Quarterly Mills
The “Why” of YA
by Sarah Jamila Stevenson, MFA ’04
24 Their Struggle by
18 So you want to publish a book? by
Shelley Moench-Kelly
DEPARTMENTS
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR / 2
OPENING MESSAGE / 3
ON THE OVAL / 4
OVER THE WIRES / 8
A SLICE OF QUARTERLY HISTORY / 9
April 1925
Lila Kalick, MFA ’19
CAMPUS PHOTO: The Mills College Art Museum turns 100 this year, and you’ll find several references to that acclaimed institution in this first issue of 2025. Front photo by Allison Rost; back photo by Ruby Wallau for Northeastern University.
AAMC NEWS & NOTES / 32
VINTAGE PHOTO / 35
Fu Dogs at the Mills College Art Museum
CLASS NOTES / 36
ALUM PROFILE / 39
Elle Newton ’12
MEDIA LAB / 40
MEMORIES / 41
Faculty Village & Warren Olney
CATCHING UP WITH / 42
Cross-Country 2009–2011
IN MEMORIAM / 44
SALON / 48
Sisters by Professor Emerita of Painting Hung Liu
ON THE COVER: Books, writing, literature: You’ll find stories about quite a few Mills alums in publishing throughout these pages. Photo by Henk Vrieselaar.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
I have been receiving my Mills Quarterly since the changeover to Northeastern. I have read your words telling us that the core of our mission hasn’t changed only to witness a rather staggering number of changes. I am saddened, angry, and exhausted. I thought I could manage getting communications from Northeastern, but I can’t. It’s not and will never be my alma mater.
I’ll miss hearing about my Mills sisters, and they are always welcome to reach out to me. But no further donations will be forthcoming, and I request you stop sending me materials about a school I didn’t attend.
I’ll always be a proud Mills woman. Good luck, Northeastern.
–Robin Mitchell ’98, Buffalo, New
York
Love the redesign and the explanation of the upgrade. It was bursting with thoughtful designs and refreshing new features—beautiful work all around!
–Samantha Foster ’09, Mission Viejo, California
I missed the article on “Millsies” from spring 2024 but have seen the first letter of the fall issue wherein Gwen Jackson Foster reiterates that the name sounds childish. I graduated in 1976 and fortunately had never heard or read the clearly demeaning label. I have to wonder why, a few pages later in the same issue, a prominent tagline refers to “three Millsies.” Do you actually think women who chose a women’s college want to be referred to that way? Please refrain. It isn’t appropriate.
–Marlene Friedman Walters ’76, Kensington, California
Share your thoughts
Submit your letter to the editor via email to mills.quarterly@northeastern.edu, online at quarterly.mills.edu, or by mail at: Mills Quarterly, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA 94613. The Quarterly reserves the right to edit letters for length and clarity.
Corrections
In “Three Paths, One (Deliciously Sustainable) Destination,” a sentence spoken by Malena LopezMaggi ’13, MFA ’15, was cut off by an image. It should have read: “We do our part by using recyclable materials and natural, organic ingredients, but overall, the chocolate industry is not assisting.” And in “Community at the Center,” we should have referred to Steven Day, the partner of Romney Steele ’02, MFA ’04, as an educator and not an author. Our apologies for the errors and any confusion they may have caused.
MILLS QUARTERLY
ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR INSTITUTIONAL ADVANCEMENT
Nikole Hilgeman Adams
MANAGING EDITOR
Allison Rost
DESIGN AND ART DIRECTION
Nancy Siller Wilson
CONTRIBUTORS
Zac Borja
Lila Kalick, MFA ’19
Danna Lorch
Shelley Moench-Kelly
Josue Murrillo
Kieran Turan ’90
Sarah Jamila Stevenson, MFA ’04
Kate Swartz ’08
Ruby Wallau
The Mills Quarterly (USPS 349-900) is published quarterly by Mills College at Northeastern University, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA 94613. Periodicals postage paid at Oakland, California, and at additional mailing office(s).
Postmaster: Send address changes to: Oakland University Advancement, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA 94613.
Copyright ©2025, Mills College at Northeastern University
Address correspondence to: Mills Quarterly 5000 MacArthur Blvd. Oakland, CA 94613
Email: mills.quarterly@northeastern.edu Phone: 510.430.3312
Greetings to you, Mills alums and community members!
This fall, it was such a pleasure for me to chat with many of you at Reunion. It was the third time I’ve come out for Reunion to support your Office of Alumnae Relations, and this year, several of my Boston-based colleagues joined me to get a better idea of the places and personalities that have made Mills so unique for more than a century. I’ve really come to enjoy Reunion, and this year was no exception— it was a wonderful time with such camaraderie!
We’re excited to welcome you into the Northeastern network, and at Reunion, I led a session about the benefits Mills alums can now enjoy as part of the Northeastern global network. It also corresponded to an email with similar information that went out that same weekend. Now, I want to make sure that readers of the Quarterly are also equipped with the same knowledge as they become more acquainted with Northeastern’s global network.
Northeastern’s Alumni Relations office has long been geared toward lifelong learning and support for graduates as they embark upon lives filled with boundless thinking and disrupting the status quo. In practical terms, that means you’ll have access to services that support your professional needs and broaden your network, including:
• NUsource, a networking platform to help you connect with peers
• Career support, including webinars and one-on-one coaching services
• Learning opportunities through on-demand, virtual programs
• Double-Husky Scholarship eligibility to help finance your graduate education
• The Women Who Empower network, offering mentorship and entrepreneurship support
• The Village of Belonging, which provides alums and students from diverse backgrounds and groups with engagement opportunities and connections
• Events in your region
When it comes to the latter, we have already begun collaborating with the Oakland team on events in the Bay Area open to both Mills and Northeastern alums. This past fall, that included a Saturday afternoon picnic in Golden Gate Park and the first of a series of industry-specific mixers at Reinhardt Alumnae House—this one, for graduates in the tech world to hear more about equity in artificial intelligence. Look for invitations to events like these and other additional alumni communications from my office.
The activities I’m describing here are all additive onto the Mills alumnae experience you already know well, such as the Quarterly you’re reading here and Reunion. We are thrilled that you are a part of the Northeastern network and look forward to bringing you more programming, but we all have such respect for the Mills legacy that lives within each of you and want to continue celebrating that. Members of the Office of Alumnae Relations, located in Reinhardt Alumnae House, will continue their work on your behalf.
I welcome you to reach out to me with your comments and questions at l.jacques@northeastern.edu. Otherwise, I hope to meet you on campus or at a regional event sometime soon!
From the associate vice president for alumni relations and annual giving
Lori Jacques
ON THE OVAL
Election results favor Mills grads
Lateefah Simon ’13 will succeed Barbara Lee ’73 to represent California’s 12th Congressional district in the House of Representatives. With 98% of ballots counted, the Associated Press reported that Simon won the race against fellow Democrat Jennifer Tran with 65.4% of the vote. “Throughout my life, I’ve worked to stand up for justice and to support the working families and communities that make us who we are,” said Simon
in a statement released on November 12, 2024. “I am ready to bring that same commitment to Congress.”
On the Saturday before the election, November 2, Simon and Lee joined together to cast their ballots at their polling place, which happened to be in the historic Student Union on the Oakland campus. The victory capped a busy campaign for Simon, who also made national headlines with a speech at the Democratic National Convention
in Chicago on August 21, 2024. Lee steps down from Congress, where she has served since 1998, this January. Because she entered the 2024 Democratic primary for the California U.S. Senate seat vacated by Dianne Feinstein—which Adam Schiff, who represented California’s 30th Congressional district in the House, eventually won—she could not run for re-election in her district. As of press time, she had not yet announced her future plans, but she leaves behind an extensive legacy in Congress, including casting the lone “no” vote against the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists in 2001.
In other local election news, Rowena Brown ’19 won the at-large seat on the Oakland City Council, defeating a field that included former Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong with 29.2% of first-round votes and 56.9% of ranked-choice votes. Brown earned her law degree from University of California Law, San Francisco, and has worked as a constituent services coordinator for the City of Oakland and state legislative district director for Assemblywoman Mia Bonta.
Librarian Janice Braun retires
In October 2024, longtime library director and special collections curator Janice Braun retired after nearly 30 years at F.W. Olin Library. Here, her friend and longtime colleague Renee Jadushlever, the vice president of campus administration and strategic initiatives, reflects on Braun’s tenure. -Ed.
Janice’s expertise in rare books administration and her curatorial acumen have been nothing short of extraordinary. With her care, expertise, and academic training, she has exhibited an unparalleled
ability to breathe life into centuries-old texts and artifacts, making history tangible for generations of students and researchers alike. Her course on the History of the Book was a highlight for many students, only to be amplified by the many examples she was able to share from the Special Collections and the historical context she presented. Her passion for these treasures was evident in every exhibition she has curated in the past 25 years, in both the presentation of an expert installation and in the complexity
News in brief
Meryl Bailey, associate professor of art history, has taken on a new position within Mills College at Northeastern: associate dean of curriculum and network programs. She is working in tandem with Dean Beth Kochly to build out Mills academic programs and secure a niche within the various colleges operating on the Oakland campus. She joins two other associate deans on the Mills team: Professor of Education Priya Shimpi Driscoll as associate dean of research, scholarship, and social impact; and Sarayu Prakash as associate dean of administration and finance.
With the help of a $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, Northeastern’s Digital Transgender Archive will add a lab space and assistant director on the Oakland campus. Archive director Professor of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies K.J. Rawson is based in Boston and told Northeastern Global News that a West Coast presence will ease the project’s attempts to expand its reach and garner new partnerships.
Janice Braun (left) visits with Congresswoman Barbara Lee '73 (middle) and actress Christina Jackson, who played Lee in the recent Netflix movie about Shirley Chisholm. Photo by Greer Rivera for Northeastern University.
and care taken with the annotations she crafted. She showed an uncanny ability to select just the right items to tell a compelling story, making complex historical narratives accessible and engaging to all. Her work has not only educated but has also instilled a sense of wonder and appreciation for our shared cultural heritage.
Janice was equally comfortable in answering the countless questions that came her way regarding rare books, archives, and ephemeral materials, in addition to more straightforward reference questions. For each, her patience, depth of knowledge, and enthusiasm never wavered, whether assisting a first-year student, a seasoned professor, or scholarly researcher. She has been an irreplaceable resource, guiding countless academic journeys and inspiring a love for historical artifacts in everyone she encountered.
While Founders Commons opened in time for the fall semester, several renovation projects that continued even as students dined are now fully complete. They include a dining area on the lower level of the building, an electric pizza oven, an all-day breakfast bar with numerous gluten-free options, and a full dessert bar.
With mostly first-year students on the Oakland campus, many sections of basic writing are being taught through the College of Social Sciences and Humanities. Starting this academic year, that course has teamed up with the Mills College Art Museum to bring those students to the latest exhibition, Reshaping the Narrative: California Perspectives, and give them an assignment to respond to and think critically about the work they see. There’s also a contest for student writing, with winners to be featured on Glass Cube, MCAM’s blog.
Populating the C-suite with women leaders
This fall, the Mills Institute added a new program to its slate of offerings— an executive training program for women.
Held November 2, the event was a joint effort with Northeastern’s D’AmoreMcKim School of Business, with Laura Huang, associate dean for executive education, flying out from Boston to co-host with Executive Director Christie Chung. Huang, who wrote the book Edge: Turning Adversity Into Advantage, took the lead during a “me”-oriented morning session, while Chung took over in the afternoon to address the “we” portion—how to collectively create advantages and empower other people within an organization. All of the content was driven by each speaker’s research.
