10/09/2026
We want to give a huge congratulations to MSW student, Leslie Bazzett for publishing her first novel, Mia, and for signing a contract for a second novel!
Mia tells the story of an American woman, Sally, who is spending a year in the Spanish colonial town of San Miguel de Allende Mexico with her husband and two young children. Eager to immerse herself in the artistic and cultural traditions of her new home, Sally meets an older, elegant expat, Louise, and the two quickly become inseparable. Soon, Louise is calling Sally “Mia” and introducing her to her friends as her daughter. Taut and psychologically suspenseful, Mia is a mother-daughter story turned on its head, and a high-intensity fable about the dangers of playing a role that doesn’t belong to you.
“Back in the fall of 2024 when I was applying to St. Thomas, I wrote an admissions essay on the symmetry between clinical therapy and writing: Both share a foundational focus on understanding people at the deepest level; how they experience their lives and what informs their choices; and in both art forms, therapy and writing, the medium is language. In answer to one of the application questions I wrote, “I am eager to bring to this program a continuation of my writer’s compassionate curiosity.”
St. Thomas has been such a wonderful place for this “writer’s curiosity” to reside and grow and has challenged me in ways that have shined a light both towards the clinical therapeutic work that I am just learning to do, and the writing work that I have been learning for decades now.”
Congratulations on this huge accomplishment, Leslie, we are so proud of the work you’ve done in your writing and in our Master of Social Work program!
