Editor’s Note: Curtis Sittenfeld is the author of the bestselling novels Prep and The Man of My Dreams, which are being translated into 25 languages. Prep also was chosen as one of the Ten Best Books of 2005 by The New York Times, nominated for the UK’s Orange Prize, and optioned by Paramount Pictures. Curtis won the Seventeen magazine fiction-writing contest in 1992, at age 16, and since then her writing has appeared in many publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, Salon, Glamour and on public radio’s "This American Life." A graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she was the 2002 - 2003 writer in residence at St. Albans School in Washington, DC. Her latest book, American Wife, came out this week.

LESLEY: How much of the fiction part of American Wife comes from your own life?

CURTIS: I think more than people might guess. For example, I’m a newlywed. I was just married in March. But my husband is an avid, avid baseball fan. And, you know, literally during baseball season, any time there’s a baseball game it’s showing in our house on television. And so certainly a lot of the dialogue about baseball, the descriptions of being at baseball games – those are not from the Bushes’ life. They’re from my life. I mean, seriously, there are definitely elements, because the book starts in the 1940s and goes into 2007. Alice is an avid reader and some of the books that she talks about are books I actually haven’t even read. But then some are sort of books that are dear to my heart and, so, there are definitely elements of me or my experience. Everything in the Bushes’ life that has taken place in Texas or, has a back story, is transplanted to Wisconsin.

Click here to read Part One of Lesley Stahl’s conversation with Curtis Sittenfeld.

LESLEY: Did you grow up in Wisconsin?

CURTIS: I didn’t. I grew up on Ohio. But my best friend from graduate school lives in Madison, WI. So, it’s a state that I’m fond of and I wish I lived in Madison. But it’s not like everything is either from the Bushes, you know, or from my life or even from research. I think being a novelist, you have to have an imagination and the bulk of the scenes in the book are flat-out made up. Like I do know that the sections that have a kind of real-life correspondence draw the most attention to themselves. But there are so many scenes where, you know, Alice is driving car pool, or she’s getting dinner ready, or she’s kind of gossiping with a friend, and those scenes are made up. They came from the ether.

LESLEY: So tell us a little bit about you, because it’s an extremely rich and often wise book. And you’re what? Thirty?

CURTIS: Oh, I’m actually 33.

LESLEY: Thirty-three? Oh, excuse me. Well, alright. Where’d you go to college? How did you become a writer? Give us a little bit of that.

CURTIS: I went to two colleges. I went to Vassar and I transferred. I went to Stanford. I graduated in 1997. Then I actually became a reporter at the business magazine, Fast Company, which was then in Boston. And basically, for most of my 20s, the main way that I supported myself was as a freelance reporter. And I had my first book, Prep. I was mostly supporting myself writing for Teen People while I wrote that.

LESLEY: Let’s stop for one second and pick up your life. Prep was a book about a prep-school girl. Did you go to prep school?

CURTIS: I did go to prep school.

LESLEY: There you go. And though somewhat autobiographical, it’s not totally …

CURTIS: It’s mostly not. But the setting is certainly inspired by boarding schools I have known.

LESLEY: But this book, Prep, hit like a meteor. It was so well received, it was so widely read. You sold it to Hollywood. This was a giant splash. I think The New York Times – tell me if I’m right – said at the end of the year that it was one of the five best novels of that year.

CURTIS: Yes, that’s true. That is true – which was amazing. I mean, it was, like, incredible.

LESLEY: A first novel hits enormously. A huge impact.

CURTIS: It was definitely sort of the very unrealistic fantasy experience of having a first novel, which isn’t supposed to happen, you know – but it did happen. But then I had my sophomore slump with my second book. Everything evened out. But I was incredibly lucky with Prep. Although it was also a little bit of a … I don’t know, a little-engine-that-could story, where it had initially been rejected by 14 out of 15 publishers that my agent submitted to. Random House was the only one who wanted it. It definitely sold for a relatively modest amount. And it was one of those things where I think the way it kind of started gathering steam was that a lot of young women – you know, the sort of editorial assistants or publicists inside Random House, who were 24, 27, or something, fell in love with the book. And then from there it kind of, you know, started getting more attention outside the publishing house and that kind of thing. But, yeah, it was a very lucky, exciting, surreal experience.

But just to jump back into my life, before Prep I got into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. And that was, you know, a huge thing. I learned so much about writing. I had always written since I was a little girl. But it kind of, I think, formalized a lot of my ideas about writing. And actually I started Prep while I was at Iowa. I attended from 1999 to 2001. It was a two-year program. And then, after that was when I was writing for Teen People, working at a bookstore, finishing Prep, etc. And then I went and I became the writer in residence at the boys’ school, St. Albans, in Washington, DC, and I ended up working there sort of part time for three years. And that’s where I was when Prep came out – which, of course, you know, probably gave it a little, I don’t know, extra … I don’t know, it just felt sort of like all prep school, all the time. You know, writing it and living it and then since then I’ve moved a couple times. I now live in St. Louis, MO.

LESLEY: Really? St. Louis?