Isaac Fitzgerald speaks at the Odyssey Bookshop

Photo by Norah Tafuri ’25.
Isaac Fitzgerald and Jarrett Krosoczka steal bites of fluff sandwiches and sips of Capri Sun between bouts of booming laughter at the Odyssey event.

Rebecca Gagnon ’23 & Norah Tafuri ’25

Staff Writers

Content warning: This article mentions addiction.

Fluffernutters, tales of childhood trauma, prodigies in ivory towers, deep belly laughter and a Carvel ice cream cake are items that seemingly have nothing in common — except for the fact that they were all staples in a reading event with two well-established authors. 

On Sept. 14, 2022, the Odyssey Bookshop doors in the Village Commons opened at 6:30 p.m., and staff of the small bookstore shuffled to make preparations for the audience that would soon pour inside. Quiet loomed over the crowd as people began to gravitate to their seats; a few attendees shifted awkwardly amid the gathering anticipation of the reading. However, as Isaac Fitzgerald and Jarrett J. Krosoczka took their chairs against a backdrop of colorful cookbooks and calendars, the humor and knowing familiarity of their conversation eased the crowd into collective comfort as they began to discuss Fitzgerald’s newly premiered memoir-in-essays, “Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional.” Krosoczka, illustrator and author of the graphic novel “Hey, Kiddo: How I Lost My Mother, Found My Father and Dealt with Family Addiction,” a recollection of his unconventional upbringing, proclaimed, “Welcome to the annual meeting of fucked-up childhoods in Massachusettes that have been put to the page.” 

To get himself and Fitzgerald in the headspace of their childhoods, Krosoczka revealed an all-too-big tub of marshmallow fluff and Wonder Bread to make the traditional sandwich of Massachusetts, a fluffernutter, with the sweet addition of Capri Suns to wash it down. As the two authors scooped the syrupy gobs of fluff with flimsy plastic knives, they began a rapid-fire exchange of biting remembrances from their respective upbringings. 

Fitzgerald and Krosoczka’s recollections are ones that would be an all-too-familiar story for some children raised in New England: one of drug use, broken homes and proud, working class bloodlines. These topics framed the conversation for the evening and acted as a bridge that marked their journeys toward self-reflection and healing through the process of writing as they introduced Fitzgerald’s new book. 

Fitzgerald explained that he originally wanted his story to be titled “Asshole, Massachusetts.” “[But] you can’t call a book ‘Asshole Massachusetts,’” he said. “Therefore, the title changed to “Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional” and became the story of his childhood that he never thought he would write. 

As described by Bloomsbury Publishing, “[Fitzgerald’s] been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents’ lives ― or so he was told. In ‘Dirtbag, Massachusetts,’ Fitzgerald, with warmth and humor, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity and a more expansive definition of family and self. … From growing up in a Boston homeless shelter to bartending in San Francisco, from smuggling medical supplies into Burma to his lifelong struggle to make peace with his body, Fitzgerald strives to take control of his own story.” Instead of allowing his all consuming emotions of anger and isolation to guide his life, Fitzgerald strived to accept himself and allow for self-love and for him to show kindness to others as well.

With this book being an ode to his childhood, Fitzgerald admitted that the original intended audience for his story was a younger version of himself. “[‘Dirtbag: Massachusetts’ is] not out in softcover yet, but I picture a younger version of myself — 12, 13, 14 — running around in the woods or maybe hanging out at the benches downtown around all those abandoned buildings that made up Main Street at the time with that softcover stuffed in my back pocket,” Fitzgerald described. “I love the idea of a young kid … [reading the book], especially … a cis straight white male, somebody that might need to hear this to understand that they don’t have to be a certain kind of way.” 

“I love the idea of a young kid … [reading the book], especially … a cis straight white male, somebody that might need to hear this to understand that they don’t have to be a certain kind of way.”

— Isaac Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald continued to describe his experiences entering boarding school on a scholarship with a chip on his shoulder from the previous defining experiences of his life. It caused tension between himself and the other students — students he assumed were wealthier, more content and less harmed from childhood trauma that kids like him had endured in their earlier years. “Who are these rich kids?” Fitzgerald wondered. Over time, however, he realized that this was not the case for everybody he interacted with.

