Alumna merges education, entertainment in award-winning fiction

Gwyn Cready, AB’83, MBA’86, recently received the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award for Best Paranormal Romance for her novel Seducing Mr. Darcy. The RITAs honor outstanding romance fiction in 12 categories, from Best Romantic Suspense to Best Regency Historical Romance.

Seducing Mr. Darcy, the story of a modern-day woman transported into the world of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, is Cready’s second novel. Her first novel, Tumbling Through Time, was published in 2008.

“It’s a wonderful thrill,” Cready says of the award. “It’s as close to the Oscars as I’m going to get.” It was a fairy-tale evening for Cready, a first-time RITA nominee who was surrounded by the nation’s most celebrated romance writers. Only after receiving her award did Cready realize she was seated beside romance legend Nora Roberts, who also won that night.

“We clinked RITAs like glasses of champagne,” she recalled.

Cready arrived at the University of Chicago knowing she wanted to study novels, but never expected she would end up writing them. “I knew I was going to be a literature major. That was what I loved in high school…I read voraciously,” Cready said, “but I had no dreams of becoming a writer.”

Instead, Cready pursued an MBA and a career in brand management. But the sudden death of her younger sister, a photographer and poet, prompted Cready to put pen to paper. “I needed to do something to honor my sister’s memory, and doing something creative would be it.”

Cready found a mentor through an online community of aspiring romance novelists, and began to look for an agent. “I felt the benefit of many helping hands,” she said of the road to publication.

Now an established writer with two new books in the works, Cready said she continues to reap the benefits of her time at the University. In each novel, she tries to offer her readers education in addition to entertainment—for example, her forthcoming novel prominently features the 17th-century Dutch painter Peter Lely, allowing Cready to mingle historical fact with her lighthearted fiction.

“That definitely comes from my U of C background, which taught me to be curious about many things,” she explained. “I learned to be curious about everything.”