"Orange Is The New Black" Author Is Blue

Swampscott High School Graduate, New York Times Best Seller, and Ex Convict. Those are three things you would not associate with one another, but they are three titles that Piper Kerman, author of the New York Times Bestseller Orange Is The New Black, holds. 

Piper Kerman graduated from Swampscott High School in 1987 with a future to do whatever she wanted laying in front of her. After graduating from Smith College in 1992, Kerman began on an unexpected path when she entered into a whirlwind romance with a woman who she describes as an impossibly stylish and cool lesbian in her thirties who happened to be involved in a drug smuggling ring and ended up pulling Kerman into it herself. Kerman carried a suitcase full of money to Belgium for a West African drug lord.

Five years later, after leaving that life behind and starting anew, Kerman was named as being involved in the drug ring and was sentenced to fifteen months in a Women’s Correctional Facility in Danbury, Connecticut. She struggled in prison at first, her character in the show says “I have been starved out, felt up, teased, stalked, threatened, and called Taylor Swift,” but Piper quickly learned the troubles of a convicted felon and adapted to her new surroundings. After being released thirteen months into her sentence Kerman wrote a memoir, the New York Times Bestseller Orange Is The New Black, about her experiences in prison. The novel was adapted into the hit Netflix series of the same name, which premiered to great success last July. 

It isn’t often that a Swampscott graduate goes out and becomes a household name and brings a new message to students. SHS Sophomore Jupiter Costantino said “I understand that people could get a message out of it, that it shows what you can do after high school, how you can avoid doing the wrong thing. It also shows you that if you do do the wrong thing you can make the best out of it.”  

Sophomore Kaitlin Snyderman, who plans to read the book soon after watching the Netflix series, didn’t know that Kerman was a graduate of the school that she currently attends. “I’m not surprised that she’s [Kerman] from a small town, it happens a lot to kids from small towns.” Snyderman continues that, “I could possibly see that happening to people I know, people are easily manipulated.” 

Costantino chimed in on the same question, saying that she just recently learned Ms. Kerman was an SHS alumna, “She seems like the typical Swampscott girl,” Costantino said.

Junior Bethany Hapgood, who has been watching the show since it premiered in July, also recently learned that Kerman graduated from SHS 25 years ago, “It’s pretty cool that someone from a small town could make a name for themselves,” said Hapgood.

Swampscott High School students and people around the country are becoming enthralled with Orange and can’t wait to find out what happens next after the cliffhanger left at the end of season one. “I can’t wait to find out what happens next,” said Costantino. “I just really want to see how the character’s relationships evolve.”