Chung said that the institute structured the program in a “cluster cohort” model, reaching out to local companies to send up to five women leaders, some of whom came in knowing each other but all experiencing the workshop as a group. Participants came from organizations including Kaiser Permanente, Salesforce, Yelp, T-Mobile, and Clark Construction. “I also wanted to make sure that people know when they send their leaders to our programs, they’re driving institutional growth for their companies as well—because they bring back that knowledge and they can make change within the organization,” she says.
Plans are already underway to make this a regular occurrence, with another planned for Oakland in March and one for Boston in May. “We’re thinking of Oakland a bit earlier because we already have the momentum, and we have the legacy,” Chung says. “I feel like the Oakland program will continue to grow because people know about Mills, and they’re, like, ‘Oh, you must know something about women’s leadership!’” She says she hopes to expand the offering to other Northeastern locations, such as London and Miami.
At the Mills Institute this fall:
• The inaugural Empowering Change Through Radical Care Conference, held in the Student Union on November 21.
• The Russell Women in Science Leadership Speaker Series, which featured Kaiser Permanente’s Physician-in-Chief Rita Ng in conversation at Lisser Hall on October 25.
• Two Global Equity Innovation Labs: one on research pertaining to LGBTQIA+ populations in partnership with Ochanomizu University in Tokyo on November 5, and another on reproductive justice as part of Research Justice at the Intersections on September 24.
Campus leaders update Reunion attendees
Reunion 2024 also gave administrators the chance to bring alums up to date on what’s happening on the Oakland campus and answer questions.
Taking the microphone first was Dan Sachs, the Oakland campus dean who started in the newly created role on July 1, 2024. He mentioned that the fall semester started with about 1,000 first-year Northeastern students, 35 legacy Mills students on campus, 35 Oakland-based students learning remotely through the College of Professional Studies, and about 100 master’s students. Sachs also said that there are about a dozen legacy Mills students on the Boston campus.
He related that Northeastern has already spent about $210 million in improvements to the campus infrastructure and specific buildings, with more to come, and that the new Oakland Opportunity Scholarship program will cover as many as 10 local students in each incoming class for full tuition, room, and board, which entails a $3-million commitment.
Next up was Mills Institute Executive Director Christie Chung, who—in addition to speaking about the goings-on detailed in “Populating the C-suite with women leaders”— said that while Northeastern did provide seed funding for the research and operations of the institute for the next few years, many programs are being funded by donors, foundations, and the endowment. She invited alums to get involved at millsinstitute .northeastern.edu.
Mills College Dean Beth Kochly then caught Reunion attendees up on academic development, including the availability starting fall 2024 of four graduate education programs and the possibility of more advanced degrees
continued on page 7
CALENDAR
Music Performances at Littlefield Concert Hall
Mills Music Now
Dewing Piano Recital with Iyad Sughayer Sunday, March 23 at 3:00 p.m.
The JordanianPalestinian pianist Iyad Sughayer was nominated as a Classic FM Rising Star in 2022. He plays a program that includes Helen Ottaway, Franz Schubert, and Aram Khachaturian.
Admission is free but registration is requested; visit performingarts .mills.edu for tickets.
Other Minds
Boulez at 100 with Gloria Cheng and Ralph van Raat Wednesday, March 26 at 7:30 p.m.
From Antheil to Zappa with Geoffrey Burleson Saturday, April 5 at 7:30 p.m
These two shows are presented by the music organization Other Minds. The former is a centennial celebration of the birth of French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, an electronic music pioneer who had a part in the growth of integral serialism in the 1950s, with two pianos playing Boulez’s
music as well as pieces by artists such as John Cage and Morton Feldman. The latter showcases pianist Geoffrey Burleson as he plays works from a broad variety of artists, including Vincent Persichetti, Irving Fine, and Samuel Barber. Visit otherminds .org for tickets and more information.
Reunion update , continued
in education; continuing progress on restoring ethnic studies to the curriculum, including interdisciplinary majors tied to public health and data science; creating special opportunities for upper division students to come to Oakland to study subjects like ecology and human behavior; and the prospect of adopting a theme on sustainability—in all its
forms, including social and cultural. “A Mills faculty member said to me that sustainability is a manifestation of social justice, and that’s something we hold deep in our hearts and really strive to move forward,” Kochly said.
Finally, Katie Wildman, the vice chancellor for student life, addressed attendees. She relayed that residence halls are completely full, with Ethel Moore out of commission for
renovations and legacy Mills students living in the Underwood Apartments, and that every resident is in a Living Learning Community with themes such as the power of place and healthy living. Wildman’s department was planning to coordinate 18 off-campus excursions this academic year for students to learn more about the Bay Area, as well as oversee a robust club sports program.
Iyad Sughayer, photo by James Bartholomew
Press mentions and honors for Mills alums and Oakland professors
Erin Armstrong ’16, MPP/MBA ’18, ran for the District 5 seat on the Oakland City Council in the November 2024 election. (She came in second.) In the leadup to the election, the Bay Area Reporter published an article on September 4, 2024, about the possibility that she’d become the first openly trans city council member in the Bay Area. Read the full story at tinyurl.com/erin-armstrong-2025.
The stint at Mills for Shireen Gobhai ’74 involved supplying the latest music to her brother Xerxes and his bandmates in John Mayall’s band Human Bondage, so much so that The Wire’s coverage of Mayall’s recent death paid tribute to her contributions to the band’s success.
The Santa Barbara Sierra Club celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2024, an occasion made possible through the efforts of Kathleen Goddard Jones ’30, who founded the chapter in 1949. Read more about her life at tinyurl.com/kathleen-jones, including her friendships with Ansel Adams and David Brower.
Daisy Gonzales ’07 is the new executive director of the California Student Aid Commission, and she participated in a media panel on August 15, 2024, to stress the importance of Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and the California Dream Act Application (CADAA). Read her advice at tinyurl .com/daisy-gonzales-2025.
Susan Ito, MFA ’94, who is also a professor of English on the Oakland campus, spoke with Psychology Today about her experiences as an adoptee and her book I Would Meet You Anywhere in September 2024. Her interviewer was author Ariel Gore ’94; read the piece at tinyurl.com/susan-ito.
Associate Professor of Political Science Martha Johnson provided guidance to WalletHub’s list of best and worst American cities for women, which was published on September 23, 2024. She mentioned that reproductive health plays a key part. Read the full article at tinyurl.com/martha-johnson.
Lead by Learning’s Nina Portugal and Charley Brooks were presenters at last July’s School-University Partnerships Virtual Conference, speaking on “Bridging Research and Practice: How Lead by Learning Uses Collaborative Inquiry to Drive Continuous Improvement in Bay Area Schools.”
Ahead of her band’s August 2024 performance in Eugene, Oregon, Megan March-Wright ’05 spoke with Eugene Weekly about Street Eaters’ early days, including Fred Frith’s influence. Read the piece at tinyurl.com/megan-march-wright.
The Granada theater in Santa Barbara honored Susan Miles Gulbransen ’63 at its 100th anniversary gala on September 14, 2024, for the work she did to restore the historic site in the early 2000s.
Louisville Public Media reported in September 2024 on the history between the Louisville Orchestra and Darius Milhaud, mentioning that a piece he composed for the orchestra in its 1948-49 season was part of an effort to add international appeal. That same piece was revisited and performed in the orchestra’s 2024 seasonopening concert on September 14.
Claire Ptak ’97, the London-based baker who gained fame for creating Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding cake, received a write-up in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 19, 2024, that mentioned her history with West Marin. Read the article at tinyurl.com/claire-ptak-2025.
The late Patricia Stockton Leddy ’51 received a star in the Fox Theater Foundation’s walk of stars in Bakersfield. She was a Bakersfield native who studied dance at Mills and returned home to support the arts community there.
The website Bold Journey interviewed Arielle Cole, MFA ’21, MM ’22 , for a piece that published on July 30, 2024. In it, she spoke about her career in dance and the journey she took in creating her own dance company. Read the article at tinyurl.com/arielle-cole.
by Michael Halberstadt.
Photo
The New Art Building
By Art Gallery Director Roi Partridge
Trip-hammers have sounded on the campus at Mills for the first time. That means modern steel construction and calls to mind the picture of men in blue overalls walking coolly along lofty bright red girders, or tossing hot rivets 20 feet to be caught deftly in three-gallon buckets. That is not all it calls to mind, but the rest can be left while we deduce that something new in more ways than one is happening here. A new paved street, the President’s house transported to a new location—almost a new house; a new fireproof, steel and reinforced concrete building; all the outcome—let us pay ourselves this compliment—of a new interest in the fine arts, in the crafts, and in the culture that lies in these realms; for this finest, first class-A, and most permanent building upon the campus is to be the heart about which will ultimately cluster studios and workshops for the Art Department; is to be an Art Gallery, a Museum.
Each generation of students has waited for this Art Gallery, each hoping it would he completed before she left college, and for 10 years and more each has left disappointed. Now the present seniors will see it practically completed and the freshmen of next fall will see it opened.
The building, Spanish in type, will consist of a large gallery, approximately 40 by 120 feet, entirely lit from above by the most approved methods that engineers can devise. At the upper end, near Aliso Station, will be the main entrance for the public, and one smaller gallery which may he used for prints or other exhibits not requiring great space. At the other end will be a second entrance to be used in affairs not of interest to the outside public. At one corner near this will be the beginnings of a beautifully planned tower, by completing which we hope someone will find immortality and, in doing so, add glory to the building and the college. The whole structure has been cunningly devised to fit the configuration of the terrain; after entering, the spectator will descend stairs into the main gallery, an unusual and not unimpressive manner of entering such a gallery. Outside many large nearby trees have been carefully preserved, and these will serve to break the great expanse of wall caused by the imperative need to keep within an unbroken space for the exhibition of pictures.
The smaller galleries and classrooms ultimately to be added to this largest unit will be of a wandering, informal, picturesque type which will have much need of the tower as a focal point, a center of interest, holding the group together. There will be covered walks, as in the patio of a Spanish colonial house, connecting classroom with classroom. The tile-roofed, Spanish character will be preserved throughout, a style so appropriate to the sunny climate of California, with its Spanish memories.
Many exhibitions have been tentatively thought of for next winter. An exhibition of works by California painters, various “one-man shows” by well-known artists, exhibitions of prints by internationally known etchers, woodblock printers and lithographers, exhibitions of textiles and embroideries such as those in the collections of Henrietta Brewer and Persis Coleman, exhibitions of paintings and other works of art which may be secured from the American Federation of Art. Added to this will he permanent exhibitions of numerous works of art, many of great value, already owned by the College and only awaiting the completion of this fireproof repository to he removed thereto. We hope many things of beauty destined for ultimate donation to some public museum, will, by the interest of the owners and the loyalty of alumnae, find permanent place in this newest of Pacific Coast museums.
The “Why” of YA
BY SARAH JAMILA STEVENSON, MFA ’04
Why read it, why write it— and
why it gets challenged
Anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with the publishing industry knows that the young adult (YA) literature market is a hot commodity. In the early 2000s, YA book sales hit record levels, and though the numbers have varied since then, YA is undeniably a part of the cultural zeitgeist: Young adult books have spawned hit movies and television shows, and they attract reading audiences well outside their professed age demographic. Not all the attention has been positive, though—as young adult books have grown in popularity, they have also been increasingly targeted by book bans and challenges. What makes YA books so compulsively readable, and yet— in some circles—so controversial?