“As I met these other students, my horizons started to broaden and that’s something that I’m a big believer in too. The more people you meet, the more people you talk to, the more you open yourself up into the world, the more you’re gonna not just figure out about the world, but you’re gonna figure out things about yourself,” Fitzgerald stated. “You’re going to be able to keep parts of your identity that are helpful [and] that still ring true to you but put down some of those things that don’t help you … [but] are actually a burden to you.” 

Through this realization, he was able to understand the intersectionality of his identity and the identities of others, allowing him to build deeper relationships. The maintenance and creation of meaningful ties has become a fundamental element in his way of engaging with the world. 

“It seems like such a basic concept,” Fitzgerald commented. “But you’re gonna get out of the community what you put into it … [by] being vulnerable, sharing yourself [and] opening up to others so that they feel comfortable opening up to you.” 

Fitzgerald continued to explain that community is a mutual exchange, and it takes strength to maintain. It is the persistent work of sharing oneself with others, and working to be an unrelenting ally for those who are generous enough to share themselves in return. As they described during the reading, both Fitzgerald and Krosoczka have found various communities and deeply feel that community can be found anywhere, including in an Odyssey Bookshop event.

Robin Glossner, the event and marketing coordinator for the Odyssey, stated that bringing readings such as these to the community is one of the best parts of her job. “[It’s nights like] Wednesday night when it’s really magic and, we’ve had a few of those where the author is excited to be here, the people, there’s enough people in the audience that are really engaged in having a conversation with this author. … It’s connecting authors and readers. I think [that’s] the most exciting thing a bookstore can do,” Glossner said.

Glossner continued explaining that this sense of community and magic should be felt by all, including Mount Holyoke students, stating that it might add something valuable to the college experience. She added that it would allow students the opportunity to experience things that they might not have otherwise.

This was echoed by Zosia Kessel ’25, a prospective English major who attended the event. She had never been to a reading before, and suggested that “[Mount Holyoke students] … definitely go.” She admitted, “I didn’t know anything about [Fitzgerald and Krosoczka] beforehand, but I’m so glad that I went.” 

Kessel continued to describe the overwhelming feeling of warmth and bittersweet joy in the store that evening. She remarked, “[Fitzgerald and Krosoczka] were very funny and that was … felt throughout the crowd. They were very interactive. Even though it was just the two of them talking it really felt like everybody [was] very comfortable with them and they made you feel like you [were] a part of their conversation.”

Fitzgerald has felt throughout his life that events like these can create a type of magic that can be felt throughout the community, especially for readers. “On paper, growing up in an unhoused situation would probably look pretty bad for a kid but … my parents loved books, they love literature and so … even as my life felt very small — especially in some of those early years after we moved to North Central Massachusetts — because of books, I had these escape hatches,” Fitzgerald said. “I was able to understand different things about the world and about different people’s experiences. … It sounds cliche, and it’s cheesy but it’s just so true, I really believe reading is a special kind of magic and it’s something that I think is so important.”

Even though Fitzgerald has an immense and intimate relationship to literature, in his early 20s he was extremely hesitant to publish his own work — or even put pen to paper. “I thought writing was a gift from God,” Fitzgerald commented. “I thought you either had it or you didn’t. I thought that the people who knew how to write sat in ivory towers, they typed beautiful manuscripts, they didn’t take a single edit, they sent it to New York, they got a cover on it and [then] they had a million dollars. None of that is true.” 

For some child prodigies, this may be the case. However, for the majority of people, writing is a process that demands practice and encouragement. Fitzgerald’s advice: Drink the pages, let your pen fly, and read a wide variety of books, be it fantasy or feminist theory. “Read, write and [understand that] there’s no right way to do it. That’d be my advice.”

A Timothée Chalamet and Mary Lyon love story comes to campus

Graphic by Lauren Leese ’23.

By Arianna Peña ’25

Staff Writer

At 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, a crowd of roughly 50 students gathered around Mary Lyon’s grave to witness a brand-new, one-time-only show, “Going Places I Shouldn’t be Going.” 

