Jade’s lips were burning for a cigarette, her legs jumping underneath the seat as she pulled into the lot of Central High School. She parked and turned to look at Gee. He was slumped against the window, his face pressed against the glass.

She shook him by the shoulder and called his name.

“This is a good thing,” she said. “I wish this had happened to me when I was your age.”

Still, he wouldn’t look at her.

“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy.”

Gee tuned out his mother and surveyed the lot. It was nearly full, although the town hall wasn’t set to start for another half hour. He’d been dreading the start of the school year all summer. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since he got the letter approving his transfer to Central. He was gnashing his teeth again.

“You don’t know,” Jade went on, “what a difference this is going to make. This is a good school. I’ve been lucky. I don’t want you to have to count on luck.”

Gee’s mother was good at pep talks, reminding him to doublecheck his homework, put lotion on his hands. She liked to monitor, advise, steer him the right way. Sometimes he thought he ought to be more grateful. But she didn’t seem to notice that his insides were quaking. Gee felt his jaw clamp shut. He pried it open to speak.

“What’s the point of this meeting anyway? What is there to discuss? It’s all final, isn’t it?”

“It’s supposed to be a welcome.”

“Will it be?”

“Sure. One way or another.” Jade gave him a tight smile, then patted his leg and said, “You’ve got to trust me.” They climbed out of the car, and Jade flung her arm around him. It felt strange, but he let her hold him anyway.

The school was four stories, a brick building with white windowpanes and eaves. Dogwood trees guarded the small lawn between the lot and the entrance.

There was a clatter of car doors opening and closing. Gee recognized a few of his classmates and their mothers trudging toward the school. Adira was approaching the school in a fuchsia windbreaker and faded jeans. She had come in regular clothes, and Gee felt conspicuous in his collared pinstriped shirt, his good pants. Adira was calm and easy all the time, even now, sandwiched between her tall parents, the Howards. She was one of the few kids at school Gee could call a friend, but it wasn’t saying much because Adira was friends with everyone. She was the kind of girl who kissed her friends on the cheeks, complimented strangers on their sneakers or hair and meant it. She could reach for you, hug you, wink at you, laugh, and it didn’t seem like flirting. She bounded toward him, snatched up his hand. It felt natural, good. It didn’t set his skin on fire.

The Howards relieved him of Jade, and the adults went ahead, snapping together into a knot, lowering their heads and their voices. Gee couldn’t tell if they were worried. The papers said the initiative to merge the city and county school systems was popular. They were piloting new programs to make all the schools attractive so county kids would want to transfer, too. Most students would get to stay where they were. But it was hard for Gee to believe people were coming to this meeting in droves all because they wanted to shake hands. There had been talk of a band of white parents who planned to protest. He had no particular fear of white people; Gee sorted them into good and bad, safe and not safe, the way he did with everyone else. But he knew even good people could turn, let alone good white people.

Adira had linked her arm with his, and she didn’t seem to be thinking about the meeting at all. She was fawning over Jade. She admired her knee-high boots, her black dress cinched with a silver chain at the waist. “She’s so glamorous,” Adira said. “She doesn’t even look like a mom.”

Jade had recently cut her hair into a mohawk, long on top and buzzed around her ears. Since becoming a nurse, she had stopped wearing her nose ring, but her ears were studded with gold, her nails painted a red so deep it seemed black. She liked to stand out, even now, a day when Gee needed to blend in. Gee shrugged at Adira, and she looked confused, as if he should be flattered, as if he should want people to assume that Jade was his sister and he was a parentless freak.

“What’s the matter? Aren’t you excited? I’ve never even been inside here before. Look at these windows! It’s so bright.”

“My head hurts,” said Gee. It was his go-to line when he had to explain why he wasn’t coming along for a soda after school, or why he hadn’t raised his hand in class, or why he didn’t want to go and meet some girls. Even when it didn’t work, and people saw that it was a lie, he got what he wanted anyway: to be left alone.

They followed the signs down the hallway. The crowd was mostly kids Gee didn’t recognize, shepherded by their fair-headed parents.

They reached the auditorium and saw that nearly every seat was filled, the murmurs of the crowd a low roar. Linette stood sentinel over three seats in the front row, among a contingent of students from Gee’s school and their families. He recited their names to himself like a psalm—Rosie, Ezekiel, Magdalena. Humphrey, Austin, Elizabeth, Yvonne. He’d known most of them since elementary school, and although they were all clumped together now, soon they’d be dispersed, just a handful among the two hundred new students at Central this fall. Would it matter they were all there together? Would they be able to find each other then? Without willing it, his teeth began to grind against each other, back and forth. A sound like tearing paper filled his ears.

Linette could always seem to sense his nerves. She kissed him on the cheek, which did nothing to still his trembling, but he was thankful for her all the same. They settled into the battered, cushioned seats, unlike the hard-backed chairs at Gee’s school. Gee sat between the two women, and they turned their eyes toward the stage.

The blue velvet curtains were swept back, and a dozen school officials sat in a row before a long wooden table. Gee recognized one of them as the principal. She wore a gray suit and pointy heels, her hair pinned into a severe blond bun. Gee had met her at that first meeting in June for the new students who’d be joining in the fall. She had shaken his hand but seemed harried, reluctant. It was a relief that she hadn’t said much, and that he’d had to say nothing, although her silence and her tepid smile had left him wondering whether she was repelled by him.

A black man sat at the edge of the officials’ table, and Gee wondered who he was. He was broad shouldered, clean-shaven, handsome in a blazer and tie. Maybe Gee should have worn a tie, too? He strained to read the little paper sign in front of him that bore the man’s name and title, but he couldn’t see, and soon the principal was calling everyone to order.

She welcomed parents and students, old and new. There was scattered, cheerless applause. Gee made sure not to look at his mother. He could feel the energy of her body. She was burning, desperate to say something out loud. It made him want to disappear.