Jennifer March Soloway, MFA ’05, a senior agent at Andrea Brown Literary Agency, stresses that young adult books are much more than simply entertainment; they provide young readers with the opportunity to learn about the world and how it works and help them know they’re not alone in their feelings.
“I really looked to reading to see what lay ahead for me and to see how other characters handle things,” she says about her own teenage reading habits. “Would I handle it the same way? Would I handle it differently?” She devoured Judy Blume books and what were traditionally called “problem novels” about teenagers in tough situations: coping with eating disorders, facing serious decisions about alcohol use or sex.
Though she now approaches YA lit with a more professional eye, it still holds plenty of appeal.
“I feel like reading literature is the one way I can slip into the shoes of somebody else whose perspective I would never have on my own,” she says. “Especially for that formative age, it’s a very powerful medium.”
As noted in a white paper by
the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), YA literature itself has experienced a coming of age. The field many once thought of as just another category of children’s books itself contains a wealth of genres, an astonishing diversity of perspectives, and a level of literary quality that has garnered increasing recognition. Highprofile awards such as the Michael L. Printz Award and the National Book Award, to name just two, honor YA books of particular literary merit. Even authors already established in the world of adult fiction, from literary luminaries such as Isabel Allende and Ursula K. Le Guin to commercial successes like Carl Hiaasen and Meg Cabot, have tried their hands at writing for young adults.
What’s more, YA isn’t just for teens anymore. HarperCollins reports that 74% of YA readers are adults, and nearly a quarter are over the age of 28. As more and more young adult books spend time on bestseller lists, even those readers who haven’t been swept up in the excitement recognize that YA has entered the mainstream, and adults reading YA no longer have qualms about admitting it in public.
The reason for YA literature’s surging popularity among adult readers is more than simply nostalgia or escapism, though those do factor in. One of Soloway’s clients, Aiden Thomas ’10, MFA ’15, notes that YA literature has an approachability and a level of openness to new experiences that is lacking in many books written for adult audiences.
“When you’re a teenager, you have so many big feelings,” he says, “and when you’re writing young adult stories, you’re tapping into those feelings, you’re tapping into those firsts”—first love, first crush, first big fight with a friend.
“You see yourself as young, no matter how old you get, and you’re still looking for the new things in life. YA lit provides that.”
– Kathryn Reiss
Soloway agrees. “I think for adults, firsts are thrilling. As an adult going back to that space, you can remember that excitement—and you also don’t have all the baggage of the adult stuff.”
“Adults are not as honest with their emotions a lot of times,” says YA and middle grade author Tanita S. Davis, MFA ’04. In children’s and young adult books, “you’re having those heartfelt conversations, and the stakes are high, and everything is put right out there.”
When it comes down to it, plenty of adult readers still feel young at heart. Associate Teaching Professor Kathryn Reiss is a YA author herself who established the first writing classes for the genre on both the undergrad and MFA levels decades ago, and she says she sees that youthful appeal as a major reason for YA’s popularity. (Her daughter, Isabel Strychacz ’17, is also a YA author.)
“You see yourself as young, no matter how old you get, and you’re still looking for the new things in life,” she says. “YA lit provides that.”
There is, of course, also a measure of escapism for adults reading teen books. Particularly during the pandemic, teens and adults alike were clamoring for just such an outlet.
“They want some fun, they want romance, they want interesting settings,” says Alex Brown ’05, a teen services librarian at an independent school in Ojai, California—and readers weren’t necessarily getting that from adult fiction, particularly a few years ago.
Brown says that one issue is the marketing and age range categories used by the publishing industry. These categories shift over time as publishers try to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. But this doesn’t necessarily result in readers actually finding the books they want to read—particularly teens.
A few years ago, Brown started to track the age ranges of protagonists in young adult speculative fiction, and they found a startling pattern: There were almost no books with a 14-year-old protagonist. Nearly all of the characters were aged 16 to 18, and there were even 19- and 20-year-olds.
“The age range is skewing up because publishing wants older characters to hit the adult readers, because the adult readers don’t want to read about 14-year-olds,” Brown says.
“We’re starting to see this creep into middle grades too, because middle grade is starting to age
up and [experience] more intense themes,” they add. “I have a lot of kids who are rejecting some of the middle grade books that I’m buying, because they’re like, ‘This is too mature for me. It’s just too intense, too scary.’” Even in YA, more adult themes—such as characters working and living as adults or dealing with marriage issues—mean that younger readers can’t relate.
Brown’s view is that readers would benefit if publishers revived the “new adult” age category, or even implemented a new category for books about younger characters in more intense situations: “If you make a separate marketing category, then we can allow YA to be what it’s meant for—and it’s meant for teens. We are denying teens their own literature.”
This is further complicated by the fact that, while older readers want books that provide a look back on their teen years, young readers do tend to want to “read up”—but, as Brown argues, they aren’t looking for situations so far beyond their experience that they can’t relate at all.
In the case of middle grade, what they want, Davis says, is “what the big kids are reading. They want what they perceive the older kids have,” whether that’s drama or adventure or even romance.
Marketing categories aside, tween and teen readers need to find the books that truly speak to them— especially critical for readers who feel marginalized, such as LGBTQIA+ kids or kids of color.
“If I’d had queer books, if I’d had books with genderqueer or asexual characters at 14, my entire trajectory of life would have been different,” Brown says. “I would have been so much happier.”
LAMENTABLY, young readers throughout the country have, more than ever before, been actively prevented from accessing the books that might make such a huge difference in their lives. The American Library Association (ALA) reported a 65% surge in the number of book challenges in 2023 compared to 2022, and 9 out of the 10 most frequently challenged books in 2023 were young adult titles. These challenges tend to target the places kids are most likely to access reading materials: schools and public libraries.
Major organizations, including the ALA and PEN America, stand in opposition to the censorship of materials based on one person or group’s objections—censorship that affects
everyone’s access to those materials, not just those who object.
Fear, according to Soloway, is one of the motivations at the heart of the issue. So is plain old bigotry. Some individuals or groups may be trying to maintain a position of power and control or promote traditional values over ideas that make them feel threatened. In short, people challenge books when they feel challenged by them.
The increasing polarization of the political climate has only made it easier for authors to step into a minefield, either inadvertently or deliberately, as more and more books take on issues at the forefront of the national conversation.
“This is always such a sad question for me,” Davis says. “I was raised by extremely conservative Christians. When I find the adults who are trying so hard to control everything, I kind of understand these people.” Aside from certain politically motivated outsiders, “many people began from a place of concern. They want their children to
go to heaven, and they feel like this is the way forward.”
Davis wrote her young adult novel Happy Families, in part, for those audiences who might be difficult to reach. In the story, the father is a leader at their family’s church, but he also has a secret life when he’s away on business trips, going out and about wearing drag. The emphasis, she says, is on “finding out that a parent is not who you thought they were, and… finding out that there was a queer person in your family when you thought you didn’t know any queer people.”
As an adult, horrified by some of the attitudes she saw expressed by people who identified as Christians, she decided to write this book to drive
home a message of love and tolerance: “Just because somebody is wearing different clothes and may have different needs, that doesn’t mean they’re a different person than the person that you loved all along. And if you love them, you love them, full stop.”
She did expect that the book would cause controversy in some places, and indeed, it ended up on a few banned book lists. Of course, she isn’t the only Millsie to have a YA book challenged. In the early 1990s, Reiss’ first book, Time Windows, was challenged in San Diego public schools because of objections to alleged occult themes—the characters wonder if there’s a ghost in the attic of their house, and they try to communicate with it. The fact that no such ghost actually appears was apparently moot.
Recently, Thomas has dealt with challenges and bans for his 2020 book Cemetery Boys, a paranormal fantasy featuring a trans boy as the
“If I’d had queer books, if I’d had books with genderqueer or asexual characters at 14... I would have been so much happier.”
– Alex Brown
main character. Another Mills alum, Nina LaCour, MFA ’06, contended with challenges to her debut novel Hold Still, which included a samesex relationship. Stories featuring LGBTQIA+ characters and themes are commonly challenged, according to PEN America, comprising 9% of banned books.
At first, “I was kind of wearing it as a badge of honor,” Thomas says— indeed, one possible outcome to books being challenged is that they may attract media attention and shed more light on the issue of book bans. But the ones who truly suffer from this situation—those directly affected by these books not being in certain libraries and schools—are young readers.
“The real victims are marginalized kids who don’t get to feel comfortable or embrace their identities,” he says. “I care about readers, and the kids who need these stories in order to survive young adulthood.”
Davis also adds that it doesn’t necessarily increase sales or attention for every author who writes a banned book: “Yeah, there are books that get on the ALA’s Top Ten [Banned Books]—people know about those books. But there are hundreds of others that don’t get the spotlight.”
When books are removed from school libraries, classrooms, and public libraries, it severely limits reader
access. And while online access to books has mitigated the issue somewhat, the truth is that more than half of children get most of the books they read for fun from a school-related source, and over a third get them from the public library. Even in towns with bookstores available, many kids have no way to easily access them.
“There are millions of people where the only internet access is the one family cell phone,” Brown says, the school librarian. “There are [Native] reservations where there’s no reliable internet. The digital divide is real.”
Fortunately, there are ways to combat book bans and even tackle potential challenges proactively. In their school library, Brown says, “I built a very rigorous challenge policy, and fortunately I had full support with my admin.” One example: “We won’t accept challenges from outside organizations or people. Even if we did get a challenge, they would have to jump through a lot of hoops.”
Many authors and book professionals, including Brown, take part in groups specifically formed to fight book bans and deliver more titles into the hands of readers. Organizations
such as Authors Against Book Bans and We Need Diverse Books help support authors, students, librarians, educators, and parents through community partnerships, advocacy, and action.
Davis and Thomas both champion the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books, whose activities range from providing grants and mentorships for writers to donating children’s books to public schools—for example, putting together book boxes for trans and BIPOC young adults in Oklahoma after the death of nonbinary teen Nex Benedict.
“As individual authors, it’s really hard for us to make a big impact or even know where to start,” Thomas says, so organizations that help authors join together to support the community are key to moving forward in maintaining kids’ access to books.
Something everyone can do—not just authors—is get actively involved in their communities, whether that means going to city council or school board meetings, writing letters, or
donating time or money in support of local or national organizations that fight book bans. And, Brown adds, “You have to vote,” particularly in elections for local officials “because they may be in charge of your library.”
While the situation may get worse before it gets better—Brown and the other interviewees all suspect that the fight against censorship will continue for a while—there is reason to be hopeful. The prevalence of book bans seems to be cyclical, and while we
might be on a downward slide right now, there’s every reason to think it won’t last forever.
“You have to vote, particularly in elections for local officials because they may be in charge of your library. ”
– Alex Brown
The increasing popularity of young adult literature may help with that, particularly as YA adaptations in other media reach wider audiences than ever before. (The Hunger Games, anyone?) Certainly, the diversity of stories published has increased over time, and those stories are reaching readers.
“The ways that I really see the impact I’m making in my community for the better, especially for young adults, is when I have readers reach out to me saying that they felt seen or connected, or it was the first time they saw someone like them in a book, whether that’s Latin American representation, or the queer or trans experience,” Thomas says.
