M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction

Jesse J. Holland, M.F.A. ’12, was appointed the new associate director of the School of Media & Public Affairs at George Washington University in July 2024. In that role, he supports the next generation coming up in journalism, public relations, and communications. Holland doesn’t limit himself or his interests; he is host of the Saturday edition of C-SPAN’s Washington Journal in addition to his work as an award-winning journalist and nonfiction author. Among his impactful works, The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slavery in the White House earned the 2017 silver medal in U.S. History in the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and Black Men Built The Capitol: Discovering African American History In and Around Washington, D.C. sheds light on the often-overlooked contributions of African Americans to the nation's captial. Holland is also bringing the stories of black science fiction to life as the author of Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Finn’s Story and the first novel featuring the Black Panther.

How do you decide what stories you want to bring to life?

The first thing I look for is something that speaks to me, something that I am interested in knowing more about. The best stories are the ones that the writer is passionate about, so I look for topics, for questions, for situations that make me want to know more. Agents, family, friends often suggest topics, stories, novels that they think would be great for me, but I’ve learned that unless those topics speak to my writing soul, it becomes just work. And nobody just wants to work, especially writers. 

But to do all of this requires introspection, requires you to know what speaks to your writing soul. There are two areas that I know will speak to me: the unknown and historical hypocrisy. I love finding out about things that should be in American history books and are not, whether it’s about American slavery, new inventions, political intrigue, or even genealogy. I love looking into situations and finding whether the story we know is the true story—or was there something else behind it?

Getting my master of fine arts in creative nonfiction at Goucher helped me hone my storytelling skills and helped me find ways to marry my nonfiction research with my particular interests and narrative desires. Without my time in my community at Goucher, I don’t know where I would be today as a writer. 

How are you enjoying your new position at George Washington University?

I absolutely love working as associate professor and now associate director of the School of Media & Public Affairs at George Washington University! I spent more than 30 years as an active journalist with the Associated Press, C-SPAN, MSNBC, and other organizations, and this job is how I give back to the industry that has been so good to me. Working with future journalists and helping mold the minds of those who will be bringing us the news in future decades is a way I ensure that values and morals that were taught to me continue to thrive in journalism in the future. No matter the delivery system—text, video, audio, photographs, or whatever’s next—the world will always need storytellers, men and women who are dedicated to telling the truth about life and writing the first draft of history. And I’m proud to be shaping some of those storytellers. 

How do you think about switching audiences between nonfiction books and fandom-based novels?

It used to be difficult codeswitching my writing between nonfiction and fiction. I started out in journalism, which is nonfiction, and worried for years that writing fiction would somehow be detrimental to writing journalism and nonfiction. However, storytelling is storytelling, and the only difference between nonfiction and fiction writing, in my opinion, is that good fiction reflects reality and conveys to the reader a greater truth, while good nonfiction is the presentation of truth to the reader through reality filtered by the author. It’s all getting your reader into the story and having them along for the ride as we search for greater truths through our narratives.

How do you balance your more niche projects in your career with your more rigorous journalistic projects?

I don’t search for a particular balance, even though my literary agent would probably love it if I did. I seek projects that interest me, that I don’t mind spending time on in my basement, alone, writing on a computer. I don’t say, oh, it’s time for another nonfiction book, or that it’s time to write a comic book or a screenplay or a novella. I say, “What would interest me right now?” Or, “What opportunity is available to me that I wouldn’t mind taking on?” And I go from there.

How did the projects writing for Marvel and Star Wars come about?

I had just finished The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slaves in the White House and had promised my wife that I would not start a new writing project for a few years and concentrate on family life. I was speaking at a journalism conference at LSU, and an editor at Lucasfilm called my cell phone. She and I had known each other from New York City and had met in San Francisco for lunch a year or so earlier. I had told her that if there was ever anything I could do for her, to call and ask.

Well, she called and said there was a project involving a new Star Wars character called Finn that she needed a writer to complete for her. I told her that I had promised my wife not to start a new project for a couple of years, and that while I appreciated the offer, I was going to have to pass. After hanging up the phone, I called home and told my wife that I had been contacted by Lucasfilm for a writing project, but I had passed because of my promise to her. The phone goes silent, and my wife said simply, “You dummy, call them back!” And I did, and that became the junior novel Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Finn’s Story.

After that novel was published, an editor from Marvel called and told me that he enjoyed my work and asked if I had ever heard of the Black Panther. This was pre-MCU, so only real comic book fans knew anything about T'Challa or Wakanda, but I happened to be a longtime comic book fan, so I said, “Of course I know who T’Challa is.” And that editor offered me a chance to write the first Black Panther novel, Black Panther: Who Is the Black Panther? which is an adaptation of Reginald Hudlin’s classic reimagining of the origin of the Black Panther. And it went on from there!