The principal announced all the good things they had to look forward to: a nearly unchanged student-teacher ratio, class sizes kept under thirty, funding for a whole new line of programming: a choir, a kiln in the art room, a drama club that would put on productions in this very theater. It was what they’d been promised in exchange for the new students. Other high schools had gotten microscopes or specialists to redo the math curriculum; Central had gotten money for the arts. They were gaining more than they were losing, and that was before even accounting for the new students, whose differences would make the community even stronger.

“Now we can say we’re an even better reflection of the city, the county, and the changing face of North Carolina. And above all, the law has spoken. Our representatives have spoken. It’s our duty, as citizens, to open up our doors and move into the future.”

A chorus of boos rolled over the room. The principal held up her hands. “We’re not here for debate. This is a time to look ahead. We’ll open the floor now for questions, words of welcome— that’s why we’re here.”

Before she was through, a line had started to form at each of the microphone stands in the auditorium, one in the rear, the other in the aisle next to Gee, Jade, and Linette. Gee sank lower in his seat. His teeth scraped together, and he felt a familiar shock run from his jaw to his ear. He winced from the pain and listened as the speeches started.

A woman with gray hair and Coke-bottle glasses was first. “I hear everybody here talking about welcome. New beginnings! But what about goodbyes? What about mourning?” She was met with applause, an echo of Yes! “To make room for these two hundred new kids, we’ve had to let go of two hundred kids who have been at Central since they were freshmen. All because the school board and the city have got an agenda? My daughter is losing every single one of her best friends to this new program, and she’s going to be a junior! It’s a critical year, and she’s going to have to start all over! How is that fair?”

By the end, she was shouting, and the cheers went on for so long, the principal had to stand and ask the crowd to quiet down. The deluge kept coming.

“Okay, we’re keeping our teachers; okay, class size is staying the same. That doesn’t mean this school is the same. Everybody knows it’s the students that make the school. And now we’re going to have these kids—these kids who are coming from failing schools—making up twenty-five percent of every grade. Twenty-five percent! They’re going to hold our kids back! These kids aren’t where our kids are in their education or their home training. And it may not be their fault, but it’s not my kid’s fault either!”

A meek-mannered woman with a short black bob and glasses edged to the microphone as if it caused her great pain to do so. She began in a low voice. “Everybody deserves a fair shot in life—I believe that. I always have. That’s what America is about. My son is applying for college this year, and I’ve heard it on good authority that this wasn’t random. That these kids were handpicked because they’re star students. And now, my kid’s ranking is going to fall. What has my son been working for if these new students are going to come in underneath his nose and steal everything he’s been working for, and everything we’ve all been working for? Everything we do is for him.”

“I know this isn’t about integration. It isn’t about what’s right. They put nice words in the pamphlets, but I’m not fooled. This is about money, money, money, and the city being greedy. They’re playing around with my kids’ future. Central might not hit that county quota of no more than forty percent of students on free or reduced lunch. Because we may leave. A lot of us may leave. I’m looking into private school for my girls because I can’t trust the administration here, and I can no longer trust the city I’ve lived in, and that my family has lived in, for generations, for over one hundred years!”

Gee felt Linette stir beside him. Her leg thumped underneath her, and she knotted her hands in her lap. She was nervous, and it was catching. He leaned away from her in his seat. Jade reached over to take Linette’s hand and steady her. The women locked fingers. Jade was swinging her head from side to side, disagreeing with the latest speaker at the podium. Gee knew it was only a matter of time before she burst.

Next there was a man in a plaid shirt, a long beard and sideburns. He pointed at the floor for emphasis with every sentence. He was so steady, so even, it was terrifying.

“Am I the only one who will say it? These kids could be bad kids. What about background checks? How are you going to keep our kids safe? Are we going to put in metal detectors? What about in the hallway, when my daughter is walking between her classes? And what about the parking lot? We ought to put cameras out there.”

Gee felt his vision tunnel, the room around him turn to black at the edges. He mopped his forehead with his sleeve. He was turning inward, closing up. He nearly missed Adira sliding to the microphone, her hands clasped primly in front of her, her head high.

“My name is Adira Howard, and I’ll be a junior here at Central next fall. I came tonight because I was excited. Because I want a future too—”

Gee wondered at Adira. She was stupid and brave and beautiful all at once.

“My family has been here for generations, too. And I deserve my future as much as anybody else. It hurts to know I’m not welcome here, at a school that’s only fifteen minutes away from my house, all because of the color of my skin.”

There was an encouraging whistle from the front row, and the Howards stood up, clapping for their girl. A few white grown-ups stood, too, to applaud Adira, and Gee wondered why they hadn’t spoken yet. Where were all the people who had published op-eds in the paper about the benefits of the program? Where was that majority who supported this change?

When the boos started up again, while Adira was still at the microphone, Jade sprang up to stand in line. A balding man in a crimson polo shirt was set to speak first. He shook his head for a long while before he began.

“This is not about race,” he said. “This is about fairness. We don’t have to give up our rights to the whims of whoever is in office right now. I know it must have taken guts for that little girl to stand up here and speak, but, young lady, you’re dead wrong. This has nothing to do with the color of your skin. I taught at North Carolina A&T, a historically black college, for twenty years before moving here—I am not a racist, and it’s criminal for you, or anyone, to suggest I am.”

There was hooting and screaming for the man at the microphone. The principal hammered at her podium with a gavel she hadn’t used before. The school officials fidgeted onstage, except for the black man who sat calmly on the edge of his seat, his hands folded into a steeple. His eyes were invisible behind the sheen of his glasses. Gee wondered how he managed to sit up there, with all those people watching, whether it was better to be onstage or in the crowd in moments like this. Next, it was Jade.

“My husband wanted the best for our son. We’ve spent our lives trying to figure out how to give it to him. We haven’t had our lives handed to us, like some of the people in this room. For a lot of you, your kids coming to this school is just them inheriting what’s rightfully theirs—the future they’ve been headed toward since they were born. But for my son, it’s a change in his fate. And his fate has been changed more than once, and not for the better, and none of that was his fault.”

Gee felt himself shrink.