“I feel very thankful and very privileged to have the platform and the job that I do.” 6
So you want to publish a BOOK
There’s more than one way to get your beloved manuscript out on the market.
For writers all over the world, the concept of self-publishing has changed over the past several decades. Back in the day, becoming a published author in the United States involved representation by an agent who negotiated a deal at one of the “Big Five” publishing houses—with all the trimmings that entailed.
Not anymore.
ith the evolution of the internet over the past decade, other publishing alternatives have emerged that have opened the field of opportunity for writers at all stages of their careers. As of this writing, there are three methods to having your manuscript published. The first is traditional publishing. This is the journey that the entire world assumes a book will take: agent representation that connects your manuscript to a nationally recognized publishing house, possibly an advance, and publishing in hardcover or softcover form with marketing and public relations built into the contract. All the author has to do is present a finished manuscript and maybe appear at press junkets, podcasts, or other media outlets to promote their work.
While traditional publishing still represents the proverbial brass ring, it does present its challenges. Sheryl Bizé-Boutté ’73, author of a book series called Back to the Bayou and former writer on the student newspaper, notes that—in her experience— traditional publishers favor a certain type of manuscript, and her books don’t fit that space. “My books are historical fiction. My family is a frame for the fictional stories that trace back to its origins in Louisiana. My family is Black, white, American, and French,” she says. “For women of color, particularly African American women, it’s almost impossible to get your book published by ‘traditional publishers’ because they’re not interested in these stories.”
She says that those Caucasian writers whom publishers assign to write stories about BIPOC characters often end up rendering caricatures. “I have a story to tell in a way that’s very different than many people. My books disrupt stereotypes. I refuse to let a traditional publisher disrupt my voice,” Bizé-Boutté says. “With self-publishing, you can protect your voice!”
Terry Sue Harms ’92, author of the memoir The Strongbox, didn’t think her story would flourish under the direction and control of a traditional publisher, so instead,
“With self-publishing, you can protect your voice!”
–Sheryl Bizé-Boutté
she found a nurturing, small, independent publisher (She Writes Press) with which she could entrust her work. Harms says she learned that most traditional publishers wield more control over their authors than she was comfortable—or willing—to relinquish, and retaining that control was the most significant benefit of self-publishing. Harms’ publisher “helped me through the process of creating the cover and allowed me to control the publication date, price, and content,” she says.
THE SECOND OPTION is “hybrid” publishing where authors hire—and pay—hybrid publishers to print, market, and distribute their books. Fees range from $1,000 to upwards of $20,000, and authors benefit from hybrid publishers’ far-reaching industry contacts that they likely couldn’t normally access.
Finally, there’s self-publishing, which evolved from the growth of electronic books (e-books) and widened the playing field for authors who either cannot or will not engage with traditional or hybrid publishers.
Alice McCracken ’63, who writes under the pen name Dorothy Rice Bennett, explains her experience with traditional publishers: “I didn’t get into publishing until I was retired. [Self] publishing came to me as a result of realizing that, at my age, I didn’t have the time to go through 20 publishers and be rejected by them, even though that’s the ‘desired’ way [to get published].” McCracken adds that she elected to self-publish because other avenues were too complicated and didn’t work with her budget or time constraints. With the choice to self-publish and cherry-pick the professionals she needed to produce her book, the
EFORE STARTING
on the self-publishing journey it’s important to understand that it’s not enough to simply have a finished manuscript. That’s merely the first step in a myriad of steps needed to produce a published work. There are many moving parts to the process, and authors will either need to tackle these components themselves or hire professionals to assist.
Proofreading , which takes place once the manuscript is completed, is the process of correcting grammatical errors, typographical errors, and formatting issues.
After proofreading comes editing, which is typically broken into three levels:
Copyediting is a further review—beyond that of the proofreader’s review— of materials for consistency in verb tenses, flow, story/character arcs, fact-checking, and logic.
Line editing is geared toward the creative side of a manuscript at the line, sentence, and paragraph level: How do you use language to convey your story to readers?
Developmental editing focuses on the big picture of a manuscript, and in many cases, it can be more time-consuming than writing the book from scratch. If a manuscript has major breaks in continuity, character development, organization, direction, or sense (just to name a few), then developmental editing comes into play—if not an entire rewrite of the book. For memoirs/ novels, developmental editing focuses on characterization, conflict and tension, plot structure, plot development, and writing style. For non-fiction works, it focuses on clarity, established authority, categorization, marketing, structure, organization, and the use of special features, such as exercises and anecdotes.
Not every project will include all three levels, but authors should ideally enlist a copyeditor for their projects.
Meta data: The author must establish the book’s title, price, trim size, author’s name, book description, and publication date.
ISBN: This stands for “International Standard Book Number,” which is how readers worldwide can identify your book in an internet search. The ISBN is a requirement for all books to be available for sale in bookstores, libraries, online retailers, and wholesalers.
BISAC code: This code identifies the genre of your book. Is it a mystery? A memoir? A self-help book? A thriller? BISACs help retailers and booksellers to determine what category to place your book in on their websites or to shelve it in their physical bookstores.
Cover and internal art and graphics: Will the book cover be in black-and-white or full color? Matte or glossy,
or a blend of both? Taken from an actual photograph or created by an artist? Is there internal art, such as charts, drawings, or photographs? In many cases, authors can search for cover artists through online creative platforms, such as Reedsy or Upwork, or they can choose to employ local art students; both will help curb rising budgetary costs.
Book format: Do you want your book available in hardcover, softcover, or e-book formats? Each has different cost structures and formatting requirements. Don’t assume that all readership favors e-books. There are still readers—young and not-so-young—who prefer the hand-feel and experience of owning and reading physical books over using electronic devices.
Once all these steps have been completed, the manuscript will be ready for publication.
collaboration proved effective. “They know editing, they know layout, they know all the things they need to know to put your hands on a professional book, and they have a process that’s very formalized,” she says. “You have a structure to work with. You send it back, they send it back—until everyone’s happy. Then, you have a book!”
ULTIMATELY, the choice to self-publish allows the author the most control over the work. And this sometimes isn’t just an ego- or control-based need.
For some, the choice to self-publish is more spiritual in nature. For Beverly Alexander Martin ’84, author of the autobiography Destiny Deems, the universe intervened. “In 2019, I looked out the window with this beautiful day and went, ‘What if I died?’ I would look back at my
“Time is short, so do it now! There’s a reason why you want to do it, there’s a reason why the thought has come to you, and don’t talk yourself out of it!”
–Beverly Alexander Martin
life from the other side and go, ‘You didn’t write a book!’ And I really stopped in my tracks. It was a sign,” she says. “I broke my life into vignettes, and I got out all my old binders and journals,” which helped organize and simplify Martin’s writing process. From that experience, she has developed classes for writing students as well as a system—the Destiny Timeline Journal—to help authors organize, plan, and execute their writing projects so they’re not as daunting.
Martin also noted that most authors, if they’re not famous, are “on their own” and must protect their work. Her husband’s photographs and daughter’s watercolors were included in her memoir, which pushed her even more strongly toward self-publishing to protect their intellectual property as well. “Once we did that, it was just a matter of choosing everything; I created the look, but I was also reminded how important the other professionals were: editors, layout people, everyone,” she says.
“No matter what you’re doing, always invest in a good editor. It’s almost impossible to edit your own work,” Bizé-Boutté says. In her opinion, she adds that she thinks self-publishing is gaining a lot of traction “because people are starting to read self-published books and finding that they are more artful, forthright, lyrical, poetic, truthful, and interesting. The author stands to take more chances and be more courageous because they have that opportunity.”
One profound lesson that Harms learned throughout the self-publishing process was the importance of the publication date. She finished her first book at the end of 2009 and wanted it to be available online before New Year’s. The book went live online a few days later—just before January 1—and within a week, it became “last year’s book
that nobody wanted!” Harms encourages writers to always strive for the best. “Try for traditional publishing, of course, but in reality, it’s probably not going to work out, so don’t take too much time chasing that dream. It’s really an illusion,” she says. “Traditional publishers rarely get back to you, and they don’t bring in thousands of readers—as you might assume.”
McCracken adds: “You can start with self-publishing at what you think is an affordable budget, but then there are all these add-ons, and you might end up with a final result that doesn’t cover all the results you wanted or expected.” She notes that many different sources have varying requirements for submitting a manuscript. “Even with self-publishing, you have to pay for every service you receive, from proofreading to editing to the cover design and layout,” she says. “Even Amazon can be complicated, and you must pay for marketing your work.”
WHILE THERE WILL BE
endless arguments as to the pros and cons of self-publishing versus traditional publishing, the bottom line lies simply with the author’s goals, desires, and budget. If you yearn for the prestige of having your work published by a Big Five or smaller traditional publisher, the reality is… you might have to wait your entire life for that to happen. And if it does, you may have to relinquish artistic control of your work in exchange for the prestige. If you’re an author more intent on retaining artistic, financial, and marketing control of your work, then self-publishing could offer you greater freedom in all those areas. Either way, according to Martin, “Time is short, so do it now! There’s a reason why you want to do it, there’s a reason why the thought has come to you, and don’t talk yourself out of it!” 6
GETTING THE WORD OUT
Marketing a new book release is usually bundled in with a traditional publishing contract, but depending on the method, a self-published title may fall to the author to promote. When it comes to the Quarterly, we ask for a press or media kit—just as many other publications do. So, what does a basic press kit entail?
For a new book, it usually includes documents with information about the book and the author, and an image of the cover and the author’s headshot. (And those images must have a high resolution, such as 300 dpi, so they’re big enough to publish in print! Photos taken on cell phones and texted or emailed are usually too small.)
Most press kits are delivered electronically, with those various elements stored on a service like Dropbox or Google Drive with a link that’s easily shared via email— so if you put one together for the Quarterly, you’ll be ready to share it with others as well.
For these alums, writing about their health troubles and past traumas can bring them into sharper relief— and vice versa.
Their Struggle
For the majority of her life, Wendy Williams, MFA ’94, would wake every morning gritting her teeth.
At age 50, she had a lot going for her: a full-time job teaching English at a community college, a loving wife, and 10 acres of land the couple owned and enjoyed restoring together. Yet Williams started every day with a kind of dread. “It didn’t make any sense,” she said, because “I had all these beautiful things around me.”
As she combed through what might be surfacing, she kept returning to a surgery she’d experienced as an infant. Though she’d repeatedly tried to deal with the memory of this event in therapy, she realized it was still haunting her, but she couldn’t totally put a finger on why.
Then, while writing about and researching her experiences, Williams unearthed a tragic insight: The surgery she underwent as a child had been performed without anesthesia, leaving the pain she experienced in the early moments of her life embodied in her somatic memory as an adult.
Basically, as she explained, “back in 1986 the standard for infant surgeries was changed, and they started using anesthesia on babies and pain control, but before that, they simply used a paralytic drug to paralyze the babies being operated on,” Williams said. “You were conscious—and it was like, ‘Yikes’… but it was wonderful to learn, because no wonder I’m gritting my teeth every day.”
She realized she’d been traumatized and was suffering from PTSD. After uncovering such impactful information, she worked to heal, crediting her writing as one of her most used therapeutic tools.
And she’s not alone. Williams is one of many Mills alums who have channeled traumatic pasts into their creative practices.
