Taylor Brorby joined Wofford’s Environmental Studies department last year during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In the past year, Brorby has drafted his first novel while also completing his memoir. 

His passions for writing and nature have allowed for forms of self-expression in new places.

His love for the environment surged from growing up in a North Dakota town with less than 600 people where all there was to do was being outside and immersed in nature. 

“I spent a lot of my childhood drawing outside, fishing and just roaming hills,” said Brorby. “I was the first person in my family to go to college, and there I learned that you could write literature about anything.”

The coal-mining industry dominated his hometown, and noticing that parts of the earth were disappearing without ever being replenished fueled his passion for the environment. 

“I grew up swimming in a lake in North Dakota that never freezes and even as a child I knew that every lake in North Dakota should freeze,” Brorby explained.

Moving to the south in the midst of a global pandemic, Brorby took to writing fiction as an outlet to maintain sanity and stability. 

“I didn’t write fiction before the pandemic,” said Brorby. “If I didn’t keep writing, I would be treading water in the worst way. Writing this novel became like brushing my teeth, I had to do it.”

Brorby moved to Spartanburg after only visiting once for his interview. Not only did he come to a new place in a pandemic, but he is also immunocompromised. 

He has yet to experience the purported “southern hospitality” as he has not been able to go out in public and explore due to his conditions. Stuck in his apartment, Brorby stated that he felt writing is his true escape.

In his first semester of teaching at Wofford, Brorby drafted his first novel while simultaneously completing his memoir. 

In his novel, he wants to highlight the lives of people that go unnoticed because he feels that everyone deserves literature, “In my part of the world, there are still no meaningful gay characters in literature,” said Brorby, “When you ask people, they always say ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ which is a 28-page short story.”

Brorby wants to showcase the lives of people who are often overlooked because he believes that all people are worthy of having their stories told.  

“When writing fiction, you can tell the stories of people who are silenced,” he said. “Growing up, there were no gay characters to relate to so I want to create these characters that I never had.” 

His novel is structured through connected stories, ranging from an immigrant family to a kiss between the county sheriff and a school bus driver. 

Though he has only completed the draft of his first novel, he is already working on a trilogy. 

“The second book will follow the lives of two closeted men, the sheriff and bus driver, over a period of 8-weeks,” said Brorby.

While his novel is not yet completed, his memoir will be released next year. “Boys and Oil: Growing up gay in a fractured land” by Taylor Brorby will be published June 7, 2022.