“And now that he’s got this chance, we’re not going to let anyone take it from him. He’s not going to be left behind. And I’m going to be here, every morning, and every afternoon, to make sure he’s welcomed the way he ought to be, the way the law says he deserves. Put in your metal detectors. Put your cameras in the parking lot. Let me tell you—you’ll be seeing my face.”

There was whooping and hollering as Jade returned to her seat. Gee felt his anger focus on his mother. She slid into the seat beside him, and he crossed his arms away from her.

“What did I do now?” she asked, and he wondered whether there was a point in being honest.

“I just want to fit in, and you’re talking like you’re ready to go to war.”

“Do you hear these other parents?”

“I don’t care about them. What about me? I don’t want any trouble.”

Jade shook her head. “These people are just talking cause there’s nothing else they can do. You’ll see. You just got to let them know they can’t take you for a punk, that you’ll fight back—”

A shrill voice startled them. Someone at the back of the room was speaking right to Jade.

“To the young woman who just finished up here—”

A fair, slender woman stood at the microphone, her hair large and feathered around her.

“How dare you say anything in my life has been handed to me! If your husband wanted the best for your son, he should have done what I did and moved him into this district fair and square. I made sacrifices to get here. It cost me. It cost my children. And I’m not just going to give it up so you can get handed what you think you deserve—that’s not right, and that’s not American.”

The applause that erupted into the auditorium was the most riotous yet. People stomped and rose in their seats. The principal banged her gavel uselessly. The large-haired woman went on, and Gee couldn’t bring himself to look away from her narrow face, the bright aperture of her eyes.

“There’s a bunch of us,” she said. “We’re putting together a march! And we’re not going to stop there. The school year hasn’t started yet. We’ve got time. I’ll be standing right back here with flyers for anyone else who wants to get involved. Come find me. My name is Lacey May Gibbs.”

From What’s Mine and Yours. Copyright © 2021 by Naima Coster. Reprinted by permission of Grand Central Publishing, New York, NY. All rights reserved.

Naima Coster, GSAS ’12, is the author of the novel Halsey Street (2018), which she began writing as a student at Fordham, where she earned a master’s degree in English with a focus on creative writing. In 2020, she was named to the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” list, which recognizes five fiction writers under the age of 35 whose work promises to leave a lasting impression on the literary landscape.

“The biggest thing is just the scope of it—and to realize that hundreds and hundreds of people are working on this thing that started out just in your head,” Quinn said, addressing more than 100 members of the Fordham community over Zoom.  

‘A Once-in-a-Lifetime Thing’: Stories From the Bridgerton Set 

Quinn recalled the journey from landing a contract with Shondaland Media, the company behind award-winning series Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder, to watching her romance novels become a television series. 

“It started with sitting in a Starbucks, drinking coffee, and getting a phone call and practically falling off my stool,” Quinn said. “[But] it was a very slow process. I thought publishing was slow, but adapting a book is glacial. From the very first phone call to the time the show actually appeared on Netflix was four years.” 

In those four years, Quinn served as a consultant for the TV series. She read the scripts before they went into production, but her involvement was limited. Quinn relinquished creative control on the project—and for a good reason. 

“I did not want to do anything to jeopardize this. This was clearly a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me,” said Quinn. She also knew her work was in good hands: “One of the smartest things that you can do is recognize other smart people. And I was not going to tell Shonda Rhimes how to make television.” 

Quinn said she loved the results, especially the color-blind casting and the diverse storytelling from the scriptwriters. 

“There were somewhere between 15 to 20 writers working on the project, and that group of people was incredibly diverse—not just race, but gender, sexual orientation, religion … they all can bring life experiences and imagination to the story that I can’t,” said Quinn. “One of the main things about a romance novel is the way it makes the reader feel and the happiness that you get at the end … I love that Bridgerton the television show has managed to create something where more people can see themselves in the story and see themselves getting the happy ending.” 

Quinn’s lips are sealed on the show’s second season, which will begin filming this spring. But she showed her audience an iPhone photo of her and Regé-Jean Page, who plays a leading character on Bridgerton, from a season one filming location. 

“Regé-Jean Page is absolutely as handsome as you think,” she said, while a few students gasped from their screens and typed their reactions in the chat box, including “JEALOUS” and “Love Love Love!!!!” 

Tips on the Creative Writing Process 

Two students from Fordham College at Lincoln Center, senior English major Mary Alter and junior art history major Sophie Choo, asked Quinn questions about her creative writing process and background, while several other students typed questions in the Zoom chat box. 

“All of your characters are very well developed. Any tips for developing characters and making their backstories?” wrote one student, Madeline Lanni.

Quinn advised her to think deeply about her characters’ backstories before beginning to write a novel—something she started to do while writing The Duke and I, the first novel in the Bridgerton book series. 

“I ended up understanding these characters so much more. Since then, I have adopted this in my prewriting. I’ll spend several pages talking about who these people are … because we are all shaped by our experiences. Does this person have brothers and sisters? Are they the oldest? Are they in the middle?” Quinn said. “Many of [these details]never show up in the book. But it means that somehow, in some amorphous, creative way, I know the character better. And I think that comes through.” 

‘Believe in What You Do’

Another student, Vivienne Blouin, asked Quinn how writers, especially young women, can defend the merit of their work genre—particularly in romance—against condescending peers.

Quinn recalled a quote from Nancy Pearl, a famous American librarian. 

“She said once that literary fiction is always judged by the best example of it, and romance is always judged by the worst. And it’s so true,” Quinn said. “I think you just have to stick to your guns and believe in what you do.” 

Mary Bly, Ph.D., chair of the English department, said Quinn offered some valuable advice and analysis. 

“Julia Quinn gave us a fascinating, authentic look at the life of a bestselling author, now propelled into the forefront of American pop culture by the Netflix series. It’s important for students to meet people at the top of their profession, if only to see that they are merely people. Julia offered great advice about writing, as well as explaining the process by which a book is optioned. Her discussion of consent in the first Bridgerton book—the fact that what is now seen as the hero’s lack of consent was greeted at the time by readers as the heroine’s feminist triumph—is also significant as a counter-weight to judgement of the past,” said Bly, who writes fiction and romance novels under the pen name Eloisa James. 