WILLIAMS WORKED with an eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapist and did a lot of free writing, eventually beginning a blog on the subject of infant surgery, which allowed her to connect with others who shared
WORDS
BY LILA KALICK, MFA ’19 / ILLUSTRATIONS BY KATE SWARTZ ’08
similar experiences. Eventually, after about 10 years of work, she finished her memoir, The Autobiography of a Sea Creature, which was published by University of California Health Humanities Press in 2023.
“I’ve healed a lot from writing the book,” Williams said, praising writing and crediting it with how she feels now. “Writing is phenomenal. Writing is the key… You can dig back in and see: What has my life been like? And then, you can understand yourself. And you know how to then proceed to heal yourself.” For Williams, the experience of writing and researching her book led directly to her healing by allowing her to access her subconscious and promote self-understanding.
This is a situation common to many writers. Arya Samuelson, MFA ’19, teaches generative writing and revision courses online, with titles like Pleasure, Illness, and Memory; The Art of Embodied Writing and Your Body Must Be Heard; and Listening for the Songs of Your Self. They are popular selections.
Her students are encouraged to allow space for life’s gray areas, and that approach has proven helpful for those who may not be struggling in an obvious way. As a result, writers with invisible illnesses often find the capacity to express their experiences, perhaps find healing as a result. As Samuelson said, “it’s reassuring to be able to [use writing to] create new meaning out of pain... By giving it form, writing transforms pain into something else.”
Like Samuelson’s students, physician, author, and poet Michelle Smith Johansen ’81 (who writes as Michelle Smith) found an outlet for processing her past in her writing. Smith began writing in her teens as a way to navigate her upbringing in a family with mental illness.
“When I went to Mills,” Smith said, “it was really an escape from an abusive
household that couldn’t come soon enough. My father was very violent at home and my mom suffered from mental illness and was unable to care for us. Back then, I was writing to express my anger. It was an outlet that I really needed.”
For many years, Smith used her writing as a private coping mechanism. Then, after she graduated from Mills and built a successful career as a doctor, she pursued formal education in writing, including poetry and memoir courses.
She started writing articles on health for a number of consumer magazines and soon found herself writing across genres. An avid golfer, she’s written humorous pieces for golf publications, and she’s also tackled more serious works as a result of the summer of racial reckoning that occurred in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.
“I started writing social justice articles for a local newspaper just expressing my feelings about how I was undermined by being a person of color,” Smith said. “And I was hesitant to get that out there, but I thought, ‘I’m tired of playing the game.’ That is when I started writing more about social justice themes.”
Smith also writes fiction as well as poetry, and she said that she finds that writing creatively and taking classes allows her to explore the difficult experiences she had but didn’t feel safe telling people about when she was younger: “I found it cathartic that I was able to express these things that had troubled me and were repressed for so long. I was finding a way to present them in an acceptable arena, if you will.”
She also emphasized the importance of all the different types of writing she does, sharing that “writing ended up becoming the outlet for just about everything I was experiencing.” She added that she hopes her work will reach others who may have had similar experiences, giving them a sense of
“The most powerful art is to make pain a healing talisman.”
–Frida Kahlo
solidarity through her stories of resilience and survival.
FOR WILLIAMS AND JOHANSEN , writing proved to be a refuge, a method for connecting with others, and a place for healing. But for other Mills alum authors, the healing-writing connection wasn’t quite as strong or linear.
Manjula Martin ’09 is one such example. Before coming to Mills as a commuter student in her 30s, Martin had already established a career as a copywriter and journalist. At Mills, she deepened her creative writing practice by taking classes i n English, art history, and music, and writing about a variety of non-healthrelated subjects.
But then, in 2017, Martin had a series of what she described as “calamitous medical accidents,” caused by a malfunctioning IUD that was embedded in a uterine wall. These incidents resulted in Martin undergoing a hysterectomy—among other procedures—and eventually, she ended up with chronic pelvic pain. When all this occurred, writing wasn’t something Martin used as a coping mechanism. She found it neither soothing nor helpful with her persistent bodily pain. Instead, she took comfort from gardening.
“For me, the garden was the place where I could really sort of take shelter when my body wasn’t doing well,” Martin said. “I liked gardening because it wasn’t a perfect metaphor. It wasn’t rosy. There was damage and sometimes violence and mistakes and failures—and that was actually refreshing to me, because as a person with a chronic illness, you get kind of sick of platitudes and cliches, you know?”
But right when she’d really gotten into her garden, the wildfires in California were getting worse and worse—and the ecological crisis where she lived in Sonoma County became unignorable. The garden
became a link between her body and the landscape around her.
“It allowed me to understand that my body is part of nature,” Martin said. “And it also became this connector between this larger crisis of climate change and this very literally interior crisis of chronic pain, and that’s when I began writing about it.”
These writings eventually took the form of a memoir titled The Last Fire Season (Pantheon Books, 2024). In the book, which became a national bestseller, Martin interweaves her experiences with chronic pelvic pain, gardening, and the wildfire crisis in California.
When asking Martin whether she found writing her book healing, her answer was blunt: “No, it was not cathartic, and it did not heal me,” she said. “And that’s OK— a story doesn’t have to heal its author. I have a therapist for that.”
She emphasized that “it honestly wasn’t a way to cope—it was just something that had to be expressed. Connecting the climate crisis to my pain crisis was an amazing tool that I was able to use to help shed light on both of those things.”
While the process of writing for Martin wasn’t healing, finishing and publishing her work brought relief. Her health and pain improved after she completed it.
“The catharsis for me in writing this book was learning to actually redefine my understanding of the concept of a catharsis,” she added. “As a writer and someone with chronic illness, I think the expectation of catharsis through story—like the binary of being healed versus being sick—can be very limiting. Are there more interesting and creative ways that we can find joy and hope in pain?”
Like Martin, Samuelson emphasized that stories of pain and healing can be complex, mysterious, and without clear answers. In her teaching practice, Samuelson instructs writers on how to unearth the stories inside
their bodies, a skill she honed throughout her own journey with Lyme disease and thyroid issues. Her experience was especially poignant because Lyme can sometimes be perceived as “invisible.”
She explored these themes in an essay she wrote about her health journey and published in the Columbia Journal called “Labyrinths.” According to Samuelson, navigating sickness from a young age (she was diagnosed with Lyme at 17) was a “winding, twisting journey.”
“Nothing really made me better. You know, I took all kinds of antibiotics and just kind of got worse and worse,” she said. “I spent my senior year of high school basically in bed, and almost didn’t
graduate.” But then, she seemed to get mysteriously better. It was springtime and Samuelson thought, "Well, now I’m done with high school. How much of that is part of why I’m feeling better?”
For the next few years, her health felt stable and good. But, in her early 20s, Samuelson realized she “was still really dealing with so much depression and anxiety, and things felt so, so, so, so hard.”
Eventually, she saw a naturopath who discovered that her thyroid wasn’t functioning. She started receiving treatment and “it was like the whole world turned to color.”
Throughout her experience, Samuelson turned to writing, using it to both embrace and dissect what she was going through:
“I wanted to use writing to get at this question of ‘What is what is what?’ Which is not a very elegant question, but I think it’s a pretty relatable one when you are used to dealing with sickness out of nowhere.”
This line of questioning is reflected in both Samuelson’s teaching and personal writing practices, where her style aims to create a sense of cohesion from fragmented experiences. “Labyrinths” is a prime example of this. Her approach with this work is that of a weaver, taking threads and bringing them together until a full complete picture or pattern is formed.
For Samuelson, writing can be a space to grapple with the intricacies of health issues. Though she’s quick to say that writing doesn’t resolve health issues, at its best, we can create stories out of personal experiences that meaningfully capture their complexity. Each of these alums had a different approach, but it was striking that writing arrived in their lives as a way to support them in their healing journeys. For some, writing helped them to express their purpose, make sense of the mystery of health challenges, and transmute pain. For others it unlocked insights and allowed for a sense of relief, refuge, and connection. All were drawn to a form of expression that, in Williams’ words, “touches a unique part of the human experience.” 6
REUNION 2024
These images are available for download at bit.ly/mills-class-photos-2024
1964
Top row: Helen Peterson Brainerd, Mary Wallon, Judy DuBois Bisgard, Lisa McKee Nedelman, Lara Lance
Second row: Nancy Blair Vietor, Ann Manuel Ditlefsen, Cathlyn White Perry, Peggy Kiely Harris, Judy Knaus Solle, Missy Marks Unkovic
Front row: Anna Mae Patterson; Cynthia Facer Clark; Barbara-Sue White, MA ’67; Diana Paxson Studebaker; Carolyn King Terry; Ellen Krosney Shockro; Patricia Collins Temple Gabbe; Lucia Burks Horner
1969
Laurie-Sue Ptak Retts, Kerstin Fraser Magary, Katia Michele Hope
50th REUNION
1974
Top row: Sharon Long Carroll; Cassandra Buckingham Curry; Momi Chang; Tori Collender; Pamela Tokioka Carlson; Adrienne McMichael Foster; Barbara Graves, MA ‘81; Anne Gordon Perry; Amalia “Mollie” Anderson Mason; Catheryn “Kit” Smith; Judith Renee Chaney James; Christina Bemko Littlefield; Mary Jane Leibowitz Schneider
Second row: Jacki Brown, Doris Phelps, Ellen Hines, Brooke Larsen Garlock, Laurie Westenberger Sturley, Betty Knox Harris, Roberta “Birdie” Klugman, Abby Everson, Shirley Poon, Clarice B. Flippin, Linda Barton White, Leslie Anne Bird
Front row: Lenore Tate, Benita Sheffield Harris
1979
Top row: Joy Kieschke, Leslie Decker, Kellor Mohrweiss-Smith, Cheri King
Front row: Miriam Clare LePell; Lisa Iden-Monroe; Wendy Ng; Julie Wong Noll; Laura Vela Austin, MA ‘80; Jan Spagel Crosby
PHOTOS BY ZAC BORJA & JOSUE MURRILLO
1994
Top row: Michelle Adams DaRosa, Lois Ehrenfeld de Buren, Isabelle Gaston
Front row: Elisa Cafferata, Cathy Chew Smith, Carole Luna Miller
1989
Lisa Tateosian
Theresa Sawyer
2004
Guevara, Amanda Klotzsche Landry, Lakisha Ashley
2014
Third row: Anna Guiles, MPP ’15; Nina Rogers Sindicich; Imani Russell; Audre Mowry; Quinne Hanrahan Brazinski
Second row: Bridget Shaw, Priscilla Falter, Mallory Shaw, Katy Williams, Erika Peterson
Front row: Lyndsey L. Werner, Maribel Garcia, Jessica Lopez-Morales, Phuong Tseng, Elena Silva
2009
Cynthia
Amanda Page Harper, Katie Johnson, Anne Wittig Serrano, Alexa Hall
AAMC
News & Notes
A MESSAGE FROM THE AAMC PRESIDENT
Hello loyal Mills Alums,
As you read this newly formatted Quarterly, we are on the cusp of a new year, celebrating the holidays of 2024 and planning for the opportunities of 2025. The AAMC is reflecting on the past year, as you are, and the future of our alumnae association looks bright—with your continued support. Here are some updates and highlights:
The AAMC’s management and technical efforts continue to expand, and more professional help is needed. The Personnel Committee has posted a part-time business and development position on several job boards, in the last Quarterly, and at the AAMC Reunion presentation. Interested alums are encouraged to apply!
