Check out Nicole’s books Mixed, Last Dance, Letters I’ll Never Send, and Until We Fall. Her first young adult novel, All I Know So Far, comes out January 2025.

Nicole has also been published in several anthologies, including Nothing Without Us, 101 Proof Horror, and Signs of Life, among others.

About the books

Mixed (The Nasiona, 2019), Nicole’s first book, is a nonfiction collection of interviews with mixed-race people and families. Cirleen DeBlaere, who is Asian and white, discusses her ‘me’search as a psychologist studying race. Asian college student Gillian Sherman grapples with her difference from her white family. Simone Thomas, who is Black, remembers her family’s reaction to learning her Latina partner Alanna Ramos is a police officer.

Last Dance (Atmosphere Press, 2020) is Nicole’s book of short stories. In Chicago, two college students enter into an explosive romance. In California, an ex-soldier prepares to tell her family about her dishonorable discharge. In Georgia, a young woman turns a blind eye to her brother’s suffering. These twelve stories follow women as they grapple with their choices and come to terms with their pasts.

In Letters I’ll Never Send (Atmosphere Press, 2021), protagonist Sadie Goldman still isn’t sure if she’s ready to confront her demons after eight months in a psych hospital following a suicide attempt. Her close friend Kim is undergoing chemotherapy, her mother is back in her life, and her five-year-old daughter isn’t entirely sure how to react to Sadie coming home. Sadie has to find the strength to deal with the ups and downs of her regular life, aided in part by her wife, friends, and therapist.

A dystopian thriller described as “a balm to soothe the lingering aches of the Trump era,” Until We Fall (Jaded Ibis Press, 2021) begins when Isla Logan’s history teacher is arrested for conspiring to take down the dictator that rules over the United States. It sets off a chain of events that will lead to Isla, her fellow refugees from the U.S., and their allies partaking in the fight of – and for – their lives.

From Where We Are (Signum University Press, coming April 2024) starts with Gabi, who escapes Germany at the beginning of World War II. Over generations, Gabi’s granddaughter, Lena, struggles with drug addiction and an unplanned pregnancy; her sort-of nephew, Zane, grieves for his wife three years after her death in an antisemetic mass shooting; and her great-niece, Miranda, advocates for Palestinian liberation against her family’s wishes. Each family member’s tale begs the question: What does it mean to survive, and is that enough?

In All I Know So Far (Inked In Gray Publishing, coming January 2025) seventeen-year-old Avery Marsh’s parents send her to live in what Avery calls Middle-of-Nowhere, Virginia, with her absentee half-brother and his secret boyfriend. And it’s great that Lucas is living his truth or whatever, but he couldn’t have told his bisexual, nonbinary sibling that he was gay before they moved in together? What starts out as the worst year of Avery’s life becomes one of friendship, queer family, and reconciliation.