“Perhaps equally importantly, she confessed that she had no real idea why she chose her major [art history at Harvard College]. That was perhaps the most inspiring of all. My takeaway: learn how to write, and you can do anything with your degree.”

Each of the honorees was chosen by authors previously recognized by the National Book Foundation.

Tayari Jones, whose novel An American Marriage was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award, selected Coster on the strength of Coster’s debut novel, Halsey Street.

Published in 2018, it tells the story of the Grand family—Penelope, a young artist who returns to a rapidly gentrifying Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn; her ailing father, Ralph, whose once-iconic record shop, Grand Records, has been replaced by an upscale health food store; and Penelope’s mother, Mirella, who had left behind “her misery and her husband,” Ralph, to return to her native Dominican Republic.

In 2018, Coster, a Brooklyn native, told Fordham Magazine that she began writing the novel as a student at Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where she earned a master’s degree in English with a focus on creative writing.

“While I was at Fordham, I got a short memoir published in The New York Times. It was called ‘Remembering When Brooklyn Was Mine,’ about a fading Brooklyn and one that was being remade,” she said. “That made me want to spend more time figuring out what it’s like to feel stuck between two Brooklyns.

“I invented Penelope and knew the story would be about her resistance to her homecoming, and about her finding her place—in her old Brooklyn neighborhood and within herself. Then I started writing her mother’s point of view, and it also became about these two women trying to find their way back to each other.”

Coster’s follow-up novel, What’s Mine and Yours—about the integration of a North Carolina public high school, and the lasting consequences it has on two families—is scheduled for publication in March 2021.

For the past five years, Fordham’s creative writing program has hosted the Golden Gloves Literary Competition, an annual event where creative writing classes from the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses present their literary pieces and compete for prizes. But this school year, with a new name, the event struck a different tone. 

“We wanted creative writing to act as an opportunity for community building as opposed to competition … We wanted all our classes’ stories to be celebrated in equal measure,” Sarah Gambito, an associate professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Fordham, explained in an email. 

On Dec. 6, nearly 150 students and faculty members gathered in Lowenstein’s 12th-floor lounge to retell the stories they had written this past semester. 

The event began with a story from Fordham’s second Writer at Risk in Residence: Felix Kaputu, Ph.D., a scholar from the Democratic Republic of Congo who arrived at Fordham this past October through a collaboration that gives writers a “free, safe place to live, work, and write without the threat of violence from their home countries” for two years, according to the program’s description.

Kaputu spoke about life in his native Congo, from the political environment to how his father and uncle shaped his identity as a storyteller. In 2006, Kaputu was falsely accused of participating in anti-government activities and jailed in solitary confinement. 

Below is an excerpt from Kaputu’s piece shared at the Story Circle: 

“My father, who was working as the catechist for the Catholic Mission, had an extraordinary talent as a storyteller of a particular kind. However, he would not use his talent for tales, legends, epics, and other oral narratives that had well-known narrators. They produced their stories in royal courts with a big group of musicians and drumbeaters. My father had the talent to make, keep the suspense, and talk about his personal life, and encounters. His stories included running from both the local and neighboring countries’ police. A famous story was about fighting a lion from a hut where he was hiding from the police. Another narrative was about moving from Congo to neighboring countries using a bicycle to celebrate life with the locals sharing the same culture. However, he would run back to the Congo whenever the locals would find him too much seductive of their women. He had more stories of that kind.  Then, my uncle, a professional hunter, had a significant influence on me. I lived with him a couple of times during school vacations. He shared with me traditional knowledge and curing diseases with medicinal plants. He taught me how to interview community leaders and wander in the forest at night without being lost.

That background has made me strong over the years. I learned to resist when condemned for prison without reason, and I easily travel around the world as a scholar and writer at risk without remorse.”

This semester, Kaputu taught a creative writing class at Fordham. 

“It means a lot to me,” Kaputu said. “One of the most important things I like in my life …  is [teaching]. There is nothing else in the world, I think, I like [more than]  being in class with students … They learn from me, I learn from them.”

Eight students also presented work from their creative writing classes. They took turns and sat in pairs, facing each other. Surrounding them were their classmates and mentors, along with flower petals and yellow candles on the carpeted floor. For more than an hour, students retold personal experiences from their lives. After each student spoke, the next speaker gave them a wish relating to their story, like “I hope that you are always surrounded by the ones that you love,” said Gambito.

Among the student speakers was Patrick Raneses, a senior English major and theology/creative writing minor at Fordham College at Rose Hill, who read a piece he wrote about his grandfather for Luminous Details, a graduate-level creative writing course. 

Below is an excerpt from Raneses’s piece, “Some memories”: 

“I remember when I was back home one summer and you and I were sitting on the ugly orange couches in my living room. Mom wanted you to visit, because you were getting stupid old. We were sitting there, silent. You were penning a letter while I was flicking through something on my phone.

Unprompted, you turned to me and started telling me this story about when you were in the Philippine Army during World War II, you were a cook and you weren’t much younger than I was. And when you were carrying a tray of food from one barrack to another, a Japanese soldier rushed you and buried his bayonet into your gut. 

You lifted your shirt and started laughing: I stared at the striated patterns of flesh that was your marbled torso and I tried looking for the scar. I think I saw it there in the folds. I smiled, saying that was amazing, because I thought it was at the time, even though that’s a strange way to describe a thing like that. You giggled, too, and stared at me with your giggling eyes.

Then you turned back to write your letter. About ten minutes later, you started telling me when you were in the Philippine Army during World War II, you weren’t much younger than I, a man gutted you. I told you that was amazing, again. You looked at me, again, with your giggling eyes, and you told me, dementia is like hell.”

Raneses said he realized he was a writer in the first creative writing class he took at Fordham, nearly a year ago. 

“I really identity myself as a writer, in the same way that I am an Asian American,” Raneses said. “I am a writer because I have to write. It’s like a release valve. It’s therapeutic in a lot of ways … It forces me to challenge myself, whether that means confronting certain truths or hard things.” 

