There are a lot of things that our school’s auditorium serves purpose for, and gathering students to attend a visit from New York Time’s best-selling author Therese Fowler was recently one of them.
The request for Fowler’s appearance, made by English teacher Sarah Larsen, came about when Larsen was purchasing Fowler’s book, “Z,” for her personal reading. Larsen was intrigued to learn the author was local.
“I always find that interesting to learn more about the author and where she comes from. Plus, it’s an interesting topic,” Larsen said.
As an English III teacher in particular, part of Larsen’s curriculum is to have students read the novel “The Great Gatsby.” The author of the book, F. Scott Fitzgerald, was wed to partner Zelda, the subject behind “Z.”
Students, such as junior Brooke Strickland, read the novel before Fowler’s visit.
“I liked that it was more of a story rather than just facts that kept going one after the other,” Strickland said. “She actually put life into it instead of having it be something boring that we usually learn in history.”
Fowler’s interest in writing came from a desire to share with others.
“It sort of came about out of this compulsion to be able to tell stories that would be meaningful to others. The stories have always been meaningful to me, so I guess that’s kind of my inspiration,” Fowler said.
Overall, Larsen thought Fowler was a humble person who “seemed to just take stride with everything.”
“She didn’t act like she knew everything like some literary guru. She was just kind of fun about it, and I also appreciated how much research she did. Whenever I was reading her book, I was constantly questioning ‘is this true’ and hearing that she made it about as real and true as possible was awesome,” Larsen said.
Larsen, as well as Miller, liked the fact that Fowler owned the fact that some of her previous books weren’t as successful as “Z.”
“I learned that your first try isn’t always your best, so have to keep going,” Miller said.
In speaking to students about that success, she gave students advice about what was needed in order to achieve that success.
Fowler said, “The best advice young writers can follow would be to read extensively and widely, not just one particular genre but all kinds of things, and then write, a lot.”