The Elephant in the Ivy follows a theater student at an Ivy League campus whose playful interdepartmental spy game blurs into real danger, exposing how performance, power, and privilege shape identity and loss. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

I had a couple of influences here. First, I had some students a long time ago when I was a middle school teacher that really inspired me. I wanted to imagine what they’d be like in college, and the whole set-up is a metaphor for the kinds of challenges that students on the margins face. Second, I currently teach at a community college, working with students that are often coming back to school after a long break. This population benefits from reassurance that they are “real” college students, that this community is here for them. Alison is a scholarship student in the Ivy League. Her feeling out of place and finding her own ground to stand on– that’s something I see a lot from community college students. 

How did your background or observations of academic life influence the book’s tone and details?

College can be a setting where marginalized populations don’t feel welcome. A lot of that comes from the standard dialect being enforced in classrooms. I learned to talk like my teachers and my privileged peers when I was a scholarship student, but I never felt that ownership of the space that others seemed to feel. With Alison, I wanted to show the audience what outsiders feel like in this setting. It’s only when she stumbles upon the game that she starts to see the university as her own space. I think college can be a wonderful place to find your footing, to find something you’re passionate about that makes you want to dig your heels in. For me, it was building sets for the theatre department.

The novel balances humor with real grief and danger. How did you know when to let scenes stay light and when to let them turn dark?

My default is probably light. I’m a funny person, and I make light of most everything. I think there’s even some good jokes in the scene where Alison has to mother her mother. I make the case that Hamlet could be a comedy if you played it for laughs. I actually did that. I played Hamlet and hammed up the stuff I thought was funny. The local papers didn’t like it much, but I did get laughs. The world has light moments and sobering ones, too. I guess I just tried to be Rainbow Rowell during the hard ones, and P. G. Wodehouse the rest of the time. Taking a low-stakes thing and giving it higher stakes by making characters want what they want even harder– that’s a Wodehous move, I think. 

What conversations do you hope students, educators, or first-time readers have after finishing the book?

Well, I very much hope I covered the bases of the stuff that’s in literature. Something to say, and a long-form story that says it. A nice mix of passages, characters, and literary devices that serve as metaphors for the big ideas. I’m hoping that the book being free is helpful so that classrooms can take advantage and have one less hurdle to take on. I hope they read it in class and then just stop when it reminds them of something– a life experience, another story, a concept from class. And that they chat about that a bit, and then move on. I think that’s what it takes to become a stronger reader: a place and time dedicated to reading, a community to read with, and someone to talk to about the book. 

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