Author of Martlet Must-Read Novel Shares His Story

On October 2, students and faculty gathered in Werner Centennial Center to welcome Nashville author, musician, and lawyer Jeff Zentner to campus as part of the Martlet Must-Read program. His arrival marked a special “first”: while he frequently speaks about his writing career at schools across the country, it was Zentner’s first time stepping onto a Connecticut boarding school campus — the setting for his acclaimed novel In the Wild Light. Chosen as this year’s Martlet Must-Read, the novel about two friends from a small Tennessee town who both have the opportunity to attend a private boarding school in Connecticut is just one of Zentner’s many books written for young adults.

Zentner was fast-paced and full of humor as he related “the story of how I became an author.” Growing up in a small town, books and music were his lifelines, and he practiced guitar for hours each day. Eventually he moved to Nashville to pursue a career as a professional musician. Although he toured, recorded albums, and met with some early success, Zentner took stock in his early 30s and announced to the audience that, “Sometimes in life, your dreams just die.” He purposefully changed the direction of his creative life when he decided to go to law school and became a prosecutor for the state of Tennessee.

“I was doing a lot of writing in my day job,” Zentner recounted. “I would get a cardboard box and inside would be a case, reports, transcripts, confessions, all the stuff of a criminal investigation. I would have to take that and stitch it together and boil it down to a comprehensible linear narrative.” Once he realized that he was capable of telling high-stakes stories that could become books, his path forward became clearer. He focused on creating art for young people and began drafting his first book, The Serpent King, on his phone during his bus commute to his day job. Once he committed to writing books, Zentner realized that the dreams he had in his 20s were “like a form of energy that couldn’t be destroyed; but could change form.”

Throughout his talk, Zentner emphasized resilience and risk-taking. “Nobody is keeping track of your failures,” he told students. “We’re really just afraid of being seen to fail. There’s freedom that comes with realizing no one else is keeping score.” He shared advice on how to become a writer: have a story to tell, finish what you start, and accept the criticism that will make you stronger, but not the criticism that will break you. His
presentation on becoming a working writer combined inspiration with realism, reminding students to continue to follow their creative passions, no matter what form they eventually take.