Candace Bushnell Talks Books, “Sex and the City ”and the 'Distractions' of Modern Dating (Exclusive)

The writer spoke with PEOPLE ahead of her appearance at the Empire State Rare Book and Print Fair on Sept. 27

For Sex and the City writer Candace Bushnell, fiction has always been one of her earliest loves.

“It was really fiction written as journalism because I wanted to write fiction,” Bushnell tells PEOPLE of her famed column for the New York Observer, which inspired the hit HBO show starring Sarah Jessica Parker. “I was actually writing about Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, really, back in the '80s. I was always pretty much doing what I did with Sex and the City, which was finding a relationship, [a] social topic, and writing about it.”

It’s fitting for Bushnell, who, in addition to her nonfiction, is the author of several novels, including the Carrie Diaries series, as well as the 2019 memoir, Is There Still Sex in the City?

This fall, Bushnell is also keeping it literary with a Q&A and book signing at the Empire State Rare Book and Print Fair, taking place from Sept. 27 through Sept. 29 at the City College of New York. The event, which features over 30 exhibitors from around the country, will showcase are books, prints and historic documents, amongst other artifacts. Some never-before-seen objects will include The Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln, the first public printing of the Declaration of Independence, and a letter from Albert Einstein to former President Franklin Roosevelt.

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Bushnell caught up with PEOPLE ahead of the fair to talk about the fair, taking on acting with her one-woman show True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City, and today's dating challenges.

This interview had been edited and condensed for clarity.

What are you most looking forward to at the Empire State Rare Book and Print Fair this year?
I think there are going to be some really great things there, like the Emancipation Proclamation and the first printing of the Declaration of Independence. I'm going to do my little talk and Q&A and a book signing, which I'm looking forward to, and my friend [designer] India Hicks is going to be there as well. I might do a couple of little excerpts from my one-woman stage show, The True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City, which I will be doing around the northeast in October and November. I think it'll be a great, fun event.

Has anything surprised you about being onstage as an actor in your one-woman show?
One of the things that's very rewarding about it is that the reaction is immediate. When you have a book that comes out, it takes at least a year, usually, to write the book, and then another year before it comes out. You don't hear directly from people what their reaction is, necessarily. But doing a stage show, I do, and it's great to interact with people.

Related: 'Sex and the City' Author Candace Bushnell Starring in Solo Show About Women 'Through the Decades'

The show is a little bit interactive. It's my life story mixed with the origin story of Sex and the City and there are a lot of laughs. There's a little game that I play with the audience, “Real or Not Real,” because there are so many things that happened in my real life that happened in [the] show, but they're better or worse. And that includes some of the guys who Carrie dated. I tell the story of the real Mr. Big, so it's a great girls' night out.

People of all ages go and it tends to be the young women who dress up and put on the Manolos. They're all excited. That's really rewarding — to be able to see the fans of Sex and the City. I feel like watching Sex and the City, it's a rite of passage. A lot of women say that they saw it for the first time in college. They meet their new roommates and they all watch it together. Of course, now they can watch it on Netflix, but they would watch it on DVDs and all of that. It's very rewarding. For me, when I watch it, I feel a lot of nostalgia. Like, oh God, that was the New York of the '90s and early 2000s.

If Sex and the City were made today, who would you cast in the leading roles?
I couldn't even answer that question. I have no idea. People are always like, what would Sex and the City be if they started doing it now? And my answer is always Emily in Paris.

[Carrie] would be an influencer. There would be influencing, there would be social media, but she would probably meet people on dating apps. Emily just seems to have all these guys after her in real life, which I suppose is a bit of a fantasy.

Related: 'Sex and the City' Author Candace Bushnell Reveals How She Answers 'Team Big or Team Aidan?'

In addition to your journalism, you’ve always been a fiction writer. Were you working on prose while writing your Sex and the City column for the New York Observer?
I was always writing fiction. When I first came to New York, I thought, “Oh, I'm just going to be a novelist. I'm just going to roll up and be a novelist.”

