N.J. girl behind #1000BlackGirlBooks interviews Hillary Clinton

Marley Dias, 11, is an editor-in-residence at Elle.com, where she has her own 'zine

It's been a whirlwind year for Marley Dias.

This past winter, the 11-year-old from West Orange saw her #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign go viral. Ellen DeGeneres then invited her on her talk show, and she met Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey.

This summer, Elle magazine invited Dias to launch her own 'zine, Marley Mag, as an editor-in-residence for Elle.com, for which she's interviewed such luminaries as writer-director Ava DuVernay and ballet dancer Misty Copeland.

Now Dias, a student at Thomas A. Edison Middle School, has interviewed Hillary Clinton. The interview with the presidential candidate, not on camera like the others, was conducted over email. Dias, who says she once dreamed of becoming the first woman president herself, focused on Clinton's childhood.

"If someone had to do it before I could, I'm happy that it will be her," Dias writes. "It's really no problem."

Dias started her #1000BlackGirlBooks project, a mission to collect and donate books featuring a black girl as the main character, after becoming frustrated by having to focus on a series of young adult books featuring white male protagonists ... and their dogs. 

The campaign was a resounding social media success, and has netted Dias more than 4,000 books. Clinton's favorite black girl book: "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," by Maya Angelou. 

"An excellent choice," Dias writes.

Asked about the book she first "saw" herself in at a young age, Clinton writes that she identified with Jo in Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women."

"The book was written at a time when there weren't as many options for women and girls as there are now," Clinton says. "Jo really struggled with that. She wanted to write, to work, to help her family. And eventually she found ways to do it, and to live the life she wanted, even though it wasn't what society expected of her. I loved that she wasn't afraid to chart her own course."

Clinton, who relays a story about a distracted local barber accidentally chopping off a chunk of her hair, also tells Dias about the time back in high school when she ran for class president and lost. The president-elect then asked her to be chair of the organizations committee. 

"This meant that he got to be president, but I had to do most of the work," Clinton says. "I said yes anyway - and it turned out to be a lot of fun, because I got to plan all the events I would have pushed for as president. (One of them was a mock presidential debate, if you can believe that!) In the end, I've always found credit isn't just something you take - it's something people give you when they see how hard you're working."

Read the rest of the interview at Elle.