Alumni Stories: Nicole Treska’s “Love Letter to Her Family”

a photo of Nicole Treska standing in front of a red wall wearing a black shirt and yellow dress
Nicole Treska

Nicole Treska (MFA Class of ’10) followed a winding road through life from Chicago to Hawaii, and Hawaii to New York, ultimately finding her way to CCNY’s MFA in Creative Writing. And following that, her path from student to memoirist under contract with Simon & Schuster, although less perilous, was just as unconventional.

Treska discussed this journey, and her forthcoming memoir Wonderland, with the director of our program, Michelle Valladares, recently in an episode of the Indoor Voices Podcast.

Nicole Treska’s fiction, reviews and interviews have been published in several literary magazines, and Wonderland will be published by Simon & Schuster in the Fall of 2023. She is an adjunct professor at City College, as well as a 2010 graduate of City’s MFA in Creative Writing program. In this episode, she talks with her Professor Valladares about how Nicole’s book came to be, its road to publication, and about the continuing benefits of the MFA program as a student and as an alumna. Wonderland refers to a Boston location as well as the questions that circle around her family’s complicated history. Michelle, an enthusiastic champion of Nicole and her writing, describes the book as “prose poems put together.” Perceptive, that, because the book, which started out as an “assignment” from a friend, was constructed, as Nicole puts it, by “screaming my life into a Word doc.”

Listen to Episode 73 here & now (or via Apple Podcasts)

Follow Indoor Voices (Apple Podcasts) (Twitter)