Jennifer Mathieu: When A YA Author Grows Up

Houston’s Jennifer Mathieu is arguably the most successful young adult author in the region thanks to her hit novel Moxie, which was made into a Netflix film in 2021. In 2024, she released her first work for adult audiences, The Faculty Lounge, an engaging story of how the stages of adulthood are often as trying and scary as those of adolescence.

“I've written seven books for young people, but in my last novel, I was like, I found myself getting like more curious about the parents in the book,” she said in a phone interview. “I still understand adolescents. I work with them every day, but I was in my 30s when my first book was published. I’m firmly in mid-life right now, and my own adolescence seems weird to me.”

The Faculty Lounge is an unconventional novel in that it’s more of a collection of short stories from different teachers’ point of view over the course of a school year. When an elderly substitute teacher dies during a nap on third floor faculty lounge couch, his death unleashes a bizarre set of consequences that affects the staff of the fictional Houston campus of Baldwin High in a myriad of ways. Some of them are funny, some are tragic, but none will leave a reader unmoved.

The subject is hardly surprising. Mathieu has been a teacher in Houston for decades. She moved to the city in 2000 to work as a journalist for the Houston Press while also helping with the Infernal Bridegroom theater company. After journalism became harder to make a living at, she transitioned to being an English teacher. And she has stayed as a teacher ever since despite her success as an author. 

Some might say that writing an adult fiction novel that centers around a high school is slightly cheating when it comes to transitioning out of the YA genre, but Mathieu uses the inherently liminal space of public education to tackle the sheer awkwardness of adulthood. Her characters are in constant flux in ways that mirror teenage protagonists, just with a mature twist. Two young teachers sheltering in a disused book closet during a shooter lockdown unexpectantly fall in love, an aging principle ruminating on his punk rock days deals with a workplace crush, and there’s even a Very Special Episode about drinking.

The genius of The Faculty Lounge is how it looks at the perpetual arrested development of Gen X and Millennials without judgment. Having survived numerous apocalypses at this point, a lot of adults simply don’t know what the grown-up thing to do is. Watching the characters of The Faculty Lounge navigate their flaws with the same type of understanding they would probably use on their students is comforting, even when some of the subjects are quite grim.

Mathieu has always used literature to help people broaden their horizons. One fan of hers is Erin Rodgers, a multi-instrumentalist avant garde musician, teacher, and lawyer in Houston. By the time Rodgers started her own work with Infernal Bridegroom, Mathieu was a “legend” there. Mathie loaned Rodgers a copy of her anti-bullying and slut shaming YA novel The Truth About Alice, and Rodgers has been a fan ever since. 

“I don't teach at the same level as Jennifer, but I do think that no matter what or where you teach, it's universally true that schools have two completely separate civilizations within them,” said Rodgers in an email interview about The Faculty Lounge. “It's like a cruise ship: there are the passengers, there is the crew, and never the twain shall meet, socially. I haven't read another book that captures this so well - that teachers are people too; complicated, drunk, horny, and generally trying their best.”

Humanizing teachers is, sadly, much needed in Texas at the moment. The culture wars have opened multiple fronts. School board elections are some of the most consequential decisions in the state. Teachers at all levels are also facing restrictions on what can or cannot be taught. Fights like these form some of the best chapters of The Faculty Lounge, such as when a school nurse must decide what to do to help a pregnant student in a state that has all but banned reproductive choice. And Matheiu frames choices like these as similar for adolescents and adults, seamlessly bridging the generational gap.

So far, Mathieu has been able to keep her writing life, under what some would consider progressive content, separate form her teaching career. She teaches under her married name, and every district has been supportive. That said, she moved from Houston ISD to Fort Bend ISD when the state took over the former, worried about what it would mean for her.

“All I can do is go to work and teach my students and uphold my professional standards at work,” said Mathieu. “I think I'm a respected teacher. I think parents and students think that I'm fair. They think that I'm kind. They think that I'm approachable. And so because they're mostly happy with me, I don't think they go looking for any problems. I suspect if I were maybe a different kind of teacher that wasn't relatively well-liked, maybe there would be more reason for them to poke around and look for some reason to burn me at the stake.” 

Hopefully, they never do because if The Faculty Lounge is any indication. Mathieu has a lot of teaching left in her both in the classroom and on the bookshelf.