Camille Hermida-Fuentes, a junior English major at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, wrote about her grandmother Alicia—the “unluckiest” person she said she knows. 

Below is an excerpt from Hermida-Fuentes’ piece, “Carcassonne”:

“Alicia had really, really bad luck. In 1985, she was at an art museum in D.C., with her son and daughter. Her son said, “Alicia, look at this painting”, so she turned around and then she was collapsing, and then she was waking up in a hospital and they were telling her it was cancer. Multiple myeloma. The kind that clings to your bone marrow for its life. The kind that doesn’t go away. And it didn’t. For 27 years, it didn’t go away. Doctors said it was a miracle but there was nothing miraculous about her life, about how she was always collapsing. Once, she tripped over her own feet on her way to the bathroom in the middle of the night and caught pneumonia because of the angle her broken shoulder bones forced her to stay in, pushed liquid into her lungs.”

For Hermida-Fuentes, a self-described “shy” person, storytelling helps her to convey her emotions. 

“I truly love telling stories … I feel like when I write, I’m finally getting to say what I want to say,” she said. “And there’s something really cool about being able to create your own kind of world when you write.”

She said the Story Circle—her first-ever public reading of work—was also an opportunity for healing.

“This is a story I’ve been having a hard time telling. There’s a lot of complicated feelings and guilt,” Hermida-Fuentes said. “It was very healing to have everyone that I know from class there to support me.” 

It all began with a professor named Sarah Gambito, an award-winning poet and director of Fordham’s creative writing program. She had heard about Yale’s most popular class of all time—Psychology and the Good Life, a college course designed to teach students how to have a happier life. She thought it was something she could bring to Fordham.

But Gambito’s class, titled The Good Life, has a different take on happiness. Through twice-weekly lectures, Gambito taught 16 students how creative writing can spark a deeper sense of personal well-being—and vice versa.

“The point is how can creative writing help usher us into a greater—a better—sense of living?” Gambito said. “It’s been said that a good life is a creative life.”

Yoga, Succulents, and Adventures in the Bronx

At the beginning of the semester, Gambito gifted each student with a small green succulent. Over the next few months, the students fed and watered their succulents, took notes about their development, and watched their plant babies grow.

“Taking care of yourself is like taking care of a plant,” she explained. “You have to nurture yourself.”

In the classroom, they took a meditative approach toward the creative writing process, drawing on the four main goals of life in the Hindu religion: dharma (truth), kama (joy), artha (prosperity), and moksha (liberation). For one class session, they gathered at the McGinley Center for an afternoon of yoga, contemplation, and freewriting about their meditation experience. After a few rounds of yoga, they draped Korean white sheet masks across their faces, lay on mats and towels, and listened to a soothing, instrumental music playlist on Spotify. The idea was to quiet their bodies and listen to that small, still voice deep inside, said Gambito—a voice that’s often eclipsed by the noise of our everyday responsibilities.

Their expeditions also extended beyond the campus. Gambito sent them on a scavenger hunt through the New York Botanical Garden, where they free wrote about the flora and fauna. Another day, they visited Egidio Pastry Shop, a mom-and-pop store a few blocks from the Rose Hill campus, and reflected on their dining experience via Google reviews.

“Part of what it means to be a creative writer is to get out of the classroom and to be involved with your community,” Gambito explained.

Storytelling Over A Shared Meal

On their last day of class in Keating Hall, Gambito and her students shared a potluck supper.

Their classroom windowsill was laden with goodies baked or bought by students: vegan monkey bread, mini pizza bagels, empanadas. Gambito herself bought five pies from Bella’s Pizza, the place with “the best pizza in the Bronx,” she declared to the class—according to Google, that is.

As they ate, the students spoke about experiences that helped them become better creative writers or thinkers. Some brought meaningful objects: a drawing from a student’s favorite book, pencils tagged with poems on small slips of paper, homemade Irish soda bread, a student’s first published story for a Fordham student journal.

Then there was Fia Swanson, FCRH ’21, who brought in her most valuable piece of jewelry—a simple pair of bronze-colored, chandelier-style earrings. She asked her peers to guess who gave them to her.

“In popcorn style, yell out your first guess,” she said.

“Mother.” “Grandparent.” “Boyfriend.” “Best friend.” “Godmother.”

“Yourself!” someone said, as people laughed.

“Actually, my therapist gave me these,” Swanson answered.

In her senior year of high school, Swanson’s father contacted a therapist for her named Dr. P. She didn’t have time for any more clients. So without telling his daughter, he sent Dr. P something that Swanson had written: a personal essay about her identity, being biracial, and her childhood.

“She read it, and said, ‘I read what you wrote, and I just had to meet you,’” Swanson recalled. “I couldn’t believe it was my writing that would get me the therapy that changed my life.”

On the day of her last session with Dr. P, Swanson’s face was covered in tears.

“She hugged me that day, and I broke down crying like I never had before,” Swanson said. “When my father came to pick me up, she jokingly said to him, ‘She’s gonna write my book for me someday.’”

The last presenter, Haris Basic, FCRH ’21, recalled memories with his best friends of nine years, like watching a zombie movie together at one in the morning and reminiscing about their high school days during a six-hour car drive to Buffalo, New York.

“I wish they were here to hear you talk about that,” said a student. “Because it was just so beautiful.”

“They would roast me,” Basic said, as the rest of the class erupted into laughter.

As he finished his presentation and the class began to applaud, he suddenly broke in.

“Wait, wait … I wanted to thank you all and Professor Gambito for being people who have inspired me to explore my creative side through writing,” he said. “Thank you all for being open and accepting.”  

Finding Community Among Writers

In the final minutes of their last class, Gambito’s students reflected on what they’ve learned. Through workshopping each other’s work, the students say they learned that writing a good piece is a group effort. But perhaps most importantly, the course has shown them the importance of caring for both their mind and body. By becoming more in touch with their emotions and their body, the students say they have developed a crucial skill for good writing—being more vulnerable in the stories they write.

