Professor Rachel Gold’s Book Launch
By Lydia Schmelzer ’23
Save the date for April 18th, when Professor Rachel Gold’s new novel Curious Minds will be published! Gold’s new YA novel is set on the campus of a small liberal arts college (not unlike Macalester) where Gold was a student and now teaches Creative Writing and Queer literature. In the novel, first year students are invited to participate in a queer literature treasure hunt, where reading classical queer novels will help unlock clues to find a treasure. Rachel’s novel centers on five participants navigating their first year at university, friendship and romance. Rachel draws heavily on their own experiences teaching and attending Macalester. Setting the novel at a small school changes the social and character dynamics. Rachel notes that “the size of campus allows you different opportunities. So that bigger campus, like let my main characters be a little more anonymous. Here, of course, everyone’s in everyone else’s business. So it’s pretty fun, especially like the queer and trans group. Certainly, when I was here, as a student, we all knew each other’s business.”
The intensity of the small college environment allowed Rachel to explore broader themes in the novel such as neurodivergence, queerness, and coming of age, all while using the treasure hunt to structure the novel. Neurodivergence plays a big role, as all four protagonists are neurodivergent in different ways, and discover that about each other throughout the course of the narrative. To properly explore complex ideas of relationships and neurodiversity, Rachel conducted a lot of research and spoke with a number of “consultants.” Rachel comments “I have a number of people I’ve consulted with, like, particularly Sophia and Kai, in the book, are Black, and I’m not. And so I actually had three black friends that I talked to for those characters. And like, specifically, they’re each inspired kind of more specifically by specific friends of mine.” Rachel mentioned their friend, Qamar, who helped with Kai’s character, saying “I was like, Come on, tell me about high school, like, tell me about early college. So in that just tons of great info because I keep that I can read a lot of books, and I would never get the kind of information I get in a conversation… For example, a lot of Kai’s physical gestures are actually gestures I’ve seen Qamar do.” Consultants allowed Rachel to explore a wider range of topics and ideas without sacrificing accuracy or integrity in their writing.
Choosing to write in the Young Adult fiction category also structures and defines Rachel’s writing process, and the themes they choose to explore. For a writer interested in identity formation, college is fertile ground. Prof. Gold comments, “Young Adult limits the parameters… In thinking about a young adult novel, the question of limitations is always, if they’re in high school, that I have to figure everyone’s parents, who has a car and who doesn’t have a car? So part of college campuses is that people don’t have to have cars!” Having limited parameters allows Rachel to delve right into character development and plot, and allows them more flexibility in these realms.
Rachel’s novels are among a class of emerging queer Young Adult literature in conversation with each other. Rachel is excited to be one voice in the rising group of queer Young Adult writers, all tackling different topics and taking a multitude of approaches. “I bring optimism, I’m not gonna give you tragedies,” she said.
Rachel’s new book Curious Minds comes out on April 18th and the launch part will be held on April 20th.