It was the night of Aug. 20, 2024. In overtime of a Democratic convention that treated schedules as suggestions, former President Barack Obama held forth for roughly half an hour on that year’s presidential election — lamenting the state of America’s politics and communities, exhorting viewers to elect his chosen candidate to succeed his successor’s successor.
Thanks in part to the wild, raucous applause that met Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama in their half-adopted hometown of Chicago, a programming slate set to wrap by 11 instead dropped the curtain closer to midnight. Yet NBC still followed its news division’s telecast with the 2,011th episode of Jimmy Fallon’s “The Tonight Show.”
After an appearance by Adam Sandler, the conversation turned again to Obama’s perspective, even in his absence — not for talking up a soon-to-be-defeated politician, but because he promoted a Philly author’s second blockbuster book.
Creative Writing MFA director Liz Moore harbored far humbler ambitions than presidential praise.
“Any time I write a new novel, my hope is that anybody reads it,” she said, with Fallon gazing blankly in her general direction. “Even one person.”
The crowd cackled. Moore’s expression remained unchanged.
Moore has been a fixture of the Mid-Atlantic literati for nearly all her adult life. She earned an undergraduate English literature degree from Barnard College and achieved an MFA from Hunter College in New York. And she authored a handful of novels while teaching undergrads at Hunter, Penn and Holy Family — paying her dues to the writer’s craft in exchange for modest sales and muted acclaim.
Then came “Long Bright River,” a hyperlocal narrative of two sisters — a police officer and a sex worker — on opposite sides of the drug trade haunting Philadelphia’s Kensington community. “River” was released in January 2020, as Moore was transitioning to Temple’s faculty. It proved both wrenching and relevant.
Obama added “Long Bright River” to his famed reading lists. The New York Times raved about Moore’s “book that makes you want to call someone you love” and said she “should be a household name.” And NBCUniversal moved to adapt the text for television: A limited series by the same name, starring Amanda Seyfried, releases on Peacock next month.
The craft paid out: “Long Bright River” was a bestseller, minting Moore as a tribune for a community the public assumed she knew intimately. Yet she wasn’t fully comfortable with that framing of her work. The setting and characters are designed to be not all-encompassing, but believable.
“Their story, to my mind, does not represent the monolith of a particular neighborhood or a particular city,” Moore said.
Last year, Moore published “The God of the Woods.” The mystery novel’s title refers to the patriarch of a wealthy, aristocratic clan Moore creates to loom during a summer camp in the Adirondacks.
Moore weaved the text’s fictional world in part from her own experiences in upstate New York. So, when members of the aristocrat’s family vanish into the greenery several pages in, it’s her own intimate knowledge of the landscape that gives the text richness — and depth.
“God of the Woods,” like its predecessor, appeared in the Times’s Book Review and on its bestseller list. Jimmy Fallon interviewed Moore on his NBC late-night show. And Obama again recommended her work, this time on his famed summer reading list.
Liz Moore, long an author and educator, had become One of Those Great Authors Who Teach — in the footsteps, if not the mold, of the late Toni Morrison at Princeton and George Saunders at Syracuse.
Moore, in her typical understated style, found the comparison a little lofty — “generous,” she said. Temple’s creative writing students, on the other hand, effused over her work, inside the classroom and out.
Joi’ Weathers, a creative writing graduate student, has taken several classes with Moore. Learning from published authors, Weathers said, helps widen her vision and enrich her style.
“I think she’s extremely kind and compassionate, and very passionate about writing,” Weathers said of Moore. “She wants to create a space where people feel supported.”
Moore says she hasn’t noticed a shift in her classroom dynamics since exploding, twice, into what she calls “mainstream commercial success.” The creative writing 4MFA hosts fewer than three dozen pens at a time; her own seminar holds fewer than ten of those students, she noted — and anyway, accomplished authors dot Temple’s writing faculty, including Cara Blue Adams and retired former chair Don Lee.
“I think our students are attracted by the program’s reputation,” said Adams, who found success herself with the novel “You Never Get It Back” in 2021. “And certainly, sometimes they read faculty members’ books and come in knowing our work and wanting to work with us specifically.”
Yes, Moore has found success as an author — as well as the media attention that comes with it. But she still has to teach. And she’s still a parent.
Rivermania was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. “God of the Woods” hit shelves as a summer read. Once episodes of “Long Bright River” begin rolling out on Peacock, Moore will embark on a mid-semester lap of the national media circuit.
And officials at NBC respected her responsibilities, she said: They worked together to design the show’s promotional rollout around her academic and personal schedule.
Nevertheless, a book tour is one thing. A press blitz for a high-profile binge-worthy TV series could bring unheard-of popularity — and put new pressure on the rest of Moore’s world — just as she’s returning to earth from “The God of the Woods.”
“I still, I think, have a kind of scarcity mindset where I’m like, ‘Well, I have to say yes to this because it might not come along again,’” she said. But as her inbox fills with fan mail and media invites, Moore’s learning — agonizingly — to say “no.” And she’s staying in touch with what she sees as her teaching career’s highest calling.
Few writers emerge from grad school en ligue with the great wordsmiths. But Moore says the goal for her students is “to have writing be a really meaningful part of their lives forever.”
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