All Student Success Letters

Tessa Boardman

Dear Gotham,

I am fortunate enough to be enjoying a career break from my work as a criminal lawyer in Brisbane, Australia. My partner, Alex, and I are living in the south of France while he completes his Masters in the Energy Transition. With plenty of time on my hands, I want to spend it learning and creating. This is why I decided to study the Fiction Writing I course Online with Gotham.

I was hoping to revisit creative writing—something that I enjoyed when I was younger, but hadn’t done in over ten years–in a structured setting that would give me the push I needed to just sit down and write. The course has given me far more than I could have imagined.

Under the wonderful instruction of Irene Zabytko, our class learned the fundamentals of creating a work of fiction from inception to publication. The course awakened my latent creativity and drove me to create some pieces that I am really pleased with. I especially loved reading my classmates’ work and receiving their incisive and thoughtful feedback on my own.

My confidence grew with each week that passed, and at Irene’s suggestion, I submitted my work to literary journals–something I never would have considered before. Less than a month after completing the course, my first piece, “The Bloom Room,” has been accepted for publication with the journal The First Line. In May, my second piece, “Seeing Clearly” was accepted by Ninth Letter.

I couldn’t be more pleased. Thank you, Gotham!

Tessa Boardman