When Zinzi Clemmons, a 2003 graduate of Strath Haven High School, first took a fiction writing class when she arrived at Brown University, she immediately fell in love with it. 

“From that time on, I was writing short stories and novels, and it was my dream to write a novel,” Clemmons said. 

Since then, after majoring in critical theory, media studies, and creative writing, Clemmons went on to write the novel “What We Lose” in 2017. It was named “Debut Novel of the Year” by Vogue and was a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, the California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Leonard Prize. 

“What We Lose” is set in a fictional town much like Swarthmore and describes both the positive and difficult aspects of growing up in a place like that as a non-white person. 

In high school, Clemmons played softball, basketball, and threw the javelin in track. She was also part of Hi-Q and the art club, crediting her extracurricular activities for developing her time-management skills. 

“Self-discipline is very important to a career as a writer, because you don’t go into an office,” Clemmons said. “You have to do everything on your own. I had to balance all of these different activities and my schoolwork, and that was where I first learned those things.”  

Clemmons is currently a professor at the University of California, Davis, where she is the director of the program in creative writing and oversees admissions as the leader of the graduate program. 

“In the earlier part of my time here, I was mostly teaching and mentoring students. Now I have this administrative leadership role, which has given me a new sort of relationship to the institution,” Clemmons said. 

Clemmons’ mother was born in South Africa. From the time that she was six months old, Clemmons and her family would go back to South Africa, usually on summer vacations. 

During these trips, South Africa was going through a racial justice movement against formal apartheid, which it eliminated in 1994. 

“I grew up very attuned to observing how political changes and politics in general manifest in individual people. And I was always interested in writing about it, so I’ve pretty much always done so since the time that I started writing,” Clemmons said. 

According to Mrs. Jennifer Rodgers, an art teacher at Strath Haven High School who taught Clemmons in various 2D art classes, Clemmons completed a project called a concentration, which was based on her identity and self-awareness. Her project was unusually large compared to her peers’ and used unconventional materials. 

“As a high school art student, she was ahead of her time and had a maturity that is rare in a typical teenager,” Rodgers said. 

Clemmons’ second book, “Freedom” is coming out in June, which includes personal essays that have to do with current events, politics, and feminism

According to Clemmons, one of these essays tackles racial inequality in Swarthmore specifically.