Alumna's sweet book deal pays tribute to late professor's talent

Laura Moriarty Photo by Mollye Moriarty

Social worker Laura Moriarty was working in a Portland, Maine, housing program for pregnant teens and young mothers when she got the phone call from her literary agent.

Her first novel had sold. Guess the price, her agent teased.

"I was making $10.50 an hour," Moriarty says. "So I said $10,000."

Try $400,000.

The Center of Everything, Moriarty's coming-of-age tale set in a fictitious Kansas town, is set for a July release by Hyperion. Book magazine and Publisher's Weekly have touted the young writer has a promising newcomer. The novel describes the transformation of Evelyn Bucknow, who at 10 years old is more mature than her struggling mother, Tina. KU figures prominently at the story's end, Moriarty says.

The startling sale of her work caps a 10-year struggle for Moriarty, s'93, g'99, the nomadic daughter of a Marine who spent a decade in Kansas and calls the state home. The Center of Everything began as her master's thesis in KU's creative writing program, where her adviser and mentor was the late Carolyn Doty, professor of English, who died March 10 at age 62. Moriarty is the only latest Jayhawk whose career was launched under Doty's tutelage. Doty, a faculty member since 1986, was a four-time novelist whose work-including her latest book, the 1992 Whisper-was hailed by critics for its sophisticated psychological drama. The novelist and teacher earned students' gratitude and affection for her warmth, wisdom and wit, all of which made her unflinching criticism easier to bear.

"She was so encouraging early on, while also letting me know I had lots of work to do," Moriarty says. " Teaching creative writing is difficult because students often suffer from delusions of grandeur or humility that go to the extreme. Carolyn was really good at finding potential, but letting you know it's just potential."

Doty was also tenacious and successful at finding publishers for her proteges, who in recent years also have included novelists Scott Heim, c'89, g'92, and Connie May Fowler, g'90. One of Fowler's five novels, the best seller Before Women Had Wings, became a television movie produced by Oprah Winfrey.

Heim sent an e-mail tribute to Doty, which her longtime friend Professor Tom Lorenz read at a campus memorial service March 31. "To be a student of hers was to be a member of a secret, snooty, coolest-people-only club," Heim wrote. "She was a skilled comic actress-a novelist/professor version of Carol Burnett. … "She believed in me more than I did."

When Heim, at Doty's urging, moved to New York City, Doty gave him a signed copy of her novel What She Told Him. Tucked inside was a card that included a $200 gift and words more generous than mere dollars: "I have such faith in you. You make me so proud."

Such gracious spirit from a teacher can help students succeed no matter how stiff the odds. Moriarty, who thanks to her book deal now works full time in Maine on her second novel, says it plainly: "I would never have believed I could work as a writer today were it not for Carolyn."

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