Stephanie Laterza FCLC '01: Multi-Genre Best-Selling Author

Stephanie Laterza FCLC ‘01

By Peter Krause

Stephanie Laterza is the author of Italian-Latina cookbook, La Masa A Casa (2020), poetry chapbook, The Psyche Trials (Finishing Line Press, 2019), and feminist legal thriller, The Boulevard Trial (2015). Stephanie is also the recipient of a SU-CASA 2018 artist-in-residence award from the Brooklyn Arts Council. Her work has been featured in L'Éphémère Review, First Literary Review-East, Ovunque Siamo, A Gathering of the Tribes, Newtown Literary, Literary Mama, The Nottingham Review, Writing Raw, Akashic Books, Obra/Artifact, Pratik: A Magazine of Contemporary Writing, Latina Outsiders, Raising Mothers, the Brownstone Poets 2020 anthology, the anthology Mightier: Poets For Social Justice, and elsewhere.

Stephanie holds a B.A. in English from Fordham College at Lincoln Center and a J.D. from New England Law School. For many years, she's worked as a contract attorney alongside her literary career. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and son. Visit her website or follow Stephanie on Instagram @stef3rd.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Peter Krause: Stephanie, thank you for taking some time to chat with Fordham English today.

Stephanie Laterza: Thanks so much for having me. It’s such an honor to reconnect with Fordham. My years at Fordham were some of the happiest of my entire life! [Laughs]

PK: My first question for you may interest undergraduate readers especially: How did your B.A. in English from Fordham inform your early career in law?

SL: I imagine that many students may feel the same way I do: that being an English major is something of a calling. It involves creativity. It involves having a love of literature. You have to love writing.

Regarding my early career after Fordham, the critical reading and writing skills that I learned at Fordham absolutely translated into my research and writing skills as a law student at New England School of Law in Boston. While I was in law school I took a seminar about law and literature with the late great Professor George Dargo, who was a huge Seinfeld fan - an even bigger fan than I was. The class was absolutely fascinating. We read Franz Kafka. We analyzed films critically. We watched Akira Kurosawa films and read the scripts. We read Shakespeare. In particular, we read The Merchant of Venice and examined the political implications surrounding the story. So, that was in my third year of law school and I was all over it. I was always raising my hand, always chiming in, and I realized: the English major in me was never going away. I didn’t want it to go away. It’s a way of seeing the world. It’s a way of engaging with the world politically and socially. It’s not just academic.

The thing is: I never stopped writing creatively. I never lost that love. I kept writing poetry, and published some of it while I was in law school. On weekends I would go to poetry events. There was this great space called Out of the Blue Art Gallery in Cambridge where I would perform my most recent work and hear other poets read their work. It was just something I never let go of.

Now, with respect to law school and becoming an attorney, you undoubtedly need to be able to think and write critically. As I mentioned, I absolutely learned to do those things at Fordham. In law school you analyze case law and statutory law rather than scholarly articles, but the principle remains the same: you seek evidence to back up your arguments. So, there is a close similarity there. That being said, a law career is certainly not the only career path to follow with a degree in English. Publishing, marketing, copyrighting, teaching, web design - there are so many areas where the skills of an English major are essential. Working with your on-campus career advisors and taking advantage of Fordham’s career development resources is critical. Have a conversation about the kind of work you really see yourself doing.

Laterza’s Boulevard Trial tells the story of three women who confront an unforgiving past during a New York prostitution case.

A law career is not how it’s depicted on TV. It’s not Law and Order. It’s not… well, at the time we had Ally McBeal! I’m dating myself here. It’s not glamorous. It’s hard, onerous work.

As an English major, if you find yourself drawn to creative writing, make sure you have those conversations with professors in the English department and advisors in the office of career services. You want to be sure that you’re doing all the necessary research to identify early career paths that are right for you. Don’t forget internships too. Do them across multiple industries to see what you like and don’t like.

PK: All of that is tremendously useful for Fordham students to hear. I have two follow up questions. One: How did you find the application process for law school? (The LSAT has its own daunting reputation, of course). And two: Given that so much of law school is intense reading and writing, in your opinion, does an English major prepare you for the rigor of law school?

SL: I’ll answer the second question first if you don’t mind. I would say: yes. Majoring in English does prepare you adequately for law school, especially for the first year, which is constant reading and writing. What I would say, though, is that your first year of law school is not like college. It is hard. It is really rigorous. An English major prepares you, but it does not guarantee that all of the readings and assignments will come easily to you. You need to be prepared for the Socratic method. Professors will cold call randomly in class and you need to be ready to answer. Your first year of law school requires an extreme amount of concentration and discipline. Imagine your hardest, most challenging English class times ten.

That being said, your first year of law school is very different from your second and third years, in which you may start doing internships and start preparing for the bar exam, which is a whole separate issue.

Let me elaborate a bit more. Looking back at my early career, I note, unfortunately, that standardized testing did factor in a lot more than I thought it would. While critical reading and writing skills were key, they are not enough.

