Rainbow Rowell, who took creative writing classes as an undergraduate English major at UNL in the 1990s, continues to dominate the bestseller lists. This Sunday’s New York Times Book Review (Dec 13, 2015) spotlights Rainbow Rowell’s best-selling fiction on its “Best Sellers” page – including Fangirl, a novel about a group of creative writing students at UNL. (The novel’s characters are all named after buildings on campus: Cather, Piper, Abel, Avery.) “The reign of Rowell continues,” writes the Times. “She has three novels on the young adult hardcover list, including her most recent book [Carry On], about a wizarding school, at No. 2 in its eighth week.”
Rowell graduated from UNL in 1994; over the years she has worked as a copywriter and journalist (for 12 years she wrote a popular column for the Omaha World-Herald) and has published two novels for adults (Attachments and Landline) in addition to her young adult novels. Janet Maslin, book critic for the New York Times, wrote, “Ms. Rowell is talented enough to be uncategorizable… Landline belongs to a genre of its own.” The film rights for her YA novel Eleanor & Park (set in Omaha in 1986) were acquired by DreamWorks, and Rowell has written the script.
Her most recent novel, Carry On, was released in October of this year, and is based on the fan fiction created by Cath, the creative writing student in Fangirl.
Above image courtesy Department of English.