In fact, I wrote a children's book and I sent it to Simon and Schuster. I was always writing stories, sending them out to publishers. This woman, who was the head of children's books at Simon and Schuster, called me and gave me an assignment to write a children's book. I think I got paid a thousand dollars, which seemed like a fortune back then.

I didn't realize that you pretty much have to come from a wealthy family if you're going to write fiction. I had to support myself. That was how I started working for magazines.

How did you balance your fiction while working at magazines? Did you have a routine that you followed?
I was writing fiction at night, on the nights when I stayed home, and doing the whole journalism routine during the day. I was always trying to get my own column from an early age because I had realized that Dickens had his own column. A lot of those Dickens books were serialized. I did have my own column in Mademoiselle, but it only lasted a short period of time.

Where’s your favorite place to write in New York?
That's probably got to be my apartment. That's where I do my writing and my reading. I try to read a bit from a book every night before I go to sleep. I try hard not to get caught up in the scrolling. I feel so addicted to my phone and it just makes me crazy, but I think everybody else is as well.

Related: 'Sex and the City' Author Candace Bushnell's Former N.Y.C. Apartment Listed for $2.7M

What was the last book you read that impacted you?
I am reading a book called The Movement [by Clara Bingham], which is all about first wave feminism in the '60s and '70s. It's actually great. It's really interesting, about how women's liberation transformed America from 1963 to 1973. There are just so many shocking realities of what life was like for women, back in that decade.

It wasn't just that women couldn't have their own bank accounts or credit cards, but unmarried women could not get birth control. There are lots of stories of botched abortions, and a whole litany of really shocking realities of how limited women's lives were and how dependent they were on men. I think these are really important things for all of us to remember, especially now. 

You were also developing an reality show about women dating in their 50s. Do you have any updates on that project?
I don't have any updates. It all seems to be moving rather slowly. Who knows what will happen in this TV environment. But fingers crossed.

Related: Sex and the City Author Candace Bushnell Confirms And Just Like That...-Style Reality Show

What do you think are the best or worst parts about dating as you get older?
I think it's pretty much the same for everybody. In a lot of ways, I think it's harder for young women, because if you're in your 50s or 60s, you've done analog dating, which was somehow easier. People just feel a little bit more disposable online. You meet some, you connect with somebody, maybe you text with them a little bit. You're not talking, you're texting with them. And then people just disappear.

The reality is, there's a lot more rejection, and that takes the fun out of it. In the '80s and '90s, sure, there was rejection, but it was always a little bit more mysterious. Why did that person suddenly disappear? Maybe there was an actual reason. Now the reason is they just didn't feel like it. They just didn't feel [like] connecting anymore. The worst thing is, I find myself doing the same thing. There're just a lot more distractions now.

You know, they've done studies. The more options people have, the less ability they have to choose. People actually freeze up when they have a lot of different options. I'm interested in somebody who's actually in proximity, location-wise.

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You’ve described yourself in previous interviews as a “social anthropologist.” What’s something that’s fascinating to you about the larger culture right now?
I do think some things are changing. Women are changing a lot. One of the things that I think is interesting — and I see this a lot on TikTok, so I don't know how valid that is — but I see a lot of women speaking out for the first time against the idea of centering men and buying into the idea that a relationship and children are going to fulfill you.

For me, it's the first time I've actually seen women having the guts to speak out and say, “Having kids is not everything that is cracked up to be.” And even women regretting having children, which was completely taboo. It's women telling the truth about their lives, which was something that women really weren't allowed to do before. We all drank the Kool-Aid of ‘“true love is going to satisfy us.” Well, the person who is most dangerous to a woman is an intimate male partner. So I think this is one of the first times when women aren't necessarily drinking that Kool-Aid.

Tickets for Empire State Rare Book and Print Fair can be reserved from finefairs.com. Tickets for Bushnell’s one-woman show, The True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City, can be purchased from candacebushnell.com.

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