Alumna Lorri Hewett

Alumna Lorri Hewett’s Biography

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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