A new take on Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’

Five months into the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown, Audrey Bellezza and Emily Harding decided to write a book.

It was the end of August 2020, and they, like a lot of people, had spent much of the year working from home while their children were going to online school. Bellezza and Harding, who spent years working together in television production, were sending each other their own writing projects back and forth and eventually it turned into “Emma of 83rd Street,” a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s “Emma.” It was released on May 23.

“This came about by accident in an attempt to stay sane during the pandemic,” Bellezza said in an interview with the News-Record before the two participated in an author talk at Maplewood’s Words Bookstore on June 15. “We were sending writing samples back and forth, and Emily said we should write something together. So we decided to try some chapters and see what happened.”

Six months later, they had a finished first draft. A version of Jane Austen’s 1815 novel set in modern-day New York City, Bellezza and Harding decided that the original classic was ripe for an update. Austen’s novels have served as source material for dozens of retellings; Harding said the themes make sense in more than just regency-era England.

“Our Emma is an Upper East Side girl,” Harding said. “It was fun to set it in New York because you can put these characters in almost any culture, any setting, any social situation.”

In this case, it was easy for the writers to decide the setting they wanted. Bellezza and Harding met while working at a production company in New York and spent a decade working together on non-fiction television shows. They became good friends while they were coworkers living in the city. They put a lot of their own experiences in the book.

Harding said there was some discussion about the time period the book would be set in.

“I wanted to set it in the 80s for a while,” Bellezza said at the Words event. “There’s a lot of miscommunication plots you can write because cell phones didn’t exist. Now it’s just, ‘Oh, the battery died.’”

“Emma of 83rd Street” was written during the tightest part of the pandemic quarantine, so it wouldn’t have mattered if Bellezza and Harding lived next door to each other-they still wouldn’t have been able to write together in person. As it happens, they don’t even live in the same state anymore: Bellezza lives in Maplewood and Harding lives in Texas. It didn’t matter.

“Most of this book was written between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m.,” Bellezza said, describing a typical lockdown day after both her and Harding’s kids’ virtual school days were over. “Emily would call me at 11 and ask if it was a good time to talk, and I would say, ‘Yes, now is actually the best time.’”

They alternated writing chapters. It helped that they were able to look to the original “Emma,” and though it’s a different medium, Bellezza and Harding used their TV experience to map out the story.

“We’re storytellers, we were already doing that on TV,” Bellezza said. “We did chapter breakdowns like we would do for episodes of TV.”

But the biggest advantage they had was their already existing relationship. Bellezza had already spent years working together and being friends at the same time and had expectations for what that would look like. There were no unpleasant surprises.

“Making TV is so hard, so we already knew that you have to have a thick skin,” Harding said. “I don’t think either of us took it personally if we didn’t like something or wanted to make a change.”

Bellezza agreed.

“Our husbands are friends, our kids are friends,” she said. “We were used to being able to work together and be friends. We had that relationship already.”

Once the first draft was done, the duo pitched it to publishing industry friends and other agents to try to find a publisher. Once they found an agent, they pitched to publishing houses and ended up with the Simon & Schuster imprint Gallery Books. Even though they spent months writing, and longer editing, the fact that the book was published is a surprise to both Bellezza and Harding. To them, it was an experiment in making each other laugh.

“I just wanted to make Audrey laugh,” Harding said. “And I know what will make her laugh, so that’s what I tried to write.”

There were no tortured artists involved in the writing of this book. Bellezza and Harding loved writing together and would do it again.

“It was a fun process,” Harding said. “It can be grueling for a lot of people, but we had each other and that made it a lot of fun. It made me wonder how people do it themselves.”

“Emma of 83rd Street” is available for purchase at Words Bookstore and online. More information about the authors can be found at www.audreyandemily.com.