NEW YORK (AP) — Judy Blume, whose novels helped millions of young people get through childhood, has some regrets about her own youth.

The 77-year-old writer says she had been in an “advanced” high school glee club in New Jersey that excluded blacks.

Blume was interviewed on stage Sunday by fellow author Jennifer Weiner at BookCon, the fan-based gathering held at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York.

Blume says she apologized to classmates at a 40th anniversary reunion and remembers saying, “I felt guilty for all these years” about not speaking out.

Blume says she had mentioned the glee club while writing her new novel, “In The Unlikely Event,” inspired by three plane crashes in her native Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1951-52, but removed the material because it didn’t fit the narrative.

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