Young American novelist admits "copying"

We seem to be entering an age of plagiarism scandals. The latest concerns 19 year-old American Kaavya Viswanathan, who has admitted copying portions of her hit novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life.

Ms. Viswanathan, 19 and a sophomore at Harvard, has previously said her copying from two young adult novels by Megan McCafferty, "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings" was "unintentional and unconscious." In the interview, she said she had begun reading Ms. McCafferty's books when she was in high school and had read both books three or four times. She said she had last read Ms. McCafferty's novels in the fall of her senior year; she did not begin working on the manuscript that eventually became "Opal" until months afterward.

More from Dinitia Smith in The New York Times.