“The greatest text you can think about is the text of your life. And for you to be an author of that, for you to feel agency and empowerment [is very important],” Gambito said. “Sometimes that’s easy to forget—that you are the architect of the stories that you’re able to tell.”

The Good Life will be taught again next fall.

Halsey Street touches on a lot of themes, like mothers and daughters, racial and cultural identity, and gentrification. How did you decide to write this story?
While I was at Fordham, I got a short memoir published in The New York Times. It was called “Remembering When Brooklyn Was Mine,” about a fading Brooklyn and one that was being remade. That made me want to spend more time figuring out what it’s like to feel stuck between two Brooklyns. I invented Penelope [Halsey Street’s protagonist] and knew the story would be about her resistance to her homecoming, and about her finding her place—in her old Brooklyn neighborhood and within herself. Then I started writing her mother’s point of view, and it also became about these two women trying to find their way back to each other.

Did you always see yourself as a writer?
I did, but in college at Yale I was premed. Because I was a smart girl of color, I wanted to be helpful to society, and being a doctor would be something my family understood as having made it. I got into med school, but I deferred. And I deferred again. Then I went to Fordham for my master’s in English. So it’s been nice to have the book come out and reassure my family that I’d be OK, even if there’s still uncertainty. And of course it feels like a huge victory for me too.

What’s been the reaction to Halsey Street?
The reception I’ve experienced overall has been really positive. But I have also been made really aware of how some basic facts of my characters’ lives can be seen as controversial or troubling. Like my use of Spanish when it would be natural for the characters, or to show the trouble with communicating across generations and languages. Or the fact that Penelope is someone who is attentive to color and race. I get frustrated when I read literature and there’s no mention of race or ethnicity until a black character comes out. So for me as a writer, if we live with the powerful fiction of race, I want to be honest about rendering that for various people, not just people of color.

Do you identify with Penelope?
I identify as both black and Latina, like Penelope. And as a scholarship kid since middle school, I also feel like I’m in this bubble, stuck between two worlds. But I don’t always agree with Penelope. The points of view [around gentrification]in the book are deeply flawed. I don’t like the terms gentrifier or gentrified; they’re flattening and not true to nuances. And they don’t acknowledge how gentrification is driven by structural forces and not just individual agency. But when people talk about gentrification, partially what they’re talking about is a sense of erasure, or theft, or appropriation. It’s a complicated position, which is why I wanted to have people on different sides of it and not have the narrative comment directly.

Is that idea of leaving open questions something you teach your students at Wake Forest?
Yes. I think some people teach writing like it’s this mysterious thing, or you’re just kind of born with it or not, which I don’t believe. I teach a first-year writing class and one about American identity, race, and belonging. I think that one really challenges students because it’s one of the first times they’ve been instructed to ask questions about what it means to be American. By the end of the semester, they’ve deepened their thinking and have more questions. I think it’s unsettling for some of them, in a good way.

Do you want to continue teaching?
I definitely want to continue working to cultivate young writers. Teaching is a way for me to remain connected to the value that fiction has for readers, and the value the practice of writing has for writers.

What are you working on right now?
I’ve got two book projects that are cooking right now; they’re both novels. One is a quest story, and the other is about a community in North Carolina, which is inspired by a short story I published about my time in Durham. I think they both build on the work of Halsey Street, but I don’t know which one I’ll finish next.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Alexandra Loizzo-Desai.

For bestselling author Mary Bly, a professor of English at Fordham, that kind of openness to ideas and innovations is the key for anyone hoping to join the rapidly changing field.

Looking out on a Manhattan sunset from the 12th-Floor Lounge in Fordham’s Lowenstein Center, Bly spoke on a panel with three industry professionals about starting points for a career in publishing, and for getting writing into the world. The Office of Alumni Relations hosted the April 5 event as a career workshop for students and recent graduates.

Bly, a popular romance novelist under the pen name Eloisa James, recalled the drive that pushed her to get her first books out and the shrewd moves that keep them atop the charts.

Her career had a financial impetus. She needed to pay off student debt after earning degrees at Harvard, Oxford, and Yale, and beginning an academic career. She also wanted security for her growing family. So she sought out the elements that make a book shine for both popular audiences and editorial gatekeepers.

“I got five bestsellers written by two New York Times bestselling authors, and I spliced those books to find out why I thought they were selling,” she said. Her plan worked: Her first manuscript advance was $2,000 more than the balance on her loans.

To keep her momentum, Bly thinks strategically about what makes a book sell. “I don’t believe in writing the book of your heart,” she said; she prefers to consider what will keep editors interested and audiences engaged. “Figure out what’s going to sell and make that the book of your heart.”

Joining and Shaping Cultural Conversations

In Bly’s case, one reason she is the favorite of both reviewers and romance readers at large could be the depth she sees in the genre—a quality often overlooked by literary critics. She mentioned that issues of consent have long been at the center of top romance books, which is one reason the women-driven narratives command vast female readerships.

“Romance, like all genres, might seem like it’s self-contained, but in fact it’s incredibly porous and it reflects what’s going on in culture now,” she said. Successful writers must understand what they would contribute to the larger cultural conversation, and what readers most have on their minds.

But to get work noticed in the first place, writers must find outlets that will take a chance. “Agents and editors, we’re reading everything,” said Miles Doyle, FCRH ’01, a senior editor at HarperOne who specializes in religion, spirituality, and health and wellness, with particular interest in alternative self-help.

The panelists encouraged writers to familiarize themselves not just with the classics but with the books and writers that are rising now. “You need to be reading all the time,” said Bly, urging writers to make note of passages that move them.

Finding a Community

Newcomers can also create networks. “They help each other find readings, and they buy each other books when they’re young,” said InkWell Management editor and agent William Callahan, FCLC ’08.

Both Callahan and Doyle mentioned gatherings like the Catapult writing workshop and Brooklyn’s Franklin Park Reading Series as ways for aspiring writers to meet promising peers, and find outlets or agents to represent them. “There is such a thing as the literary community,” Callahan said. “Try to get in there.”