Performed by members of the Write Here, Write Now creative writing club, this satirical one-act followed ex-actor Timothée Chalamet as a new professor at Mount Holyoke College. After his career takes a drastic turn for the worse, Chalamet lectures at a college where he is mistreated and gawked at. There, he wonders why the school founder is buried on school grounds and why the Film, Media Theater department is led by the same woman who chairs the German studies major. Chalamet is then transported back in time by Jorge, who seeks to generally terrify and torture him, to the early days of Mount Holyoke, when Mary Lyon was still president. Now in the year 1847, Chalamet manages to show the young women of the seminary there is more to life than the Bible. Along the way, he falls in love with the College president. Eventually, Chalamet returns to the present day, heartbroken that he has been separated from his true love, but determined to carry on her legacy as a professor at the school. 

“I think this was born out of Zoom insanity,” Olivia Wilson ’24, the writer and director of “Going Places I Shouldn’t be Going,” said. “It was at the end of our second meeting on Zoom, I remember this very vividly, and we were talking about bad fan-fiction — as you do in a creative writing club — and we were playing this little game of ‘What is the worst thing we can come up with?’ And we landed on Timothée Chalamet and Mary Lyon.” 

“We kind of got to talking about it more and said, ‘Oh my god, wouldn’t it be so funny if we put on a play?’ … I remember saying, ‘I have directing experience and playwriting experience, so if you guys work with me to put it on, I will write it,’” Wilson said.

And they did. Wilson, along with many other members of the club, helped create the production. Everything, from the costumes to the live violin player to the various promotional posters plastered around campus, was done by members of Write Here, Write Now.

Lauren Leese ’23, co-president of Write Here, Write Now and the Narrator of “Going Places I Shouldn’t be Going,” is no stranger to building creative outlets for students. 

“[In] my freshman year, my friend Rebecca [Kilroy ’23] and I met each other at orientation and we went to the involvement fair to try and find writing-related clubs because we both loved creative writing. And there was Mount Holyoke News, I think at the time there was a poetry society, but there was no creative writing club. And so we said, ‘Well then, we’ll make one,’” Leese said.

While Leese and Kilroy — the other co-president and founder — tried to finalize the club’s official founding, their plans were derailed when the pandemic hit in 2020, and the club remained both small and unofficial for a year. However, in 2021 the current juniors were able to secure Student Government Association Ways and Means funding to make Write Here, Write Now an official club at the College. They aimed to give students who enjoy non-academic writing a space to write freely and creatively with no judgment and full support.

“When you’re in college, it’s really hard to write creatively, especially if you’re working on a long-term project or if you’re just trying to be consistent about it. That can make you feel really guilty, that you’re putting other things above your creative expression. So, we thought that having a set meeting time every week where we set a timer for 30 minutes and everybody [gets] to work on the creative project they couldn’t get to earlier in the week, that’s the kind of thing we think creative writers on this campus really need, so that’s what we want to provide,” Leese said.

“[That’s] the core of what we are, a place where people can write when they don’t have time the rest of the week,” Leese added.

While Write Here, Write Now seeks to give students the space that they need to write whatever they desire. Wilson believes there is something almost cathartic that comes with putting effort into something “bad.” 

“I find it really liberating … [writing] ‘bad’ fanfiction, and not caring about quality or the nitty-gritty and just being like ‘How can I tell this crazy story in 15 minutes? … How can I make people laugh [and] how can I torture my fellow board members?’” Wilson said.

Samantha Pittman ’23, who played Jorge, agreed that there is relief that comes with being creative simply for the sake of being creative. “It’s super easy [to be] dragged down by all the work you have to do [at the end of the semester,] but to have an hour or half an hour where you are just goofing off and doing this silly amazing fanfiction, … it was a great break mentally,” Pittman said.

While there are no promises that Write Here, Write Now will put on another Timothée Chalamet-themed production in the future, the leaders of the organization seek to support writers who have a passion to create.

Editor’s note: Olivia Wilson ’24 and Lauren Leese ’23 are members of Mount Holyoke News.