Four years ago, Sofia Mazloum was completing her master of arts degree at RMIT University and giving creative writing classes at Glenroy College.
In her spare time, the Reservoir resident was also busy penning her first novel.
Fast forward to 2014, and Mazloum’s year 12 English students at Thomastown Secondary College are reading her novel, I Don’t Belong Here, as a study in conflicting cultures.
Mazloum self-published just a month ago and will officially launch her first work of fiction later this month.
I Don’t Belong Here tells the story of 16-year-old Tamara Khoury who struggles to be a “normal” teenager in the spotlight of a watchful father raised in a strict Lebanese Catholic household. Tamara rebels against her father’s tyranny, experimenting with alcohol, drugs and sex.
Mazloum, 33, says the book draws on her own adolescent memories and is set in Melbourne’s outer north.
“There’s a lot of drama; it hasn’t been sugar-coated. I know teenagers today. If you give them something that sugar-coats their experience, they’re not going to like it.”
The novel is aimed at senior school students and teachers, and Mazloum hopes one day it will be part of the school curriculum. She completed her first draft three years ago and worked on 11 in all before the final version.
She now has another two novels on the way – a sequel and an adult novel about falling in love for the first time.
The book’s launch is on November 23, 2-5pm at EnVogue Café, 670 Chapel Street, South Yarra. For more information, visit www.sofiamazloum.com
