Taylor Swift has been lauded as one of music’s greatest storytellers, and now her songs are the inspiration behind 13 Little Love Stories, a new YA romance anthology by 13 top authors. The trade paperback original publishes June 30 from G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, where president and publisher Jen Klonsky helped shepherd the book.

“Alloy Entertainment, a group I work closely with on a lot of projects, pitched me the idea of 13 stories by well-known and prominent authors, all inspired by Taylor Swift songs, creating a playlist of sorts,” Klonsky said. “I loved the idea immediately.”

Though story collections are often a tricky prospect with lots of moving parts, Klonsky noted that careful collaboration ensured a smooth process. “You want to have a nice balance of writers,” she said. “With Alloy at the helm, we pitched author ideas back and forth and came up with lists based on authors we knew to be Taylor Swift fans.” The result is a mix of writers who specialize in various genres, from romance, to fantasy, to contemporary. “In the end we landed on a powerhouse list of 13,” she said. The contributors are Elise Bryant, Jennifer Dugan, J. Elle, Jessica Goodman, Sloan Harlow, Crystal Maldonado, Krystal Marquis, Katharine McGee, Julie Murphy, Lynn Painter, Laura Sebastian, Sara Shepard, and Jesse Q. Sutanto.

With the lineup in place, the Alloy team asked each of the writers to choose a Taylor Swift song they were inspired by and craft a love story around it. As the stories came in, Alloy’s editors took a first pass, making notes on the drafts, which were then sent to Klonsky and associate editor Simone Roberts-Payne at Putnam, for their editorial input. Alloy compiled everything and returned each story to its author for the next round. “The good news was, all of these authors were pros and have been published before, so the stories were strong from the start, pretty clean,” Klonsky said. “It was honestly quite a joyful process.”

The process was also, well, swift. “Part of the strategy here was to have people deliver the stories pretty quickly, and all at around the same time, so that we could get the book to market as quickly as we could,” Klonsky said. “I was very appreciative of the efforts of the authors and of Alloy on that point.”

Drawing Boards and Mood Boards

The look of the book was spearheaded by Jessica Jenkins, former senior designer for Penguin Young Readers. (She has since moved to the newly launched Paramount Global Publishing, as senior director, publishing design.)

“She is a tremendous Taylor Swift fan and had mood boards for days, so we had a ton of options,” Klonsky said. “We really wanted to signal something to fans with the heart, the colors, and the number 13 [which holds great significance for Swift]. And we wanted it to look good on a shelf for any romance reader.” But, Klonsky added, “True to the spirit of the artist, these stories are not always romance. There are a couple of stories that are friendship-based because that’s a form of love too. And at least two of them have a fantasy setting. The book is meant to hold wide appeal, in the same way that Swift’s songs do.”

PYR design assistant Claire Young, a fellow Swiftie, brought “lovely interior elements,” to the project, Klonsky said. “The visual elements shore this up as a real love letter about and around Taylor Swift songs.”

Author Elise Bryant was eager to add her voice to the collection. “Taylor Swift’s music has been a soundtrack to much of my life,” she said. “Fearless is my favorite of all her albums, because I just love how unapologetically earnest all of her lyrics are. I ultimately decided on the song ‘Fifteen.’ What I love about it is, her music is answering that question, ‘does anyone else feel this way?’ It’s so relatable to me, that feeling that you think a romantic relationship is going to give your life meaning,” she said. “But that song is about how there are so many other things and so many other relationships that are important to you in your life. That’s what I wanted to express in my story.”

Bryant especially enjoyed the “fun, creative challenge” of this project. “I loved taking the song I’ve been listening to since I was a teenager and creating my own story from it, making a story that reflects my background too, adding Black characters into this world of Taylor Swift, and showing how these experiences and these big feelings can be universal,” she added. Bryant’s fandom runs in the family, too. “My 13-year-old daughter is also a Swiftie and it’s been wonderful to share the music with her and see her create her own relationship with the songs and the lyrics.”

For author Julie Murphy, contributing to this collection was a must, even with a very crowded work schedule. “When I saw the email subject line that said ‘Taylor Swift inspired anthology,’ I was like, ‘Oh my gosh! I have to make time and figure out a way to do this.’ I’m obviously a big Swiftie and was over the moon that someone was putting together something like this that was inspired by this cultural phenomenon.”

For her song choice, Murphy wanted something that told more of a story. “I felt like ‘Cardigan’ really fit the bill,” she said. “It’s become a real thread through her fandom; she even sells a cardigan for every album that comes out. So, I liked the iconography of the cardigan, and the fact that I could take little snippets of the story in the song and really spin that into something completely different, but with a few winks still at Miss Taylor Swift.”

Like Bryant, Murphy said she loves anthology work because it’s an invigorating change of pace from a full-length novel. “You get to stretch your muscles and try something that is a little more daring and experimental,” she said. “There’s a lot of little funny bits in this short story, but it’s also a little more somber than I normally would write.”

As the book heads out into the world, it will have some solid, built-in support in terms of marketing and publicity. “We have the Taylor Swift connection, of course, and we have 13 well-known authors who have fan bases themselves,” Klonsky said. “We have created plenty of assets for each author to use on their social media as they choose,” she added. “I’m excited about this one. I think it’s a ton of fun,” Klonsky said. And, though Swift is not touring the globe this summer, she’s still making headlines, as it’s rumored that she will be married, in showstopping fashion, on July 3 in New York City.

13 Little Love Stories: An Anthology Inspired by Taylor Swift Songs by Elise Bryant et al. Putnam, $12.99 paper June 30; ISBN 979-8-217-11202-9