By Kate Coomber
“Valley Girl.”
Popularized by the 1983 film starring Deborah Foreman and Nicholas Cage, it’s a term synonymous with blond hair, BMW’s, and botox. But what lies underneath the shiny, superficial surface of the San Fernando Valley are stories far darker and deeper than anything seen on “Keeping up with the Kardashians”.
UCSB Writing and Literature student Via Bleidner has her first book coming out on August 10.
In her soon-to-be-published collection of short stories, If You Lived Here You’d Be Famous By Now, Via Bleidner, a fourth-year UC Santa Barbara student studying Writing and Literature, gives a rare glimpse into the lavishly twisted lives of Southern California’s elite. As a former student of Calabasas High, Bleidner recounts personal, coming-of-age tales from a town ruled by social media, money, and fame. She hopes her writing sheds light on the societal impacts of celebrity culture and wealth inequality.
But becoming a 21-year-old published author didn’t happen overnight.
“It’s been a super long process,” Bleidner admits. “I started seriously writing the book when I was 18, because I wanted to place my work on submission.” But, as someone whose passion for personal essay writing started at a young age, she pulled some portions of the book from stories she wrote when she was 16, before she ever had publication in mind.
“My mother’s a writer, so she’s always been the number one person encouraging me to read and write—even when I was little,” Bleidner said in a recent interview.
By her freshman year, Bleidner had signed with a literary agency and, in her words, developed “the skeleton” of what she wanted her full-length book to look like. She attributes much of the structure she settled on to her experience in a College of Creative Studies memoir-writing class with UCSB lecturer Caroline Allen.
“She’s great,” Bleidner said of Allen, who recently retired. “The format of her class forced me to write as much as possible in a short amount of time.”
Allen wasn’t the only member of the UCSB community that helped Bleidner along the way. “My advisor, Kara Mae Brown, was such a huge influence throughout the process too. She’s actually the first teacher who really encouraged me to seek publication,” Bleidner said. “I also owe thanks to Ellen Whittet, a professor in the Writing Program. Her magazine writing class inspired me to apply even more pop culture analysis in my book.”
It wouldn’t be until Bleidner’s junior year that such encouragement and inspiration would come to fruition. After spending her sophomore year polishing her proposal and distributing it to numerous publishers, she finally signed a book deal with Macmillan Publishers in the fall of 2019. Even so, she confesses that there is still work to be done.
“Even though I’m in the home stretch of publication, I still work with my editor. We’ll be going back-and-forth with minor changes for another month or two.” These changes are being made in preparation for the 304-page book’s August 10 publication date.
With her graduation a mere arm's reach away, Bleidner hopes to continue her writing career as a proud UCSB alum. “I want to keep writing essays,” she says. “I’m especially interested in internet culture and niche celebrities, so I hope to one day publish another collection in that vein.”
Kate Coomber is a third-year UC Santa Barbara Student majoring in Communication. She wrote this article for her Writing Program class, Journalism for Web and Social Media.