Speaking of Reunion, it was a joyous event. Attendance was strong, the weather was stellar, and the campus was sparkling. Many improvements have been made to the infrastructure and maintenance of the grounds and buildings, which is heartening and a reason for optimism. Reinhardt Alumnae House was central to the event, and it was a pleasure to see the living room filled with alums, celebrating the golden Class of 1974 and all those from years ending in 4 and 9. Thank you to all who purchased AAMC merchandise, and to those who generously donated in person or online (at aamc-mills.org/donate) to support the ongoing and expanding administrative needs of our independent nonprofit organization.
The Center for Contemporary Music digitalization project, funded by alumnae donations and contributions from the College, continues. To date, more than 411 tapes have been digitized, and each tape includes multiple compositions. Professor David Bernstein estimates that roughly 2,205 individual pieces have been saved. He notes that the project is very well supported by Mills staff members, and that a copy editor is being hired to work with him on the descriptive entries for the tapes.
The CCM project was our first major fundraising effort, and it was highly successful. We look forward to more initiatives to promote the legacy of Mills College and the value of women’s education and the liberal arts in today’s world.
Regional branch and club events have celebrated the holiday season across the country. Continuing education opportunities are forthcoming, with the Lifelong Learning Committee offering cooking classes and book club events.
The Alumnae Student Relations Committee is supporting the last legacy Class of 2025 and distributed goody bags to students on the first day of finals this semester.
The Mills College we attended and continue to revere was built and molded more than 170 years ago. Today, we are in the third year of a new chapter, with renewed opportunities to shape and enhance what Mills College at Northeastern will become. Support your AAMC with ideas, involvement, donations, and trust that the Mills College we knew is evolving in a way that will bring innovation and prestige to the campus.
All the best to you and yours in the New Year!
Deborah Dittman ’68 AAMC President
AAMC Awards
Distinguished Achievement Award
Patricia Collins Gabbe ’64 received her Master of Science and medical degrees from Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon. She then completed her pediatric residency at Boston City Hospital and earned a Master of Public Health from Harvard University. Dr. Gabbe taught and practiced general pediatrics for 49 years while on the faculties of Boston University, UCSF, The Ohio State University, University of Washington, and Vanderbilt University.
In 2010, with a grant from Ohio State, she formed the Moms2B program to reduce infant deaths and the significant Black-white disparities in local Columbus neighborhoods. More than 5,800 pregnant women have participated in this ongoing program. Published studies show families attending Moms2B have fewer infant deaths and better birth outcomes.
In 2021, Dr. Gabbe was appointed professor emerita of pediatrics, obstetrics, and gynecology. She then wrote Saving Babies: The Moms2B Story, as well as a manuscript: “Analyzing the history of racism in Ohio and how it contributes to maternal and infant deaths.”
Pat epitomizes the ideals of Mills College: She used her liberal arts education, her scientific and medical knowledge, and her career experience in service to her community to improve the lives of underserved pregnant women. This is social justice at its heart.
Recent Graduate Award
Malena Lopez-Maggi ’13, MFA ’15, co-founded The Xocolate Bar in Berkeley and Xocolate & Confections in Oakland. Inspired by the Aztec word xocolatl, the X is a nod to Malena’s Latin-American heritage. Since 2006, The Xocolate Bar’s chocolates have won multiple awards, including gold medals from the San Francisco International Chocolate Salon. In 2023, Malena opened a sister store, Xocolate & Confections, in the heart of the Rockridge shopping district. The Xocolate Bar’s products are featured alongside confections like decolonized craft chocolate, Italian giandujas, Nordic licorice, Turkish halva, Mexican chamoy lollipops, Japanese lychee candies, and California artisan gummy bears.
Malena’s products are sold at almost 400 boutique retailers nationwide, including Oakland Museum of California, and the company has done custom work for clients such as Netflix, Google, author Sandra Cisneros, and Mills itself. Popular items are the OMG Bar, and dark chocolate truffles that happen to be vegan.
At both of her brick-and-mortar stores, Malena pays above-market wages to local workers. She participates in
internship programs through local high schools, and the Xocolate Bar is a member of the Good Food Guild, which supports artisan food producers nationwide.
Malena came to Mills as a transfer resumer in 2011, graduating with a BA and MFA in studio arts. She credits her time at Mills with giving her the professionalism and artistic acumen to keep growing her business.
Outstanding Volunteer Award
Viji Nakka-Cammauf, MA ’82, came to Mills from India to pursue a graduate degree in English with an emphasis in American literature. She also holds a PhD in theology and the arts. Many may know Viji from her time as president of the AAMC from 2016 to 2022, as she served six years through “the before time,” the AAMC’s lawsuit against the Board of Trustees, the Mills trustees’ vote to close Mills College, and the pandemic.
Her uninterrupted service to the AAMC began in 2004 as chair of several committees, then she moved on to governor, vice president, and finally, president. As a Mills trustee, she chaired the Student Life Committee. Viji was honored as a Phenomenal Woman of Color in 2013.
During her tenure as president, the Board of Governors made strategic decisions to strengthen ties between Mills and the AAMC. The Memorandum of Collaboration with the College was finalized and adopted. Two endowed scholarships of $100,000 each were set up for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Oakland Promise students, as well as a grant of $10,000 for training Mills faculty in online teaching. Mills Connect, a program to connect alumnae with students, was established. During the pandemic, $40,000 was raised for international students. Her collaboration with faculty enabled student employment at the AAMC.
Viji’s 20-plus years of volunteer service with the AAMC is exemplary. She is the AAMC ambassador to Mills College and now Mills College at Northeastern University.
Left to right: Deborah Dittman, Patricia Collins Gabbe, Viji Nakka-Cammauf, Malena Lopez-Maggi. Photo by Ruby Wallau for Northeastern University.
COMMUNICATIONS CORNER
Update from the Communications Committee
By AAMC Governor Kieran Turan ’90
AT REUNION, the Scholarship Committee met with members of Northeastern’s Advancement team from Boston to discuss the exciting possibility of combining several of our AAMC scholarships, with the aim to direct them towards initiatives that align with and embody the Mills experience.
We also shared the alumnae/i database drive survey results (see Fall 2023 Quarterly), which had hundreds of responses about what alums want to preserve of Mills College’s legacy. They received this with interest. We discussed potential projects related to the arts at Mills, a key concern of alums, and got helpful feedback on steps forward. This meeting marked a positive step in our collaboration, and the board hopes to share progress on these initiatives in the coming months.
This spring, we’ll be unveiling the new AAMC website, which has a professional yet creative look, highlighting our community and bringing our organization’s impact into better focus.
For those subscribed to the AAMC newsletter, watch for announcements about discounted programs on campus available to Mills alums, such as the graduate certificate in business administration this spring, designed to enhance your management skills.
Your engagement means influence, so please continue to stay connected with the AAMC as we keep the Mills spirit and legacy alive.
OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS
2025 Alumnae Awards Applications Open
Honor your fellow outstanding alums by nominating them for the Alumnae Awards! This tradition has been a treasured AAMC event at Reunion for three decades.
The deadline is July 18. Please visit our website for more details.
Governor Applications
The Nominating Committee is looking for board members and officers for the 2025-28 term. If you’re interested in serving the AAMC and its ongoing mission to champion the legacy of Mills College and promote the interests of our alumnae, please apply through the AAMC website.
Annual Meeting Date
Mark your calendars for the AAMC Annual Meeting, which will be held on June 21.
Sign up for the AAMC Database
If you haven’t participated in the AAMC survey or added your name to our database, please visit our website at aamc-mills.org and click the link on the banner of the page.
AAMC Travel 2025
Explore the AAMC’s exciting travel offerings for 2025, from Europe to vibrant Turkey. Embark on a journey where education and adventure meet, creating unforgettable experiences and cherished memories. Pack your bags for a year of discovery, connection, and inspiration! Visit the AAMC website to secure your spot at aamc-mills.org/travel.
DUTCH WATERWAYS: April 23–May 01
ITALY: TUSCANY & EMILIA-ROMAGNA: June 10–June 19
MALTA & SICILY: May 15–May 25
HEART OF BRITAIN: September 1–September 13
COASTAL GEMS OF THE EMERALD ISLE: June 22–July 04
ISTANBUL & THE TURQUOISE COAST: September 24–October 04
Conwy Castle, Wales – Heart of Britain
The famous Fu Dogs
outside the Mills College Art Museum didn’t always abut the sidewalk along Kapiolani Road—they originally stood guard right along the arches of the building, as shown in this undated photo. According to an article in the May 1980 edition of the Quarterly by Virginia Peterson DuMont ’38, these Ming lions first took their position—the male in the east, the female in the west—in October 1933 after delivery from William D. McCann, a known collector of Asian art in San Francisco. The statues were a gift of Albert Bender and the Board of Trustees to celebrate the opening of what was then the Art Gallery’s new wing.
COMMUNITY WEAVER
By Danna Lorch
Poetry isn’t exactly a genre known for breaking news—though its call can be urgent. When mass shootings became even more disturbingly frequent across the United States in 2016, Elle Newton ’12 said she felt like it was so painful to take in that it was literally breaking America.
“The headlines all blurred into one and were just adding to this white noise of pure violence,” she said. “One of the few things that would pierce the numbness of being overexposed to violence was poetry,”
That’s when Newton co-founded Poets Reading the News in response.
The idea for a new genre of journalism in verse started out with Newton, a poet herself, sitting down at her desk in Oakland and writing hundreds of poets and literature professors to invite submissions to a fledgling publication still so new it didn’t yet have a website.
To her shock, her inbox was soon bursting with poems—and has been ever since. Voices respond to urgent news stories on issues like climate change, war, police brutality, Trumpism, and still more shootings. Writers from 25 countries, from teenagers to U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo, have contributed so far, and now the new genre is well-known as a result.
“Great art creates platforms for artists, poets, playwrights, and technologists to enter. I see my role as a community weaver, creating the conditions that make it possible for art to happen,” she said.
The concept of doing everything in community is something that Newton first learned as an art history major at Mills.
Newton transferred in from a local community college, though she wasn’t new to Mills by any means. She was already rooted to the campus as a Bent Twig and as a former attendee at the Children’s School.
From the beginning, Newton was deeply drawn to the late Trefethen Professor of Art History Moira Roth, a prominent feminist art historian.
“I showed up with a lot of energy and didn’t know where it should go,” Newton explained about her younger self.
“I loved curating and art, and I knew I cared about feminism a lot, but she really recognized my possibility even before I did.” They began a mentorship that lasted years after graduation until Roth’s passing in 2021.
“Everything she did was in collaboration with other curators or activists, and she passed down the
“The climate crisis is asking us to rewild our relationship with nature and heal it. I come to the page every morning and try to create writing that will inspire that in other people.”
power of collaboration to me,” Newton said. As a result, everything Newton’s created has been in community, too—sometimes threading its way back to Mills.
In 2016, her resonant poem Afterward was adapted for the stage by Professor of the Practice Victor Talmadge and performed by the Mills Players.
Written in the first person, the poem memorializes Ghost Ship, the deadliest fire in Oakland’s history, which tore through an industrial warehouse in 2016 and killed 36 people. Most of them were young creatives cutting corners on unsafe housing so they could afford to focus on craft.
“It was one of the most powerful moments of my life to see these amazing students performing my work after the fire had literally burnt up my creative well,” she said.
Newton’s current writing is about cultivating a peaceful exchange with the natural world—or what is left of it. “The climate crisis is asking us to rewild our relationship with nature and heal it. I come to the page every morning and try to create writing that will inspire that in other people,” she said.
