Coordinated by Jodi McLawhorn and the Leadership Institute, the new Lunchtime Leaders program invites female leaders to speak to students during their lunch periods and in other classes.  Jessie Foley ’98 came as the first Lunchtime Leader on October 21 to speak about her new book, The Carnival at Bray.  As a sophomore transfer student to Regina from St. Ignatius, Jessie Foley ’98 found her place and her calling to be a writer during her Creative Writing class, taught by Kathleen Burke, Ph.D.

In high school, Foley was quiet and reserved, but she flourished in Creative Writing. Foley acknowledges her high school education as having a large impact on her writing and career.  Senior year, Foley wrote a story that inspired her writing aspirations.

“I wrote a story for Dr. Burke’s class, but I didn’t think it was appropriate for school,” said Foley. When Burke read the story to the class as an example of excellent writing, Foley was motivated to major in English at the University of Illinois Champagne-Urbana.

While teaching at Loyola Academy and Taft High School for seven years, Foley worked on her Masters degree in fiction writing from Columbia College.  She assembled a short story collection, but her writing agent told her it would not sell in today’s market and she should, instead, write a novel.

Last year, Foley submitted a novel to a young adult label, winning their writing contest.  In October of this year, The Carnival at Bray was finally published by Elephant Rock Books.

The road to becoming a published author is not easy.  For five months, all she did was edit and rewrite.  When afflicted with writer’s block, Foley would put the book away for a couple months before coming back to it.  When deciding how much detail to add in a work, she advises writers to write as much as one can, then cut and edit.

To help keep track of her ideas, Foley would dictate her thoughts into Siri on her phone, and then she would listen to the recording the next day before she began writing. “That blank Microsoft Word document is so intimidating,” said Foley, explaining her methods.

Foley gained inspiration for her book in various ways.  The Carnival at Bray centers on a teenager named Maggie, who has to move from Chicago to Ireland much to her displeasure.  Foley’s husband is originally from Ireland and helped make the Irish dialogue in the book sound as accurate as possible.

The book is also influenced by the band Nirvana, and Maggie even attends a Nirvana concert.  It is set in the 1990s, a purposeful choice. “It solved a plot problem because there would be no social media or cell phones.  It would isolate Maggie in Ireland,” said Foley.

Foley will embark on a book tour as part of the marketing for her book, traveling to Minneapolis, Iowa, Miami and New York.