The panelists’ advice extended beyond writers, and each offered suggestions for the many aspiring publishers, agents, and publicists in the audience. Those interested in publishing will find that some flexibility in the subject matter and types of jobs they start out in can improve the chance of real job prospects. The panelists also stressed that location is a major factor in getting that first job. “You’ll be doing a lot of unexpected things, so like the unexpected,” said Callahan. “Make the real advantage of living in New York City work for you.”

For the students and recent Fordham graduates in the audience, this was a chance to network with professionals who were once in their place and to reconnect with Bly, who eagerly forged connections between panelists and former students during a reception after the panel discussion.

Tatiana Ridley, FCRH ’05, and Erika Ortiz, a Fordham College at Lincoln Center senior, both found the event helpful. Ridley, a nutritionist and yoga teacher said she hopes to publish a book about holistic healthcare based on her wellness brand, Healthylicious Bliss, and a children’s book about her childhood pet rat, Tommy Lee.

Ortiz said the event gave her the boost she needed after spring break; the creative writing major, who is set to graduate in May, is interested in both sides of the publishing world. “It was very relevant, and very important,” she said.

To Doyle, success in publishing is ultimately about developing one’s taste in writing—something that starts in the classroom. “Fordham refined my tastes,” he said. “It made me a better writer, and a better reader.”

—Violet Baron

The evening, titled “The Social Value of Crime Fiction,” celebrated the impressive work of both best selling mystery author Higgins Clark, FCLC ’79, and crime fiction legend Lee Child.

Child is the author of the famous Jack Reacher novel series. His bibliography includes over 20 novels, all centered on Reacher, a character who is a drifter and assassin with a strong moral code. Child has also published more than a dozen short stories and has worked on movie adaptations of his books. His 21st Reacher novel, Night School, will be released in November.

Child said that when he began writing, he moved from the United Kingdom to New York and was astounded by the support he received from Higgins Clark, already a famous name in the genre. Her support of the crime writing community, said Child, changes authors for the better.

“Mary will let you know she is on your side,” he said. “Through her friendship, you learn how to become a better writer and feel you are associated with a legend.”

Child lectured on the instinctual power of storytelling and why stories—in particular crime fiction—mirror the human condition and give readers confidence. Crime fiction allows the audience to release frustrations and confront unfairness that they would otherwise not be allowed to in a civilized society.

Watching normal people surviving danger and peril also gives others courage, said Child. Through fiction, the audience is empowered to survive life’s challenges.

“There is a reason stories are older than art and music,” said Child, noting that language has been around the longest. “It’s because they are necessary for our survival.”

In his introduction of Child, Leonard Cassuto, Ph.D., professor of English and American Studies, said that Child’s service is what sets him apart from fellow writers.

“He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and the International Thriller Writer Associations—service that he didn’t have to do,” said Cassuto. “He is a committed member of his community . . . one of the good guys.”

Higgins Clark, who turns 89 in December, was also in attendance. Since her graduation in 1979, she has become one of the University’s most noted alumni, acting as a member of the Board of Trustees, endowing scholarships, and challenging students with her insight and experience.

“Signing up for my first class was one of the happiest days of my life,” said Higgins Clark. “Graduating at 50 years old was also a happy day. It is a continuing joy that I am able to still be a part of this wonderful University.”

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the University, likewise admitted to being star-struck by the talent in the room.

“I have to admit, I came here to see Lee as a fan,” said Father McShane, who confessed to taking the Reacher series on his flights to fundraising trips. “But I leave a student. I thank both of you for showing us the art, the magic, and the holy involved in storytelling.”

–Mary Awad

The gift will make it possible for Fordham to hire a professor of creative writing within the Department of English. The chair will be a visiting appointment for a limited term, offered to a distinguished writer and drawn from a variety of genres. The chair holder will lead writing workshops and teach seminars and master classes to upper-level undergraduates or graduate students.

The first holder of the chair will be announced in the spring of 2015.

This is not the first gift from Higgins Clark, who served as a University trustee from 1990 to 1996, delivered the University’s commencement address in 1997, and received the Fordham Founder’s Award in 2004. In the late 1990s, she helped fund the construction of the William D. Walsh Family Library.

“I always knew I wanted to make another gift to Fordham,” she said. “At my age, at 85-and-a-half, if I don’t decide to do it soon, who knows?”

Higgins Clark said that some years ago there had been a suggestion that she establish a “literary chair.”

“Frankly, I thought there would be scorn about that because a lot of people would say, ‘She’s just a popular writer,’” said Higgins Clark, who said she just signed a deal to write three more novels. “But I thought, ‘A chair in creative writing?’ Yes, damn it! I’m a good storyteller.”

“This wonderful gift from Mary, in an area that is both an academic priority for Fordham and perfectly aligned with her remarkable career as the ‘Queen of Suspense,’ is something we are profoundly grateful for,” said Roger A. Milici, Jr., vice president for development and University relations. “She joins a very elite list of alumni and friends who have made an investment to establish an endowed professorship. We are proud to forever link her name with Fordham, and we are doubly proud to consider her one of our own.”

Higgins Clark grew up in the Bronx not far from the Rose Hill campus, and never dreamed of going to college when she was young because she wanted to help support her Irish-Catholic family. Instead, she attended secretarial school and worked as a stewardess on Pan American Airlines. After raising five children on her own (she was widowed in 1964), she enrolled at Fordham and took classes at night for five years.

“I had two children in law school, one in Mount Holyoke, one in Dartmouth, and one in Immaculate Heart, and I thought, ‘I don’t want to be the only one in the family who doesn’t have a college degree,’” she said.

She wrote two books while at Fordham: A Stranger Is Watching (Simon & Schuster, 1977), and The Cradle Will Fall (Simon & Schuster, 1980). Both became bestsellers. Her most recent book, The Lost Years (Pocket Books, 2013) features the University prominently.

The idea of a revolving chair was appealing, she said, because creative writing encompasses myriad writing styles that all depend on strong storytelling skills.

“There are plenty of nonfiction writers who are as dry as a bone, and then there are the David McCulloughs and Doris Kearns Goodwins. They know how to tell a story so it reads like a novel,” she said.