In 2025, Poets Reading the News will publish its first anthology, Breaking, with Newton as editor. The site also runs a competitive fellowship for up-and-coming editors.
New releases, publications, and performances by Mills alums and professors
Photographs by Carolyn Benedict Fraser ’12 were exhibited at Vanderbilt University in Nashville to start out the fall 2024 semester. Holiday ran from August 29 to September 27.
Renée Benmeleh ’00 has released a song, “Claim to Fame,” which is a first-person narrative about a young girl who dies in gang-related gunfire. The song is available for listening and purchase at tinyurl.com/renee-benmeleh.
A Jew in Ramallah is a new selection of essays by Carla Blank Reed, MA ’72, detailing her varied career on the stage and as a writer and cultural critic. The book also includes an interview with her partner, the writer and satirist Ishmael Reed.
More than 200 photographs from the first 25 years of the late Barbara Crane ’49 ’s extensive career are on exhibition at The Centre Pompidou in Paris through January 6.
The Others, the first book by Evette Davis ’90, was published by SparkPress in September 2024. The novel follows a political consultant with supernatural powers as she navigates a fantastical San Francisco and the realm beneath it.
Professor of Music James Fei played a saxophone solo and conducted the symphony at London’s Royal Albert Hall on August 15, 2024, as part of the BBC Proms concert series, while Professor of Music Fred Frith performed alongside the band Wand at the Sebastiani Theatre in Sonoma on September 13.
The Research Handbook on Feminist Political Thought published Professor of Music Nalini Ghuman’s most recent project last summer. “Inaudible voices: transnational feminism, music, and listening in our time of crisis” argues that the climate crisis can be disrupted by listening to all species.
Carol Jameson, MFA ’89 has released the novel Adam and Leonora through She Writes Press. The title, which came out last year, following the travels of an artist and the women in his life from Paris to New York to Mexico to Paris.
Sun Glories is the new album by Chuck Johnson, MFA ’09, which was released by Western Vinyl in August. Emily Packard, MFA ’07, provided violin accompaniment for the album; see the music video for the single “Ground Wave” at tinyurl.com/chuck-johnson-25.
A series of paintings by Carolyn Roe Hubbs ’65 was on display at the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara from September 6 through November 2, 2024. ABSTRACTED included paintings inspired by the plein air sketches she made in the local area.
Saxophonist Randy McKean, MA ’90, and twin brother Ray (a pianist) played jazz standards at the Unitarian Universalist Community of the Mountains in Grass Valley on November 2.
The newest title by Lola Phoenix ’09, The Non-Monogamy Journal, was released in January by Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Oonagh Stransky ’89 is an Italian translator, and she wrote in Electric Literature about the experience of translating for Domenico Starnone—suspected to be the true author of the novels credited to Elena Ferrante. Read the piece at tinyurl.com/oonagh-stransky.
The Oakland Theater Project staged both parts of Angels in America at the Marin Shakespeare Company this past fall, and Professor of Practice Victor Talmadge played the role of Ray Cohn in both productions.
Vanessa Ya Lopez, MA ’07, who works as a certified child life specialist at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, has written a children’s book about loss. My Brother is Not Getting Better was released by Azalea Art Press in June 2024.
Share your recent release with the readers of Mills Quarterly ! Send a press kit, including high-resolution images, to mills.quarterly@northeastern.edu
Faculty Village & Warren Olney
Something we didn’t anticipate when introducing new departments featuring Mills history in our redesign was the flood of recollections they would inspire! So, in this issue, we introduce an occasional department, Memories, to ensure that those submissions are shared with our readership. -Ed.
What a delightful surprise to see the feature on Olney gals from 1961 I was in Olney and remember them all.
I have always been grateful to the counselor who thought Mills would be a good fit for me. In a class of 550, how did she know me well enough to know? And being the only child of conservative parents, why did they listen?
Someone loaned me a Mills yearbook. I liked the location of Olney near the Art Department, and one of the gals looked very friendly. Nobody could understand why I wanted to major in art if I didn’t want to teach it. I even threw some pots from clay dug from the creek at my door.
My first job was a stewardess living in New York. I’ve traveled to more than 40 countries on my own and become a collector of folk and Indigenous art, giving numerous works to the collections of the Portland Art Museum and the Burke in Seattle. That’s what you can do with a degree in art.
–Barbara Christy Wagner ’59, Portland, Oregon
Faculty Village was unique and memorable! When I chose child development as my major, Dr. Kramer was my advisor, and I can remember dinners in her home with other CD majors. Dr. Hedley was my freshman/ sophomore advisor, and I recall going to Ruddigore. Dr. Hedley officiated at my wedding, 20 days after graduation. He baptized our oldest son,
and our second son was baptized in the Mills Chapel by his successor.
The article on Olney 1961 also hit home; Olney was my hall. Those seniors were exceptional leaders, and I remember all of them. My favorite Mills tradition was the Pine Top Picnic, the seniors singing “Fires of Wisdom” on the far side of Lake Aliso and all other students singing on the near side.
–Bette Chinn Dare ’62, Columbus, Ohio
I can probably fill in a few of the lacunae in the fine article on Faculty Village.
There was a whole generation of lively little boys that grew up in those houses in the 1930s and 40s. I arrived there as they were being built, in 1937, when my grandmother brought me to America as we were fleeing the Nazis.
We were a little island in East Oakland—and most of us stayed in touch for many years. All except the Marchants were refugees from wartime Europe. We played baseball in the big lot between all our
For next time
houses, where Mike Blume literally entrenched a home plate in the form of a foot-deep hole, which of course collected rainwater in the winter. Dr. Blume napped in the daytime, so our baseball games had to be precisely timed not to interfere raucously with that quiet regimen.
Next door to them were the very ancient General and Mrs. Cress, and their daughter, the tough Cornelia, whom you correctly identify as owning and running Mills College’s equestrian establishment. One year, my parents gave me the dubious pleasure of horseback riding classes under her stern tutelage—and well I remember the long, single-file column of horses seeming to lurch slowly, left to right, on the long trails in the hills behind Mills, musically expelling farts at rhythmic intervals. I did not become a horseman.
Madeleine Milhaud, who also taught something approaching drama and French recitation, was a gem. She’d cook exotic treats expertly and generously for neighbors such as us. And she secretly saved my hide when her son, Daniel, and I one time badly misbehaved on the Mills campus. She never even told my parents.
–Peter Neumeyer, son of Professor of Art History Alfred Neumeyer and husband of Helen Snell Neumeyer ’51, Santa Rosa
For Throwback, we’re still looking for your recollections of going off-campus, especially at the intersection of MacArthur and Seminary, for the spring issue. And for summer, start gathering your best stories about the Tea Shop! Send in your thoughts by emailing your stories to mills.quarterly@northeastern.edu, leaving a voice mail at 510.430.3187 (time limit is three minutes), or mailing a letter to: Mills Quarterly, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA 94613
CATCHING UP WITH...
CROSS-COUNTRY
2009–2011
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Cross-country at Mills navigated a tough course as the Aughts came to a close. The team reached the national championships in 2009 under the coaching of Laura Joyce Davis, MFA ’06, who soon received a Fulbright scholarship and departed to the Philippines in 2010 so she could write a book about human trafficking. (She’s now a lecturer in writing and rhetoric studies at Stanford.) The subsequent leadership change upended the team, with some previous participants opting instead to run on their own. But the dynamics eventually gelled once again, with the runners returning to the national championships in 2011. Four participants from that era shared where they are now and what they took with them from their time on the team.
Amandla Atilano-Roque ’11 received a PhD in toxicology and first went into biotech before moving into healthcare. She currently oversees the cardiac and trauma research departments at UCHealth in Aurora, Colorado.
Rachel Jensen ’13 earned a master’s in earth science from Montana State University in 2017, but later took a detour into psychology—she’s currently a therapist on the Bishop Paiute Reservation and is completing a master’s in clinical mental health from Naropa University.
Lindsey Bozym Ravache ’14, MA ’15, graduated from Mills after completing the 4+1 program at the Mills College School of Education, first working as a kindergarten teacher in Oakland. Now 10 years into her career, she teaches in Orinda.
Dana Webb ’12 works as a healthcare administrator in Humboldt County, where she also volunteers extensively with Kiwanis International, including as a trustee. “I still have a pottery version of Super Couch in my living room,” she says.
What about your time on the team has stayed with you in the years since?
“I continue to run and am an outdoor enthusiast.”
–Atilano-Roque
“I ran before and after my time at Mills. I have completed 15 marathons, 10 of which were the Boston Marathon and eight ultras, including one 100-mile mountain run. I live with my partner of three years in Bishop, California, and we spend lots of time running in the mountains together.”
–Jensen
“I loved the amazing women I met on the team and our morning practice runs! It was so nice [completing] an entire workout before 8:00 a.m.” –Bozym Ravache
“It is rare for me to feel as though I belong, and I felt like belonged on that team.” –Rachel Jensen ’13
“That running (plus other things in life) is 99.7% mental. Don’t go dancing in heels before a big race. Make sure you stretch after you run and do D-ROM before you run (Dynamic Range of Motion). If it’s cold outside, breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, so your lungs don’t freeze you from the inside out. Running on sidewalks has 10 times the impact as running on asphalt. Having the right pair of shoes makes all the difference. Get enough sleep.”–Webb
What are your favorite memories from your time in cross-country?
“Creating friendships.” –Atilano-Roque
“The team camaraderie was unmatched. [I loved] our camping trips to Santa Cruz and Marin, as well as our team culture. We had so many inside jokes. Going to nationals in 2009 in Vancouver, Washington, was truly special experience.” –Jensen
“Our long van rides were fun!” –Bozym Ravache
“Getting to spend a lot of time with a lot of awesome ladies both during practice, at races, studying for classes, and eating in the cafeteria. Also, it was a lot of fun to start out the season at one pace and end the season a lot faster; seeing your teammates accomplish their goals as well was exciting!”–Webb
Catching Up With...
Were you part of a club or activity at Mills like this? Do you want to know what those other alums are up to (or do you all keep it going with a never-ending email thread or group text)? Let us know at mills.quarterly@northeastern.edu!
Raiseaglass in the newyear!
Toast yourself (or someone else!) with the gift of a new Mills keepsake: a stemless wine glass emblazoned with an image of iconic Mills Hall.
At $30 for one or $40 for a pair, it offers the perfect way to sit back, take a sip, and reminisce about your favorite Mills memories all while helping to support the Mills Institute Endowed Fund with a portion of the proceeds.
Visit or scan the QR code to order yours!
bit.ly/mills-hall-wineglass
IN MEMORIAM
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This section includes notices of death received before October 11, 2024. Submit a listing on behalf of a member of the Mills community at mills.quarterly@northeastern.edu or 510.430.3312.
Sybil Kaljian Balatti ’45 • August 12, 2024 • Los Banos, California
She spent a year at Mills before World War II broke out, when she returned home to Los Banos to support the fight and marry her high school sweetheart. Sybil taught first grade while he was fighting abroad, then they started their family upon his return. She was the consummate hostess, baking apple pies and cookies as her specialty and bringing a Dutch exchange student into the family, and she loved searching for a good bargain. She is survived by four children, nine grandchildren, and 15 great-grandchildren.