Regarding your first question about applying to law school, the LSAT score does matter. That score does affect the kinds of offers that you’ll get from law schools, which in turn affect the opportunities that you’ll have in that program and beyond (internships, etcetera.). Finally, there is research supporting the correlation between your LSAT score and whether or not candidates pass the bar exam. All of this emphasis on standardized testing was something of a rude awakening for me. I took preparation courses and was surprised by how much they affected my LSAT score and, in turn, by how much my score affected the opportunities available to me.

Anyone thinking about law school should remember that there are two crucial components: the critical reading and writing and the standardized testing.

PK: Again, this is all so valuable for students to hear. There’s no substitute for hearing from someone who has been in their position and then made the leap into the legal profession. I have in mind a few former students who have mentioned law school. I’ll definitely be forwarding your thoughts to them when this is published.

SL: I’m glad.

PK: As you have very strongly implied, law school is certainly not the only destination for high-achieving English majors like yourself. You have also published a few books across multiple genres, including a cookbook, a thriller, and a poetry chapbook. Some students at Fordham will be far more interested in writing and publishing creatively than in legal or corporate life. What would you say to those students?

Laterza created a cookbook celebrating her Italian-Latina heritage focusing entirely on dough.

SL: I would say, “Go for it!” [Laughs] Absolutely go for it. That creative urge will never go away. It will always be there. It will always whisper to you. To this day, wherever I am, if inspiration strikes I am ready to jot down notes on my phone, the nearest napkin, or whatever else might be within reach. These notes are all over my house! Do not give that creative impulse up. Even if you wanted to give it up, eventually it would rear its head.

Regarding genre, people in writing circles will say, “Oh, I write poetry. I don’t think I would be a good nonfiction writer.” To that I say: the story you are trying to tell will very often dictate the structure of the narrative. The story itself will help influence the form and genre. I’ll get an idea and I’ll know immediately that it would be best expressed as a poem.

During the beginning of the pandemic, I found myself up at 4 a.m., which I think was due to being unable to go out, the overall stress of the situation, etcetera. So, in the early morning I would find myself working with dough like my Abuelita used to do both in Ecuador and in Queens. Rolling out dough, making empanadas, testing recipes, writing them down - all of that became my cookbook. In the cookbook I tell the stories that inspired my recipes. So, format-wise, I just knew the story had to be a cookbook, rather than a poem or blog post. I hoped that the format would be useful to others who might be in the process of baking their sourdough bread, stress baking, or otherwise using cooking as a way to make sense of this precarious time. It’s an Italian-Latina cookbook since I’m Italian on my father’s side. He passed away in April, so the project is also in memory of him. Getting those recipes down on paper was certainly therapeutic.

PK: Thank you for sharing what is obviously a very important project. Much of what you describe highlights the fact that cooking and writing about cooking are art forms. They are expressions of creativity just like more traditional arts and letters. This is vital to remember specially during COVID, when we are all removed from traditional campus life and perhaps exploring more nontraditional modes of expression. There’s never anything wrong with writing widely across genres.

SL: Yes, absolutely.

PK: Could you say more about your novel and your chapbook?

SL: Sure. Regarding The Boulevard Trial, what I learned in law school absolutely influenced the story. Three women fight the demons of their past during a litigation case. While I was in the “Law and Literature” class with Professor Dargo we talked about the myriad definitions of the word “trial.” There are emotional trials and there are psychological trials in addition to the legal process. That term “trial” also found its way into The Psyche Trials (Finishing Line Press, 2019), which is my feminist poetry chapbook. That story maps the journey from infatuation and loss to self-love and discovery. The chapbook is a reinterpretation of the myth of Psyche and Eros through the lens of my experiences, but the ultimate message is self-love.

Inspired by Psyche and Eros, The Psyche Trials envisions a feminist resolution for Psyche along a sensual path from infatuation and loss to self-love and discovery.

PK: By way of closing, perhaps I could ask you to describe what your experience as an undergraduate at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus from 1997-2001 was like. What aspects of campus life were you involved in?

SL: I did work-study in one of the deans' offices. My friends would always find me there and we would hang out, which was fun. I was able to connect with lots of students who came through the dean’s office for various reasons. I also had poetry published in Red Rover, which was the on-campus literary magazine at the time. I found that opportunity through a creative writing workshop class that I was taking. In fact, I still have a copy of Red Rover featuring my very early work! [Laughs] That was all fun.

Let’s see, what else? There were, of course, always on-campus parties. The Lincoln Center campus was always bustling since it’s right in the heart of Manhattan. That being said, I did often get up to the Rose Hill campus, especially to use the Walsh Library, which had just been constructed. Overall, it was just a really fun time. New York City was our backyard.

PK: As an English instructor and Writing Center Fellow, I adore hearing a former student recall trips to the library. Let me shamelessly reiterate: You went to the library when you had research and writing to do.

SL: [Laughs] Yes, I went to the library! Though, I might add: both for studying and for events.

PK: Is there anything else that you might like to say to Fordham students who are considering majoring in English, or to those who have already declared?

SL: Being an English major opens a lot of doors. It’s a way of life that stays with you forever. The English major in me has never stopped moving forward. She’s always there. She’s always thinking critically. She’s always reading, or wanting to read. She’s always expressing herself through the written word.

PK: Stephanie, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts with us.

SL: Thank you so much for having me.