Between standardized tests, after-school clubs, and ever-looming college applications, fifteen-year-old Maggie Murphy is content to watch others on ClickClock, exchanging her own mundane tastes for others’ on the video-sharing app that is integral to her and her friends’ daily existence. In the economy of creators and consumers, Maggie is the latter… until the CIA recruits the teen to assist in a covert foreign data-mining investigation, an opportunity her parents see as a unique resume-builder. Suddenly, Maggie is a creator. Soon, her unanticipated success on the app is forcing Maggie to confront ideas of creative and political authority, and leaving the teen with a more personal question: What is the scope of her influence without such a platform? A biting and timely satire from a debut voice, Amateurity explores how social media shapes today’s teens, as well as the world they will inhabit as adults.
photo by Molly Haley
About the Author
Sofie Matson attended Falmouth High School and now attends Columbia University, where she plans to major in what CNBC ranked as the most-regretted course of study, English, and where she is an associate opinion page editor at the Columbia Daily Spectator and writes for the current events section of the Columbia Undergraduate Law Review. In addition to writing (and, inevitably, reading), Sofie enjoys painting, playing clarinet, and googling the answers to the Sunday Times crossword puzzle. She wrote her debut novel, Amateurity, in The Telling Room’s Young Emerging Authors program.
About the Interviewer Kathryn Williams is a young adult author, most recently of The Storyteller (HarperTeen). Her nonfiction has appeared innumerous print and online publications, and she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Sewanee School of Letters at the University of the South. Originally from Virginia, she’s been in Maine since 2012 and teaching for The Telling Room since 2014. As program lead of the Young Emerging Authors fellowship, she gets to help the next generation of poets and storytellers turn their words and worlds into books.
Portland Public Library’s Literary Lunch series is held monthly and features authors from New England in conversation about new works. Authors are interviewed by literary friends, colleagues or critics.
All Literary Lunches are free to the public. Because they take place over the lunch hour, guests are encouraged to bring their lunch! Coffee is generously provided by Coffee By Design.
Questions about our Literary Lunch Series? Please send us an e-mail.
Kathryn Williams is a young adult author, most recently of The Storyteller (HarperTeen). Her nonfiction has appeared innumerous print and online publications, and she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Sewanee School of Letters at the University of the South. Originally from Virginia, she’s been in Maine since 2012 and teaching for The Telling Room since 2014. As program lead of the Young Emerging Authors fellowship, she gets to help the next generation of poets and storytellers turn their words and worlds into books.
about new works. Authors are interviewed by literary friends, colleagues or critics.