E. Murray Lawson DuVall ’50 • September 2024 • Pomona, California
She decided on the train ride to Mills that she’d rather go by her middle name, Murray, rather than Elsie, her birth name. Murray and her late husband, Dick, raised their family in Laguna Beach, where she volunteered extensively, including as the founding member of Las Tias Auxiliary of the Assistance League of the Foothill Communities. Murray was the youngest member of the local Shakespeare Club when she first joined at 23, and she was the oldest at her death. She is survived by two children, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
Carillon Cargill Moak ’51 • August 4, 2021 • Indianapolis After Mills, she graduated from the University of Minnesota with an English degree and then enrolled at Butler University for a master’s in education. Carillon taught in Indianapolis Public Schools before transitioning to homemaking; her cooking was renowned, her knitting won ribbons at the state fair, and her garden and home reflected her creativity. She also volunteered for organizations such as the Indianapolis Art Museum and Second Presbyterian Church. She is survived by three daughters, nine grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.
Marjorie Marcallino ’51 • February 7, 2021 • New York City She was a founding member of the Roosevelt Island Garden Club and served as vice president of the American Rose Society.
Virginia “Ginna” Brown Liebergesell ’53 • October 1, 2024 • Vaughan, Washington After Mills, she earned a master’s degree at Harvard and began teaching in the Bay Area, later moving to Tacoma with three young daughters following a divorce. Ginna’s career continued there as she taught courses in adult basic education, which inspired her to open the DIAL Center to
provide extra help in reading and math. After retiring in 1996, she and partner Sylvia Haase founded the HaaseLiebergesell Family Foundation to benefit non-profits in the Key Peninsula area of Washington. She is survived by Sylvia, three daughters, and five grandchildren.
Margaret De Armond Frye ’53 • July 18, 2024 • Rochester, Minnesota She married her husband Robert a year after graduating from Mills, and his career in medicine took them to Nashville; Washington, D.C.; and Baltimore before they settled in Rochester. There, Margaret entertained many friends and Mayo Clinic staffers with her imaginative menus, and she and Robert explored their love of opera on trips to various performing venues around the world. She is survived by her husband, five children, five grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
Virginia Vereschagin Talbot Homer ’54 • October 11, 2024 • Chico, California After Mills, she graduated from the then-College of the Pacific. Virginia’s professional life was dedicated to teaching, beginning at two schools in the Chico area before her 30-year career at Mill Street School in Orland. Upon retirement in 1994, she turned to writing—her first book, Teaching
Helen Drake Muirhead ’58
Accomplished painter and proud Mills alumna Helen Drake Muirhead ’58 died on August 15, 2024, in Greenbrae, California. She is survived by her husband, Fraser; three children, including Eric Sanford, PMC ’88 and Walter Sanford, MA ’93; daughter-in-law Ellen McDaniels Sanford ’88; three stepchildren, including Krista Muirhead ’88; 10 grandchildren, including Kaila Sanfelder ’11; three great-grandchildren; and a sister. Her other Bent Twig relatives include niece Cindy Morris, MA ’85.
In Marin County, where she lived most of her adult life, Helen was known as an artistic philanthropist. Her landscapes and depictions of local flora and fauna were displayed at spots like the Town Hall in Tiburon; Dominican University of California in San Rafael, where she co-exhibited with her husband; and the Corte Madera Library, where she co-exhibited with her great-grandson. She donated paintings of hers for sale to benefit the Belvedere-Tiburon Landmarks Society and taught art classes at the society’s Art & Garden Center and local schools. Upon her death, lengthy obituaries were published in the Marin Independent Journal and The Ark in Tiburon.
Helen majored in philosophy and religion at Mills while also studying art history, later attending the San Francisco Art Institute. But her ties to Mills lasted the rest of her life; she served on the AAMC Board of Governors and the College’s Board of Trustees for decades, alongside many other committees, and chaired the Mills Hall revitalization campaign in the early 1990s in addition to numerous other fundraising efforts.
My role has changed over the years. Now I think of myself as the mother of my alma mater. Mills is my daughter. As her mother, I am proud of her. As her mother, I feel responsible for her.”
The April 1991 issue of the Quarterly included the following quote, which she delivered at an event at Reinhardt Alumnae House to commemorate the nine years she spent as chair of the Cyrus and Susan Mills Society: “When I first graduated from Mills, I thought of myself as a daughter of Mills College.
Kaila Sanfelder, Helen’s granddaughter, recalled how entwined Mills and her family have always been. When moving into Mary Morse for her own first year, she said she discovered her room was across the hall and one down from where her grandmother lived while attending Mills. “I got to hear about how she was excited to tell her dorm mates at dinner when she got engaged her sophomore year. She was embarrassed that all the students wanted to see her ring,” Kaila says. “That is the ring my husband used when he proposed to me.”
Reading, Writing, and Spelling was a guide for other educators, and she followed up with five children’s books. Virginia was also an ardent piano player and golfer, and she traveled to all 50 states and six continents. She is survived by two children, four grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and a brother.
Patricia Reid Harmon ’57 • August 19, 2024 • Fresno
At Mills, she majored in biology, then headed to Syracuse for grad school and left with a fiancé, Wallace, whom she married in the Chapel. Patricia later received her RN certification and a BS in nursing, which she used as an oncology nurse and in hospice, which included caring for AIDS patients in the 1980s and ‘90s. With Wallace, she traveled throughout the world, including a full year living in Nigeria and many
trips to their favorite spots in the American Southwest. She is survived by four children, seven grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.
Yvonne Sandkulla Morse Kilbourne ’58 • August 2, 2024 • Big Rapids Township, Michigan
Her passion for nursing was kindled as a teenager when she was in the hospital for appendicitis. Yvonne obtained
Class of 1958 at Reunion 2018. Helen Drake Muirhead is center, top row. Photo by Alli Novak.
Phil Lesh
The bassist and Grateful Dead co-founder Phil Lesh died on October 25, and the ensuing press coverage rightfully noted that he studied avant-garde music at Mills in the years before he met Jerry Garcia. Alongside renowned composer Steve Reich, MA ’63, he worked with the Italian experimental musician Luciano Berio during his tenure at Mills.
Though their times at Mills didn’t overlap, longtime Professor of Music David Bernstein was a big fan. “I will never forget attending the Grateful Dead’s live performance in Central Park on May 4, 1968. The band was obviously ‘pushing the limits’ of rock and roll,” he said. “Many decades later, I was not surprised when I learned that Lesh, along with bandmate Tom Constanten, briefly studied at Mills.”
“I will never forget attending the Grateful Dead’s live performance in Central Park on May 4, 1968.”
–Professor of Music David Bernstein
her RN at UCSF, working with pregnant patients in the polio ward, and her career took her across the country before meeting her first husband, Edwin, in Chicago. Her own health concerns continued to drive her—she served as secretary for the local National Alliance of Mental Illness chapter in Big Rapids—and her interests and hobbies varied far and wide. She is survived by four children and six grandchildren.
Martha “Marty” CristyCouch ’60 • October 4, 2024
• Battle Creek, Michigan She was an artist who specialized in a broad range of media, and her talent at piano tuning earned her the level of master piano technician. In 1972, Marty purchased a farm in western Michigan, where she built the passive solar home where she lived until 2016. She had many pets throughout her life, with a special fondness for her English Shepherds. She is survived by two sons, four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
Linda Loomis Fagerstrom ’62 • February 19, 2024
• Walnut Creek
She majored in psychology at Mills and later owned and operated Room for One More, a maternity store in Walnut Creek, for almost 20 years. Linda was a quilter and an enthusiastic member of the Scrappy Quilters group, donating her well-admired creations to a variety of organizations, and she served as membership secretary for the local Sveaborg Society chapter. Upon retirement,
she and her late husband, Richard, traveled with friends through Europe, Central and South America, and Asia. She is survived by two children and three grandchildren.
Jane Singh ’63 • August 18, 2024 • El Cerrito
Her parents were Punjabi pioneers in Yuba City, raising Jane and her six siblings on a dairy farm. Jane started her higher ed journey at Columbia, majored in education and social sciences at Mills, and continued at Cal with a master’s degree and PhD in Middle Eastern and South Asian languages and literature, respectively. She taught and researched at her graduate alma mater for 25 years, studied at Agra University in India for a year with a Fulbright scholarship, and directed the National Endowment for the Humanities People of South Asia in America project. She is survived by many nieces and nephews.
Kathleen Bennion Barrett ’64 • August 11, 2024 • Worley, Idaho
At Mills, she graduated with an English degree, then married her high-school sweetheart. His military career took them around the country over the next 20 years, plus 13 months in the UK. Upon their return, Kathleen earned a law degree at the University of Utah, clerked for a Utah Supreme Court justice, and worked as an assistant U.S. attorney. She and her husband divorced in 1985 but remarried 22 years later, joking that the split didn’t take. Kathleen
was also a devoted member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She is survived by her husband, three children, 15 grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and four siblings.
Sharon Richardson Jones ’76 • September 16, 2024
• El Cerrito, California
She made history as the first Black woman to work for the front office of a Major League Baseball team when she joined the Oakland A’s organization as an outreach director. Sharon made inroads in the local community by developing little league programs, and she stood her ground after overhearing former Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott say racial epithets, leading to Schott’s eventual ouster. She also worked at Mills as the executive director of college relations. Sharon is survived by her husband, Terry; two children, including Kristyn Jones ’98; and her grandchildren.
Gretchen Zatarain ’76 • July 1, 2024 • Olympia, Washington
She majored in government at Mills before transferring, and she worked in banking and for the State of Washington.
Rita Guevara Neely ’84 • September 30, 2024 • Capitola, California
She came to Mills as a resumer, having raised a family on a small farm in Cupertino and creating a business out of her many artistic interests in Mendocino County before pursuing higher education. Rita’s BA at Mills was in studio
Gifts in Memory of
art, but she also earned certification for early childhood education and began working at Rainbow School in Berkeley. In her later years, she traveled extensively and moved to the central coast to be close to her children. She is survived by six children, five grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.
FAMILY & FRIENDS
Donald H. Godbold, first Black chancellor of the Peralta Community College District and father of Michelle Borba, MA ’86 • Mary 25, 2024 • Oakland
Barbara Krusi, former member of the Board of Trustees • July 22, 2024 • Piedmont
Seng Tee Lee, father of Fiona Lee Chan ’73 • July 29, 2022 • Singapore
James Sweatt, husband of the late Mary Lois Hudson Sweatt ’60 • July 23, 2024 • Dallas
FACULTY & STAFF
Robert Allen, former assistant professor of ethnic studies • July 10, 2024 • Benicia
Frances Zavala Tobriner, former co-director of student counseling • July 18, 2024 • Berkeley
Pat Ellis Severn ’64 by Carolyn King Terry ’64
SALON
The late Professor Emerita of Painting Hung Liu was on the Mills faculty from 1990 to 2013. She immigrated from China to the United States to enroll at the University of California, San Diego, for her MFA in 1984. This piece was featured in the MCAM exhibition State of Convergence from January 22 to February 23, 2020, not long before her death in 2021.
Salon features artwork and creative writing by Mills alums and professors. Submit your work for consideration by reaching out to mills.quarterly@northeastern.edu
PAINTING BY HUNG LIU
Hung Liu, Sisters, 2000, Lithograph with chine collé on paper, 22 in. x 29 7/8 in., Gift of the artist, Collection of the Mills College Art Museum.
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“Writing is phenomenal. Writing is the key… You can dig back in and see: What has my life been like? And then, you can understand yourself.”
–WENDY WILLIAMS, MFA ’94, AUTHOR OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SEA CREATURE (READ MORE ON PAGE 24)
