocate with limitless energy. “It’s uncanny what David is able to accomplish in one day,” Clegg says. “He’s flying at altitudes where most of us couldn’t survive.”
Most weekday evenings, Levithan heads to the theatre or a concert. “It’s almost laughably rare that I’ll get home before 11 o’clock,” he says. He should get more sleep, but he can’t resist the siren call of a live performance. And he can’t wait for readers to experience his new book with Lekman. “This is a novel that breaks into song. It’s extraordinary.”
Elaine Szewczyk’s writing has appeared in McSweeney’s and other publications. She’s the author of the novel I’m with Stupid.
