About Nicole Blades
Tuesday, March 2, 2010Montreal-born writer Nicole Blades likes to tell tales. Not tall ones. Just good ones.
Ever since third grade with Mr. Polka, Nicole has written and created stories. Her journey into fact-based storytelling—journalism—developed in the late years of high school and continued through university, where she contributed to York University’s newspaper. After graduating from York with honours, a BA in Mass Communications and a BA in Psychology, Nicole moved to New York City and launched her journalism career working at Essence magazine. Nicole soon ventured into dot-com, co-founding an online magazine for savvy young women called SheNetworks, which was featured in Wired magazine. Later, she became an editor at sports media giant, ESPN.com.
Even though the media life was good, the need to tell more tales—the inspired, dreamed-up, irresistibly fascinating kind—was tugging at her coat. So Nicole left her ESPN post to sink neck-deep into writing and finishing a story that came to her years earlier. Enter Earth’s Waters, the coming-of-age story about a young Caribbean woman slowly drowning in paradise. The debut novel was published in the spring of 2007 and won an Independent Publishers’ bronze medal later that year.
Nicole recently finished writing her second novel. She currently works as a freelance journalist, writing and editing for ESPN, More and Cosmopolitan, while maintaining Ms. Mary Mack. For more on Nicole’s projects and to read excerpts from her work at Blades Central.
