Lauren Magaziner ’12 wrote her first children’s book, The Only Thing Worse Than Witches, during her junior year at Hamilton. During her semester abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland, the old city served as her muse.
“I was feeling pretty inspired from the witchy, cobblestone-y, spooky atmosphere of the city, and so I decided to try my hand at a witch novel of my own,” Magaziner says.
Penguin Books published Witches in 2014, followed by Mazaginer's second book, Pilfer Academy. A third is on the way.
Magaziner, now a full-time writer, knew she wanted to write books before coming to Hamilton, and picked the College in part it offered her the option to major in creative writing as opposed to English. “I love that Hamilton recognizes that studying literature and writing literature require different hats,” Magaziner says.
She had an internship at HarperCollins children’s books the summer between her sophomore and junior years. In her application, she submitted as her writing samples three workshop critiques she had written for a class at Hamilton.
