Kristen Fajardo (BGBDA ’20) shares how her background in tech and user design shaped the release of her debut novel.
100 years after the publication of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business alumnus Kristen Fajardo has released a novel of her own – a speculative, queer cyberpunk reimagining of the American classic.
Book author may not be a typical career trajectory for a Global Business and Digital Arts (GBDA) grad, but Fajardo says her background in user experience (UX) and her work in the tech industry have informed both the content of the novel and the entrepreneurial strategies she’s used to market it.
Fajardo always knew she wanted to do something creative, and she was initially drawn to Stratford’s GBDA program because of its blend of design, marketing and practical experience. “There was no other program quite like it in terms of the breadth of classes and things you get exposed to,” she says. “You’re never locked into anything – the possibilities are really endless with where you could end up.”
After completing an internship and graduating during the pandemic, Fajardo worked remotely in several user experience roles before landing a full-time position with an agency. “I really liked the collaborative nature of working with a team and analyzing what is or what isn't working with a product or a service,” she says.
For three years, she worked as a designer by day, and in the evenings she would write. “I've been writing since I was a kid,” she says, adding that Waterloo’s creative writing courses helped her develop the confidence and skills to grow as a writer. “The third book that I wrote is the one that I took to agents, and that's the one we sold.”
“The moment in time that I returned to [The Great Gatsby] as an adult in the middle of the pandemic, I saw it as a story about class and wealth,” Fajardo says, reflecting on how her novel Local Heavens started. “If The Great Gatsby is about the illusion of the American dream, then this book would be about the survival of the American nightmare.”
The cyberpunk subgenre in particular, a type of dystopian science fiction that deals with themes of class and wealth through the lens of technology, felt like a natural fit. “When you take the story into the future, into this cyberpunk dystopia, what does the billionaire class look like?” Fajardo asks. “What does technology look like?”
Having studied and worked in the technology sector also impacted the way she approached these questions. “When there's a new technology, it's always about how this is going to change the world, how it benefits all of these people,” she says. “What's not necessarily talked about are the ramifications, and those are some of the themes that ended up in the book.”
One of Fajardo’s favourite things about the GBDA program is that it allows everyone to find their niche – and for her, that was design. “I think I take a lot of that into my work as an author because you have to make so many graphics for social media,” she says, highlighting that it’s one thing to write a book, but it takes a very different skillset to promote it in an increasingly platform-driven industry.
The entrepreneurial mindset fostered at Waterloo is clear in her work. Between sharing conversations on AI, publishing advice and reflections on censorship as well as fun behind-the-scenes moments, her Instagram page offers a glimpse into how she’s leveraged social media to position herself and Local Heavens within the publishing market.
Fajardo adds that she enjoys thinking about branding, market strategy and target audiences when it comes to her book. “It's the same side of my brain that I would use when I was working with brands and coming up with campaigns,” she says. “I think all of that is stuff I've definitely taken with me.”
Local Heavens released on October 14. Learn more about the book and where you can find it on Fajardo’s website.
