Katy Loutzenhiser's "If You're Out There"

Katy Loutzenhiser grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dabbling in many art forms and watching age-inappropriate movies. After graduating from Bowdoin College, she found an unlikely home in the Chicago comedy scene and regularly sang improvised musicals in public. These days she writes YA books in Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband. She is probably eating a burrito right now.

Here Loutzenhiser shares some casting suggestions for some of the characters in an adaptation of her new novel, If You're Out There:

It's actually incredibly difficult for me to dream-cast the main characters in If You're Out There, maybe because they're such precious, unique little snowflakes in my mind! But I can definitely picture the characters around them.

Paul Rudd would make for a killer Zan's dad. (He's made some mistakes in his life, but oh man--with Paul in the role we'd root for him!)

I've had a longstanding daydream of Amy Adams playing Zan's flustered, extremely Irish Spanish teacher, Señora O'Connell.

And I think Lana Condor would make for a delightful Samantha, Zan's potty-mouth law student coworker at the vegan diner where she works.

Oh, and for director: Amy Poehler, Tina Fey or Mindy Kaling. Just imagining it makes me swoon. If only!

Visit Katy Loutzenhiser's website.

--Marshal Zeringue