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"    Photo: Courtesy of Nora Zelevansky   Growing up in the art world can be a complicated experience. Either one embraces it or runs screaming. Nora Zelevansky chose the former. The writer (disclosure: she&amp;#039;s written for ELLE) just had her first book published earlier this month by St. Martin&amp;#039;s Press. Semi-Charmed Life chronicles the world of one Beatrice Bernstein, as she attempts to gain independence from her famous artistic family and falls in with the socialite crowd. Just how closely did the book resemble real-life? ELLE: Why did you decide to write about the art world? Nora Zelevansky: I grew up in the midst of Manhattan&amp;#039;s art world. My mother was a curator at MoMA, my father was a performance artist (whose esoteric events   my sister and I attended as toddlers in then gritty Soho galleries) and my sister was always sort of poetry-, theater- and literature-obsessed. So, I guess I wrote what I knew! As I&amp;#039;ve gotten older and the hipster universe has become more and more tied to the art world, it&amp;#039;s been funny for me to watch that rarified world of my childhood become more recognized and known. So, I ended up doing a lot of thinking about art as commodity and that came out in the story! Who knew I harbored so many opinions?  ELLE: The book draws on your own life experiences. So we have to know: Who was your real life Veruca? NZ: That&amp;#039;s funny ... and a tough one. I definitely both grew up around and found myself living amongst (in LA and NYC) people who seemed to exist on another plane of opulence and, therefore, understanding. I was almost a ghost writer for a socialite, so my strange interaction with her definitely inspired some wild ideas. But I think there are pieces of a lot of people in Veruca -- the glancing absently over peoples&amp;#039; shoulders while talking, the sort of charisma that is just innate, the warm, but also guarded friendships --those are traits I saw in several friends.  ELLE: Are there parallels between your feelings about the art world and Beatrice&amp;#039;s?  NZ: Beatrice&amp;#039;s feelings about the art world are definitely more complicated than mine. I have always loved visual art\u2014from the time I was a small child. I even spent a summer studying painting at RISD! She feels trapped by that world, but my parents weren&amp;#039;t provincial like the characters in the book. They encouraged me to expand my world. They even insisted I leave NYC for college, so I could experience something different. Of course, there is always a little bit of absurdity within the world of your childhood, so I definitely see the humor where she sees it. When I see the &amp;quot;art world&amp;quot; behave like the &amp;quot;art world,&amp;quot; it makes me laugh!  ELLE: Were you more into gossip magazines than, say, ArtForum? NZ: Well, I think maybe I was somewhere in between. I was never reading art theory in bed like my parents. I always gravitated more towards fashion and beauty and those types of vices. As a teenager, I was definitely a Sassy girl at heart! ELLE: Will we get a sequel perhaps? The adventures of Veruca? NZ: Turning the book into a series has definitely been discussed. A lot of people seem to love the main character Beatrice&amp;#039;s sister Gertie, so we have toyed with telling her story too. But it&amp;#039;s still not 100 percent decided. We&amp;#039;ll see! (I&amp;#039;d love to see the Veruca story on TV or in film!)  ELLE: What&amp;#039;s more seductive to you--fashion riches or art world fame? NZ: Ooh. Can I have both? If I had to choose, I guess fame is fleeting, so maybe I&amp;#039;ll take the riches and live the good life! But, in my wildest dreams, I wouldn&amp;#039;t have to choose. Buy the book: Semi-Charmed Life "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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