Bright Young Things

SPOTLIGHT

emma Forrest is "having a nervous breakdown," she confesses, "because, at 16, I know I'm getting too old." Forrest is not an Olympic gymnast or a child star. She is a full-time schoolgirl who, after doing her homework, settles down to write fiction or her regular column for London's Independent newspaper. Her mother sometimes worries that "Emma will bum out."

If the traditional English teenager is either touchingly awkward or a spotty rebel, trying not to choke on an illicit cigarette, Forrest doesn't fit the mold. Nor does Victoria Coren, the daughter of former Punch editor Alan Coren, who had her own column in The Daily Telegraph at 15, followed by a book and a television series, and who is now at Oxford working on her first novel. A third youthful veteran of London's literary scene, Caitlin Moran, left school at 11 to write by her own rules. 'Take punctuation," she says. "When you have to take a breath, that's where the comma should go. When you light a cigarette, put a dash, and when you go to the toilet, it has to be a colon." Seven years later, Moran also has a column and a television show, and is about to publish her second novel, Kisses, Dreams and Amphetamines. "At this rate I'm going to be dead at 20," she predicts, roaring with laughter. "If the work doesn't get me, the lager will." With these three defining the term Wunderkind, 22-year-old Nicola Davidson may look like an underachiever. But she has already spent three years as a reporter at The Sunday Times. "Newspapers are trying to attract young readers, and they can't get that from some thirtysomething editor who hasn't been out for years, so they get me to write about stage diving or chilling out." Quite. Davidson's biggest worry is the effect all this success might have on the boys she meets: "I suppose I'll just have to find an older man."

HANNAH ROTHSCHILD

LITERARY LOLITAS when you take a breath, use a comma. When you light a cigarette, put a clash."