Marvin K. Mooney
Holmes, Leila

LEILA: Hi, my name is Leila Holmes and I'm going to tell you my literary story. It's more of a thank you, basically to my mom and one of my favorite teachers from high school. When I was little my mom, every day, even before I could talk would read me a story of some sort. We'd always go to the library and then my dad too. At night when my mom would be cleaning up for dinner we could hear the water in the pipes and so we knew that she was still cleaning and my dad would go tell us a story. One of his favorites was Marvin K. Mooney [Laughing] and he would get all big, "Marvin K. Mooney, would you please-" 

[Media cuts forward]

LEILA: And my mom didn't like it because we would get all hyper before bed which was never good. Dad just got me reading and growing up my friends were like, "I play volleyball, I play basketball, and Leila reads." I'm like, "Yeah, I do read." So I did that growing up and in high school I had one of my favorite teachers, Donna Parker, at Baton Rouge Magnet High School and she was very sort of scary at first but she was very intelligent, sort of strict but respectful. So we always had to work hard for her. She was very supportive of my writing and I've been writing ever since. And now I'm a rhetoric in writing minor. So that's exciting and that's it.