Dabney: AAR staffers love Kristan Higgins’ forays into women’s fiction. So I was excited to read her upcoming book Good Luck with That. I liked it. A lot. It made me think hard about how America, a nation where the vast majority of us are overweight, treats “fat” people. But it quickly became clear some advance readers, very vocally on Twitter, were furious about Kristan’s book. I decided to ask her about it. Kristan, who is as lovely a person as you’ll meet in Romlandia, was happy to answer.

Dabney: Kristan, I have to ask: What were you thinking? And by that I mean, when you started to write Good Luck with That, what did you want the book to be?

Kristan: In all the books I’ve read about plus-sized heroines, two things happen—either the women lose weight […]