Lorri Hewett

Lorri was born in Fairfax, Virginia, but spent most of her childhood in

Littleton, Colorado. Her childhood was for the most part idyllic and

uneventful, her father was a system analyst at the National Renewable

Energy Laboratory and her mother stayed home with Lorri and her younger

brother Derek. Lorri was a highly imaginative kid, spending hours in the

imaginary worlds she created from the many books she read. One of her

favorite things to do was to write herself into her favorite stories,

altering the stories so that instead of Laura Ingalls, Charles-Wallace

Murray, Luke Skywalker, or Indiana Jones, she was the principle heroine.

All through her early years at school she was the difficult child, the

one who was smart but didn't apply herself, was continually challenging

authority, and constantly daydreaming. Her first serious try to write

was bei the age of 9 .She got the inspiration for the novel from the

lizzle house on the Prairie series. The novel, titled 'Carlton's Life,'

consisted of about 140 pages detailing the adventures of 6 year old

Wendy Carlton,who was not only a pioneer (braving the ravages of the

Florida winters in 1843 -- at that point Lorri didn't know much about

geography), but also a religious zealot (as in Joan of Arc). At this

time Lorri became seriously involved in ballet training, which made a

nice compliment to her writing because in ballet she was able to develop

the discipline that would allow her to sustain long writing

projects. The first major

event in her life occurred when she was eleven and her Aunt Ginger died

of cancer. Her parents then took in her eight year old cousin Darnel,

and the family had to adjust to having a new member. The change was made

even more difficult because Darnel's biological father, learning that

Darnel was to be the recipient of his mother's life insurance policy,

sued the court for custody of Darnel. The next two years were very

difficult emotionally and financially for the family, as social workers

and lawyers became a regular guest on family life.Whereas writing had

been mainly an amusement before, writing stories became therapeutic and

a source of escapism. Her characters began to resemble human beings

instead of fantastical adventurers.Although she had in junior high

school become a part of the 'bad crowd,' her attraction to this crowd

was their anger and their rebelliousness. They provided her with a

window of observation into the world of teenagers that she had read

about in S.E. Hinton books and that she was not, by her relative comfort

and her stable family life, a part of. In these years she was playing

the role of counsellor to her friends, helping them through parental

crises,substance abuse problems, eating disorders, and

sexualvictimization. All of these experiences gave her new ideas for

writing. She now became committed to the idea of recording the problems

that she saw around her with people her age in a realistic way. Writing

was still, however,an extremely private thing for Lorri. Aside from her

best friend from childhood Lyda Acker, no one, not even her parents,

knew to the extent to which writing was an important part of her

life.Her most productive writing period was in her high school years,in

which she wrote nine novels. Her high school years were her most

difficult years, because that was when she began to feel alienated.Being

'different,'being the only black student in her classes,living in a

middle-class neighborhood had never before been problematic for her

because she had always been in many ways a leader, some other kids could

look up to. Once she reached high school, being a leader was no longer

enough for her. She knew that there was something more to her identity

than she was seeing in her daily life. She had no real access to black

organizations, had no black friends. Her first thought to deal with this

new dilemma for her was to throw herself even more into activities. At

this time ballet had become an important part of her life. She was

spending six days a week at the dance studio in serious professional

training. She began to feel the first actions of racial discrimination,

which she had not faced with to age 14 in her ballet company. As she

watched herself being passed over for major roles, Lorri began to wonder

why it seemed to difficult to have a black Sleeping Beauty or

Cinderella, and in this way she began to see how tradition was often

incompatible with social realities. Lorri actively tried to involve

herself in the black community by making friends in the Denver area and

becoming active in Shorter African Methodist Episcopal church. Out of

these experiences grew her inspiration for her first published novel

titled Coming of Age, which she wrote as a Senior in high school. Unsure

of the book's marketability, she sent the book to only one publisher,

Holloway house, a medium-sized publisher of black experience paperbacks.

She was surprised to learn in her freshman year at Emory University that

the book had been accepted for publication. Lorri was surprised by the

amount of publicity surrounding the book and spent her first semester

giving many television, radio, newspaper and magazine interviews. This

was a rather unnerving experience, as writing, which had always been

such a private part of her life, now became public. But the most

enjoyable experiences for her were the visits to several Atlanta high

schools, where she talked with students about the process of writing.

She was often told by the students, especially by black students, that

her book was the first book to get them interested in reading in

general. These experiences further emphasized her to focus on the

contemporary experiences of young African-Americans and how it was

important to her to keep writing for that audience.

Lorri won a merit scholarship to attend Emory University that covered

all of her tuition and room and boarding expenses. Because finances were

not a big concern for her, she was able to devote her time to many

different activities. At Emory, Lorri remained actively involved in the

dance community, as well as getting involved in several African American

organizations on campus. She had originally thought she would study

political science and then go to law school, but she realized in her

second year that she had a love of literature and that she wanted to

explore that interest further. She became involved in the creative

writing program at Emory, winning the undergraduate fiction contest in

her freshman year.Her second novel Soulfire grew out of that impetus.

The first draft was written during her second year at Emory and explored

the issues of black manhood.Lorri spent the summer between her sophomore

and junior year in Europe and the middle East, studying art history and

ancient history. She was also able to travel again in the summer of

1993, spending that summer at the university of Oslo's International

Summer School with students from 78 countries. That experience made the

most profound impression on her life, as she was able to live in a truly

global community. During her final year at Emory she became committed to

the idea of spending a year abroad after graduation in order to more

fully experience life in another country. She was awarded a Robert Jones

fellowship to the University of St. Andrews, which has also offered her

the opportunity to travel throughout Europe. She had also received a

Fulbright scholarship to Ghana and regrettably had to turn it down

because the Fulbright commission does not allow deferrals. At St.

Andrews she is continuing her studies of English. She plans to explore

these issues further in graduate school, where she hopes to get a PhD in

English and ultimately teaches literature and writing. She is concerned

with the fragmentation occurring in the humanities today, especially in

the areas in such interdisciplinary fields as cultural studies and woman

studies. She plans to investigate the issue, most importantly the

implications of the hyper-specialization required by today's graduate

students and tomorrow's teachers on the undergraduate student, with a

fellow Jones scholar and cross over into the field of non-fiction

writing. Her current fiction projects include an original play she's

working on, as well as the revision of the short story collection she

wrote for her Honor's thesis at Emory. She plans to begin work on

another novel.

She is now a research assistant at the Mid-Continent Regional Education

Laboratory in Aurora, Colorado. She is also pursuing a master of fine

arts degree in fiction writing at the Iowa Writer's Workshop and is at

work on her third novel.

Her books:

Lives of Our Own

Lorri Hewett / Published 1998

Soulfire

Lorri Hewett / Published 1998

Coming of Age

Lorri Hewett/Published 1998

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