Award-Winning Author and BMCC Professor Zetta Elliott Releases Second Young Adult Novel

NEW YORK, March 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) Ethnic Studies Professor Zetta Elliott just published her second young adult novel, Ship of Souls, from Amazon/Encore. The book links the histories of Revolutionary War soldiers and African slaves with the lives of three young people in present-day NYC.

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The story was triggered by a series of "signs," she says—including cowry shells that appeared on the sidewalk near her home—inspiring her to bring the supernatural and the everyday into riveting focus.



I call it 'speculative fiction'," Professor Elliott says, "and there's a pretty big group of African American writers out there doing that now. It's an umbrella term, and encompasses different genres: fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal, horror, alternate—rather than ancient—history, time travel and others. Ship of Souls could also be called 'urban fantasy', because it has ghosts, and 'fantastic' elements."



Those elements link the ghosts of Revolutionary War soldiers massacred in what is now Prospect Park, Brooklyn, with the souls of African slaves who labored to build Lower Manhattan, and are buried there. They call up an 18th-century ship uncovered at Ground Zero, and unite three African American teens on a dangerous quest to help a multitude of lost souls transition to their final rest—all the while, led by a glowing, other-worldly bird.



Elliott teaches two courses in BMCC's Ethnic Studies Department: Black Women in the Americas, and Contemporary Black Writers. She earned a doctoral degree at NYU in American Studies, "an interdisciplinary degree in social sciences and cultural criticism," she says, and grew up in Toronto, Canada, but has lived in the U.S. for the last 15 years. 



In 2008, Professor Elliott's first picture book, Bird, was selected as a New Voices Award winner by Lee & Low Books, an independent children's book publisher that focuses on diversity. 

Her first play, Nothing but a Woman, was a finalist at the Chicago Dramatist's Many Voices Project, and her first young adult novel, A Wish After Midnight, was published by Amazon/Encore in 2010.



"It's the hottest field in publishing right now," she says of the YA genre, adding that "African Americans represent only 3% of all young adult authors published annually," and pointing out that since stories often come from the writer's experience, this means that black children and teens don't often see their reflection on the page.

Professor Elliott recommends the YA field to aspiring student writers at BMCC, and advises them to "purge" their life's experiences by "writing and writing drafts they never use. Then, as you mature, you develop emotional distance between yourself and your writing."

That "distance" enables writers to reconcile their own histories, and produce their best work. "Writing in the first person is how I make sense of the world," Elliott says.

Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) of the City University of New York (CUNY) enrolls over 24,000 degree-seeking and 10,000 Continuing Education students a year, awarding Associate Degrees in 28 fields.

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Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York

Contact: Lynn McGee
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SOURCE Borough of Manhattan Community College