Nicole Fersko graduated from AUR in 2016 earning her bachelor’s degree in Communications with a concentration in Writing. After working with professor Lisa Colletta on her thesis that explored, ‘places, spaces, and nonspaces,’ Nicole’s desire to continue writing was invigorated as she began life post graduation. As a result of her capstone, which explored theoretically and creatively the relationship between time, space, and the writer, Nicole realized that her “desire to keep writing grew, as well as my need to inhabit different spaces and reflect on them through creative writing.”
Shortly after graduating, Nicole lived and worked in Bolzano, Italy where she managed Sidewalk Trento and Bolzano and worked in the education department at Museion, contemporary art museum in Bolzano. During her time with Museion, she established Museion Ink, a programme for visitors to approach the art through creative writing exercises and experiment with writing itself. Nicole noticed that creative writing was a fairly new discipline in Italy and she remarks that this project is one of her proudest achievements.
During this time, she continued to write and realized that her desire to study writing academically was growing in her, so she moved to London in 2020 to pursue a Masters degree in Creative Writing and Education at Goldsmiths University. In her creative writing courses, she began to assemble material for the memoir she is currently working on, titled ‘Bad Wolf.’ Nicole reflected that, “as part of an exploratory and therapeutic approach I did some free writing on memories I had blocked out or that remained blurry to me from adolescence up until I was 18 and moved to Italy. Then together with my thesis advisor Livia Franchini, I turned this diaristic writing into the beginning of a memoir.”
The ‘bad wolf’ title comes up in the excerpt selected for The Rome Review as a recurrent theme that pairs well with how alienated we tend to feel during adolescence. It is a reference to the disciplinary tactics that Nicole remembers from her middle school that ultimately landed her in the high school indicated in ‘the roof.’ Nicole noticed that, “the school I went to was for the “rejects” of society, so I associated all of us as bad wolves. The individuals who got sent away or could only be in this school all had turned into bad wolves or had that name thrust upon them.”
‘the roof’ was published in The Rome Review on September 8th of 2024. It is a fraction of Nicole’s ‘Bad Wolf’ memoir which is still in progress. ‘the roof’ showcases aspects of adolescence that Nicole experimented with during her Masters program which ultimately influenced her ideas for the memoir. She attributes themes of identity, sexuality, girlhood, insecurity, innocence, shame, and grief to this poignant ten-minute read.
It takes place during Nicole’s freshman year of high school in a gritty environment where she finds a few close girlfriends that impact her coming of age arc. She chose to revisit this period of her life because it represents, “moments where we experience things for the first time, the first cigarette, the first kiss, the first of many things.” These firsts are apparent in the scenes of refuge on her roof with Ellie, Luna, and Rachel. Specifically, she reflected on why her and her friends’ exploration of freedom and autonomy from their families was invigorated by the roof as a setting of refuge: “perhaps because we weren’t under our parent’s roof, but we were above, where there were no rules and it gave us the sense that we were free.” This sense of being above showcases an obvious literal spatiality, but also an emerging sense of liberation from forces that adolescents often find themselves learning to navigate. Swirling in the background was the impending sense of loss and grief which culminated in the death of Nicole’s father and her move back to Italy with her mother and two younger siblings.
The juxtaposition between Nicole’s friend group on the roof and her father’s waning health amplifies how time and space become visceral co-creative experiences. She notes that, “the most vivid memory I have of the day my dad passed away was me being on the roof and it felt as if all my memories from that point on became fragmented and my life became contorted. Time and space and the important events like graduating highschool and everything else seemed to take on a different meaning.” The omnipresence of grief, not only for her father’s death, but for the expiration of time and space and the transition between her childhood home and her life in Italy is certainly an aspect of Nicole’s life she is continuing to grapple with.
Towards the end of the piece, Nicole writes that, “everything from that point on from the roof to when we moved back to Italy remains in my mind in fragmented moments.” This acceptance of the passage of time and the impression it leaves on memory is something that Nicole is continuing to learn from and experiment with. These fragmented moments that she is still in the process of understanding are symptomatic of change which is often tainted by recollections of loss. Now, Nicole has realized that, “having left New York in some ways protected my family and me from having to be there and face many things perhaps related to my father’s death, but it also created a distance between me and that time that I am still trying to explore and understand.”
Nicole is currently living and working in Trento, in Northern Italy, where she appreciates the slower pace of life that allows her to work on her writing. She works as a freelance translator and teaches English in a nursery school while also continuing to collaborate with Museion and running Sidewalk Trento and Bolzano.
Follow this link to read Nicole’s story!
If you are interested in submitting to The Rome Review, send a polished piece to theromereviewlit@gmail.com with a one paragraph third-person bio. They accept fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and hybrid work which categorically pushes boundaries and errs on the side of weirdness. The Rome Review also strongly encourages submissions from underrepresented authors.
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