Stewart Foster

About Author

Stewart Foster explores friendships and young men's mental health in Pieces of Us, his first YA novel, which draws on his own teenage friendships, challenges and his battle with bulimia.

Foster writes books for adults and children, too, and these have won multiple school and library awards. His first children's book, The Bubble Boy - or Bubble in the US, published in 2016, was nominated for The Carnegie Book Award.

He studied at Bath Spa University and continues to live in Bath. When he's not writing, you'll find Stewart running, playing football or listening to music. Follow him @stewfoster1

Interview

Stewart Foster explores friendships and mental health in his YA novel, Pieces of Us (Simon & Schuster YA)

February 2025

In his heartfelt and tender novel for young adult readers, Pieces of Us, Stewart Foster revisits his teenage years to explore the friendships, the mental health challenges and the tragedy that inspired him to write Pieces of Us, and about his hope that reading this story will encourage young people, and particularly young men, to seek the help they need.

Read a Chapter from Pieces of Us. "I wish you were here, because maybe this isn't a story, or a diary. Perhaps it's just the longest thank you letter a friend could ever write."

Review: "A poignant and deeply affecting read"

Q&A with Stewart Foster

"If books like Pieces of Us will bring the issue out into the open, to help young males take the first step and to talk about bulimia
and their Mental Health, then that will be the best outcome of writing the book."

1. Thank you for joining us on ReadingZone. Can you tell us what first inspired you to be a writer, and what keeps you at it?

I found that writing poetry in my early days, made my friends laugh. Then I realised I could make them cry and feel all the emotions in between. It is a powerful thing, and it helps that I love writing, full-stop.

I keep going because I think it's important that people see themselves represented in books, and the issues they face. I don't write 'self-help books' per se, but if people do see what I write as a way of helping, I'm happy with that.

2. What is your new YA novel, Pieces of Us, about, and what brought you into writing for older readers?

I think the best thing ahead of all the following questions is to say, Pieces of Us is a very personal story, drawn from feelings and experiences I had from my teens, through to present day. Eating disorders, body dysmorphia is no temporary thing, and luckily beautiful friendships aren't either. It's like everything else I've written before has just been practice for this.

Despite being popular and outgoing in my teens, I was hiding a lot of stuff underneath and so many people in their teens now, will be feeling the same. I wanted to give them a voice, hope, but mainly say, here's some one who understands and maybe pass this book to your parents so they can understand, too.

Mental health knows no barriers and I always think of it like bubble wrap, press in down or suppress it in one place and it will pop up with a set of problems in another. I wanted to put it out there, so we all talk about it, rather than give it an opportunity to re-surface.

3. Given that you are exploring such personal issues in the book, was it a difficult novel to write?

I thought Pieces of Us was going to be extremely hard to write at first, but within days, pages, I found it came naturally, Jonas's voice kind of jumped into my head, or maybe he was there all the time. Writing his and Louis's story was the happiest period of my writing life and using lyrics I wrote when I was 18 helped me stacks, as I was in effect revisiting younger me.

It was something I'd been wanting to do for a long time and came out without filter; streams of thoughts, and at the end of each day I figured I liked what I'd written so much that most of it could stay.

4. Why did you decide to set the story in the past, in the 1990s, and over one summer?

I grew up at a time in the late 70's 80's when the BBC and later Channel 4 were coming up with some incredible dramas like Cracker and Boys from the Black Stuff, but it was Ken Loach's Kes that hit me most. I was shocked by the edge of danger, grittiness, real life nature of it. I did not want to go back to the 70's but I did want Jonas and Louis to live in a purer, more innocent world without internet and phones. The phone booth scenes in the book are amongst my favourite.

And why summer? My favourite film is Stand by Me and I may have been guided by that. I wanted that sepia summer feel, where days could last forever and over those days people change, especially when they are young.

5. Pieces of Us explores the close, life-changing friendship between Jonas and Louis. Do you feel we need more positive representations of male friendships, and also to better understand how influential these friendships can be?

Pieces of Us is certainly about a beautiful friendship. I knew from the start that I wanted to write that theme but as the characters grew, as I loved writing them, they began to have a far deeper relationship than I'd first figured. It gave me quite a warm glow as I wrote. I recall stopping writing over Christmas because Jonas and Louis were in such a happy space that I wanted them to stay there for a while. It made my Christmas happier for sure.

And the short answer is that I do wish for more positive instances of male friendships in books, films, TV; it can make for a beautiful dynamic. There are so many instances where drama is drawn from friends falling out; sometimes there is as great a value in friends sticking together through whatever life throws at them. I should add that it applies to girls, too.

6. How did your two main characters, Jonas and Louis, develop? And why did you decide to write the book from Jonas's perspective?

Jonas tells the reader in the first chapter that he is the writer, sits in the corner of the room with his notebook. I liked that he was this quiet observer. I'll make another nod to Jordi, in Stand by Me, for that. At first, I was going to use him to commentate on his friends lives, tell their stories, but once I decided to tell my own experiences of bulimia through him, I realised he had a bigger story of his own.

Louis is a combination of the love I have for my best friend and a boy I grew up with who died at an incredibly young age; so a manifestation of the beautiful friendship I have and the one I might have had.

Jonas and Louis' character and relationship developed pretty much as I wrote. I don't plan any part of my books, so it's quite organic how they develop; like life, things are so much better if we freewheel without a script.

7. The boys bond over music and song writing. Why did you decide to make this core to their relationship?

This part of the story is based on a friendship that started when I was 15 and it happened very much in the same way as Jonas and Louis met with me sitting on a bench writing lyrics as a boy from school that I barely talked to stopped by. I'm glad that he did, because it led to three amazing years in my life, writing songs with him.

The verse, The Kosovo Penfriend, was originally written about the troubles in Ireland and others in the book are my own lyrics written to early tunes by U2. The very last song that starts 'Good night, good friend, it was fun while the sun shone' was written a week after my friend died in my late teens. I missed him awfully and those emotions were a big driver in the book.

8. How did you research the themes of bulimia and mental health in the story? Do you feel it is less difficult for young men to get help with these issues today than it was then?

I think it is apparent that the bulimia is very much written from my own experience. Sadly, I didn't need to internet search or read any books. On first draft, I solely depended on that. It is not hard to recall how things felt when those feelings are still there, even if I do cope with them better now.

Back in my teens I had no idea what I was doing, only that for fleeting moments it made me feel better, before the guilt kicked in. All I had was TV agony aunt pages that might feature something related and my mum's Woman's Own magazines that I'd read when the rest of the family had gone out.

I'm not sure it's any easier to get help nowadays. There are resources online but that first step of asking for help is most certainly as hard as if ever was. We are all different, some might be able to say how they feel, but others will keep it in and feel trapped. But if books like Pieces of Us will bring the issue out into the open, to help young males take the first step and to talk about bulimia and their Mental Health, then that will be the best outcome of writing the book; Pieces of Us as being a book about the importance of friendship and being able to love and trust.

9. Will you be writing more YA novels? What are you writing currently - and what are your favourite times away from your desk?

I absolutely want to stay writing YA. I'm currently writing a story about a couple of young guys who get lost in the Scottish Highlands. I cycled the whole of the North Coast 500 last year and had no idea how bleak and desolate the place was. It made me think a lot. That's why I love cycling, mostly mountains, it makes me think a lot. And music; I listen for a couple of hours each day, maybe more. There is a soundtrack for Pieces of Us that I think we'll be putting in the paperback. I've even got the exit song, if ever the book became a film....

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