By Justin Kopp ’25, staff writer
Associate professor of English and creative writing Dr. Holly M. Wendt launched their first novel titled “Heading North” at the Midtown Scholar bookstore in Harrisburg, PA on Wednesday, Nov. 8.
“Heading North” is a sports fiction novel published by Braddock Avenue Books primarily told from the point of view of a young ice hockey player named Viktor Myrnikov.
Myrnikov is on the cusp of playing in the National Hockey League when both his entire Russian team and his secret boyfriend, Nikolai, are killed in a tragic plane crash. After losing everything, readers follow Viktor as he tries to find a place for himself in the world of professional sports.
The launch at the Midtown Scholar consisted of a reading, an interview conducted by local author Curtis Smith and an audience Q&A session.
Smith asked several questions about Wendt’s 11-year-long journey from first draft to publication. Smith has most recently authored the novel “The Lost and the Blind” and has previously taught classes at LVC.
Wendt told Smith that their process consists of writing a first draft from start to finish rather than editing and revising at different times of day. They compared it to crafting a marble block from which they carve their ideal novel out of, and Wendt spoke of carving away 300 pages and a point of view character over the years to get it.
“Heading North” is inspired by the real-life Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash of Sept. 7, 2011, one of the few instances where an entire sports team was lost at once. As a hockey fan, the tragedy resonated with Wendt as they engaged with coverage of the event and the difficult questions being asked about the future of a team that just lost all of its players.
“For whatever reason, I thought about that intensely. The absolute worst part of my writer brain said, ‘That’s terrible. What must that feel like? What could possibly be worse than simply losing all of your teammates?’ And for Viktor, that was losing his beloved at the same time and not being able to tell anyone about it,” Wendt said.
A plane crash also affected Wendt in their youth when one carrying high school students from their region crashed in New York. The risks of air travel weighed heavily on families in their rural Pennsylvania community, even though few of them flew very often.
Upon reflection, Wendt wondered if it affected how they were drawn to the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl crash.
“It might have been percolating in the back of my brain for a long time. I also love telling sports stories, so it was like a perfect storm in a few ways and didn’t take long to jump onto the page,” Wendt said.
Wendt also had a breakthrough in their process while writing for The Classical, which has since shut down. It was an online hub for sports writing where people went beyond games and scores to write cultural criticisms and personal essays about their relationships with athletics.
One of the founding editors, David Roth, put out a call for writers as spring training approached for baseball. Wendt aptly “tossed out a pitch” and started balancing working on “Heading North” with watching practices and games as research. Their work would go on to be published by the literary journal.
“After that piece was published in The Classical, I started taking myself seriously as a person who could write about sports,” Wendt said. “It’s probably a lot of the reason why I persisted with the book.”
More motivation came from the vacuum Wendt saw for a literary sports novel about ice hockey. Beyond the game, Wendt is interested in digging into the life of athletes outside the rink and the unique challenges they face despite their privileged status as professional athletes.
“I want to read a book like this, and this book doesn’t exist yet,” Wendt said. “That’s always a good reason for writing one.”
The title never changed throughout the drafting process despite many other works sharing the same title. Its myriad of associations with ice hockey and navigating one’s life make it nothing less than a perfect fit.
“Ice hockey is a sport associated with cold weather and northerly things, so the idea of the perpetual winter is part of it, but also knowing your direction. Heading north with the puck means driving toward the goal, which is also a reference to navigation, the north star and knowing firmly what your destination is,” Wendt said.
Despite launch day having come and gone, Wendt still has plenty of energy.
“It just feels really, really exciting to finally be here in a place where the book is out. It’s been an 11-year journey, and that’s kind of wild. Everybody’s been super kind, and I’m looking forward to the moment when people have copies in their hands. I’m excited to see where this leads.”
Readers can find “Heading North” on Braddock Avenue Books’ website and on Amazon. The opening pages of the novel can be read here at Littsburgh, and a recording of Wendt’s conversation with Curtis Smith can be found on the Midtown Scholar’s YouTube channel.