Adelphi Professor Publishes Young Adult Novel About Climate Change
Garden City, NY (06/20/2022) — Adelphi University Adjunct Professor and author Ellen Hagan will release her third young adult novel, "Don't Call Me a Hurricane," on July 19. The novel, which will be published by Bloomsbury, is a coming-of-age story that explores family, community, the changing ocean tides and what it means to fall in love with someone who sees the world in a different way.
"I had so much fun writing this book," said Hagan. "This one feels like the biggest love story that I've written."
Set on Long Beach Island on the New Jersey shore, the novel follows a group of student environmental activists who live through a hurricane on their island home. It's the summer before their senior year of high school and their biggest action is protecting the Clam Cove Reserve, an area of marshland that's in danger of being destroyed and becoming overdeveloped. While trying to protect the reserve, the main character, Eliza Marino, finds herself falling in love with a tourist who is holding on to a secret.
While writing the book, Hagan explored climate change and climate justice with her students.
"The more I followed what's happening in this global crisis, the more I thought, 'How does art respond to some of these issues?'" she said. "How do young people speak back to what's happening? How do you create and begin to be in dialogue with some of these larger social justice issues? That's really what inspired the book."
For more than 20 years, Hagan has been dedicated to educating young minds. She has co-led Adelphi's Alice Hoffman Young Writers Retreat for high school students and has published multiple novels and poetry collections. Several of Hagan's poems and essays have been published in literary magazines such as Underwired Magazine, She Walks in Beauty, Huizache, Small Batch and Southern Sin.
"For me, everything I do in the classroom fuels what I do as an artist," said Hagan. "I am hopefully teaching them, but they are at the same time, teaching me."
"Don't Call Me a Hurricane" is available for preorder now: bookshop.org/don-t-call-me-a-hurricane
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Cover of Ellen Hagan’s third young adult novel, “Don’t Call Me a Hurricane.”
Adelphi University Adjunct Professor and author Ellen Hagan