How Brittany Amara wrote her way to healing

Stories have always been part of Brittany Marasciulo-Rivera’s life. From an early age, she was drawn to writing, art and performance, passions she brought with her when she moved to Mahopac at age 11. Here, she said, her teachers encouraged her to keep pursuing her craft.

She remembers walking into class and saying, “Do you see these bags under my eyes? It’s because I’ve been writing all night.”

Back then, the pages of Comic Sans, 14-point font that she showed her teachers may have been pieces of a dream — a collection of thoughts and imagination from her mind.

Now, writing under the pen name Brittany Amara, the 2017 Mahopac High School graduate is set to launch her debut novel, “The Bleeding Woods,” on Oct. 14.

In “The Bleeding Woods,” Amara introduces Clara Lovecroft, a young woman whose dangerous powers emerge after the death of her parents when she is 14. Years later, Clara becomes lost in the Appalachian Mountains alongside her first love, the sister she betrayed, and a stranger bound to her telepathically, as a series of murders casts fear across the woods.

“There’s a lot of feminine rage in the book,” Amara said. “When I look back at the book, I realized afterwards that I was processing so much when I was writing it, and I feel like Clara is a woman who is in every way, trying to conform to society’s view of beauty, of femininity.”

While the book now reflects the 26-year-old’s polished and poised writing, it began when she was a young girl. She also found solace in writing during the pandemic. Like many people, Amara said she went through a dark time and was struggling. Writing became an outlet — a story that, while rooted in science fiction, mirrored her own search for purpose.

“I’d want people to walk away a little bit less afraid of the shadows and the scary memories and fears and all the things that we’re taught to shove away about ourselves and address the shadows until their alchemized into light.”

Writing was then, and is now, her safe space.

“It was both a coping mechanism and sort of a path to healing," shw said. "Art has always been my biggest sources of healing. So I feel like during that time, especially when it felt like we didn't know what was going to happen, we didn't really know what to do with ourselves. This was kind of the only thing that I could work towards.”

After Mahopac High School, Amara went on to graduate from SUNY New Paltz and later earned her master’s in creative writing from Queen’s University Belfast.

She was in Belfast, four weeks into her program, when she got the call that her story was being purchased. She remembers sitting in her apartment in footie pajamas playing an online game. It was midnight in Northern Ireland.

Her phone rang. She panicked.

She recalled the call beginning with: “Are you sitting down?”

Her biggest dream had come true.

She said her first phone call was to her grandmother, who has “loved this book since I was literally 12 years old.”

Amara said she is full of gratitude and pride.

“I really want to celebrate it with the community,” she said. “I've been working on just writing and becoming an author for so long — on the bus, traveling from the high school to my house — I'd be listening to music and conceptualizing stories.”

To celebrate her book launch, she will host a reading and signing at Libri in Yorktown Heights on Oct. 14 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Amara is becoming the woman she once dreamed of being as a young girl.

“It is emotional. It’s surreal. I have been dreaming of this for as long as I can remember,” she said. “I’m looking back at my previous self, the one who was really struggling, and telling her, you got to keep going because you’re going to get there.”

She can be reached on Instagram at @brittany.a.mara. She also shares book updates and writing content at @starscythe.write and on her website, brittanyamara.wixsite.com/my-site.

The book will be available wherever books are sold on Oct. 14.