Washington DC (Map, News) - Katherine Marsh spent lots of time in New York City while growing up and moved there in 1998, working at Good Housekeeping and then Rolling Stone after spending a year teaching English at her boarding school alma mater in Connecticut.

She moved to the District after Sept. 11, 2001, and is on maternity leave from The New Republic, where she is managing editor. Her first book is “The Night Tourist” (Hyperion, 2007), a nominee for this year’s Edgar Award in the juvenile category.

I understand that “The Night Tourist” was born out of homesickness for NYC.

My now-husband had moved down here for a job, so I followed him after being pried out of New York. It wasn’t easy to get me out. [The book] was a way for me to reconnect with the city and to write about a lot of these places that were special to me.

Why a male protagonist?

I’d heard that girls will read books with boy protagonists but boys will not read books with girl protagonists. I wanted a boy protagonist but strong female characters. Beyond that, I’m not exactly sure. I’m having a boy, but I didn’t know that, obviously, when I started the book. But I thought it would be sort of interesting to write from that perspective.

Do you think you will set a novel here?

I do. I’ve come to really like Washington; it’s just a very different city. It took me a while to ... understand the culture. ... New York has become, in some ways, a fantasy city. I think it becomes that way for a lot of people. ... I feel that the New York I love is no longer accessible to me ... partly because times have changed there. The New York I love is shaped a lot from the stories my mom and grandmother told me about living there. That New York has vanished. I still love going there. But I feel that Washington has a lot that makes it home for me now.

What was it like teaching in a school where you’d been a student?

It was very hard to call my colleagues by their first names. And I was just out of college, so there were a few times when people tried to check me in or send me back to a dormitory. That first year out of college is so hard.

It was a nice way for me to be in a familiar place but to experience it differently. And to work with kids was really fun.

The ninth-graders — the age that Jack is in the book — seemed to me such a great age.

The boys especially were this chimera of child and adult. There were ways in which they were really mature and could understand sophisticated issues in literature, and then there are ways in which they still seem like goofy kids.