Rising From the Flames

Twenty-five years ago, the Oakland Hills fire destroyed the home of Risa Nye MFA ’11. With the help of Saint Mary’s MFA program, Nye realized her dream of writing a book—There Was a Fire Here, her memoir of surviving the firestorm. Published in June, it coincides with the 25th anniversary of the October 20, 1991 fire that killed 25 and caused $1.5 billion in damage.

For Nye, the course helped her process some painful memories, which her professor—Peter Trachtenberg—compared to a mud puddle. “He said, ‘I want you to walk through that mud puddle…get to the emotion. Don’t be afraid to go where it’s messy.”’

Nye’s book not only shares the hopelessness she and her family felt as they returned to a home in ashes, but the personal growth they experienced in rebuilding.

“For me, a person who always had trouble making decisions, it forced me to step up,” Nye said. “I discovered I was more capable in some ways than I thought.”

That newfound confidence surfaced again, when she entered the MFA program with students the same age as her own kids. “I was 58 when I started. I just had to decide it wasn’t going to matter.”

Nye found support in her classes, with small writing groups and even an internship at a publishing house. And the 100-page thesis, due at the end of the program, became the bones of her book.

“What makes Risa's writing so special is that she's able to balance humor and disaster with expert pacing and a singular philosophical velocity,” said SMC English Composition Professor Alex Green. “She's quite fearless, too—to watch her stare down this tragic incident with such aplomb is something to marvel at.”