Mary Bly, Ph.D., professor of English and herself a bestselling author, who hosted Higgins Clark in her creative writing classes last year, called her a “genius” when it comes to creating narrative drive. Bly said that having a chair that features experts in different writing genres will be a testament to Higgins Clark’s considerable success in not only writing well, but also cultivating a readership.

“It would be wonderful to have a children’s book writer one year, maybe a food writer the next year, a genre fiction writer like Mary the year after that. There’s so much flexibility,” she said.

Robert R. Grimes, S.J., dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, called Higgins Clark a “natural-born teacher.” He recalled that her 1997 commencement speech, in which she instructed graduates to think of their lives as their own suspense novels, was one of the best. The intellectual vigor with which she pursued her studies even as she was writing full-time makes her an ideal role model, he said.

“Having this revolving chair where we bring in writers of distinction from different genres means that over the course of four years, students can be exposed to four very different distinguished writers,” Father Grimes said.

Higgins Clark said she has a great affection for Fordham, and is excited by the goal set by Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the University, to make it the premier Catholic university in the country.

“I think Fordham has the tightest alumni you could find anywhere. You’re part of the Fordham family, no matter how old you are,” she said. “I have found it to be a wonderful, enriching experience.”

Mary Higgins Clark, FCLC ’79, whose 42 books have sold 85 million copies in the United States alone, has pledged $2 million to Fordham University to create the Mary Higgins Clark Chair in Creative Writing.

The gift will make it possible for Fordham to hire a professor of creative writing within the Department of English. The chair will be a visiting appointment for a limited term, offered to a distinguished writer and drawn from a variety of genres. The chair holder will lead writing workshops and teach seminars and master classes to upper-level undergraduates or graduate students.

The first holder of the chair will be announced in the spring of 2015.

This is not the first gift from Higgins Clark, who served as a University trustee from 1990 to 1996, delivered the University’s commencement address in 1997, and received the Fordham Founder’s Award in 2004. In the late 1990s, she helped fund the construction of the William D. Walsh Family Library.

“I always knew I wanted to make another gift to Fordham,” she said. “At my age, at 85-and-a-half, if I don’t decide to do it soon, who knows?”

The gift will make it possible for Fordham to hire a professor of creative writing within the department of English. The chair will be a visiting appointment for a limited term, offered to a distinguished writer drawn from a variety of genres, to lead writing workshops and teach seminars and master classes to upper-level undergraduates or graduate students.

The first holder of the chair will be announced in the spring of 2015.

This is not the first gift from Higgins Clark, who served as a University trustee from 1990 to 1996, delivered the University’s commencement address in 1997, and was honored with a Founder’s Award in 2004. In the late 1990s, she helped fund the construction of the William D. Walsh Family Library.

“I always knew I wanted to make another gift to Fordham,” she said. “At my age, at 85-and-a-half, if I don’t decide to do it soon, who knows?”

Higgins Clark said that some years ago there had been a suggestion that she found a “literary chair.”

“Frankly, I thought there would be scorn about that because a lot of people would say,  ‘She’s just a popular writer,’” said Higgins Clark, who said she just signed a deal to write three more novels.

“But I thought, ‘A chair in creative writing? Yes, damnit! I’m a good story teller.”

“This wonderful gift from Mary, in an area that is both an academic priority for Fordham and perfectly aligned with her remarkable career as the ‘Queen of Suspense,’ is something we are profoundly grateful for,” said Roger A. Milici, Jr., vice president for development and University relations.

“She joins a very elite list of alumni and friends who have made an investment to establish an endowed professorship. We are proud to forever link her name with Fordham, and we are doubly proud to consider her one of our own.”

Higgins Clark grew up in the Bronx not far from the Rose Hill campus, and never dreamed of going to college when she was young because she wanted to help support her Irish-Catholic family. Instead, she attended secretarial school and worked as a stewardess on Pan American Airlines. After raising five children on her own (she was widowed in 1964) she enrolled at Fordham and took classes at night for five years.

“I had two children in law school, one in Mount Holyoke, one in Dartmouth and one in Immaculate Heart, and I thought, I don’t want to be the only one in the family who doesn’t have a college degree,” she said.

She wrote two books while at Fordham: A Stranger Is Watching (Simon & Schuster, 1977), and The Cradle Will Fall (Simon & Schuster, 1980). Both became bestsellers. Her most recent book, The Lost Years (Pocket Books, 2013) features the University prominently.

The idea of a revolving chair was appealing, she said, because creative writing encompasses a myriad of writing styles that all depend on strong storytelling skills.

“There are plenty of nonfiction writers who are as dry as a bone, and then there are the David McCulloughs and Doris Kearns Goodwins. They know how to tell a story so it reads like a novel,” she said.

Mary Bly, Ph.D., professor of English and herself a bestselling author, who hosted Higgins Clark in her creative writing classes this past year, called her a “genius” when it comes to creating narrative drive. Bly said that having a chair that features experts in different writing genres will be a testament to Higgins Clark’s considerable success in not only writing well, but also cultivating a readership.

“It would be wonderful to have a children’s book writer one year, maybe a food writer the next year, a genre fiction writer like Mary the year after that. There’s so much flexibility,” she said.

Robert R. Grimes, S.J., dean of Fordham College Lincoln Center, called Higgins Clark a “natural-born teacher.” He recalled that her 1997 commencement speech, in which she instructed graduates to think of their own lives as their own suspense novels, was one of the best. The intellectual vigor with which she pursued her studies even as she was writing full-time makes her an ideal role model, he said.

“Having this revolving chair where we bring in writers of distinction from different genres means that over the course of a students’ four years here, they can be exposed to four very different, distinguished writers,” Father Grimes said.

Higgins Clark said she has a great affection for Fordham, and is excited by the goal set by Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the University, to make it the premier Catholic university in the country.

“I think Fordham has the tightest alumni you could find anywhere. You’re part of the Fordham family, no matter how old you are,” she said. “I have found it to be a wonderful, enriching experience.”