“I grew up reading every fantasy book in the world and you always want to believe there’s some magic in the world. This was it for me,” said Molly Booth ’14, in a profile in the Boston Globe this week. She was referring to the magic she felt the first time she stepped into Shakespeare’s Globe, during a research trip to London to capture details of the Elizabethan period theater for her new young adult novel Saving Hamlet, published by Disney Hyperion this month.
The article explores how Molly’s fascination with Shakespeare grew from acting and working backstage as a teenager, at community theaters in her hometown of Marblehead, Massachusetts, then blossomed in college. She began writing Saving Hamlet as a student at Marlboro, with the support of teachers T. Wilson (literature), Paul Nelsen (theater), and Brian Mooney ’90 (writing), and Geraldine Pittman de Batlle (literature), and landed a two-book deal within months of graduating. Her second novel, Nothing Happened, a retelling of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing from the perspective of teenager summer camp counselors, is forthcoming in spring 2018.
Photo by Rosie Kahan ’15 at Everyone’s Books, in Brattleboro, where there are some signed copies of Saving Hamlet on the shelves.
