The goal was clear. She knew the path that would get her there.

But first, Nikole L. Pegues had to get out of her own way.

As a child, she recalled, she was an avid reader and wrote almost obsessively in her diary. Then in high school she fell into a bad crowd and began fighting with other students and ditching school.

Pegues, born on an army base in Italy and raised in New York, failed her first year in high school, and she said her future became fuzzy.

However, watching her friends get pregnant and go to jail helped Pegues refocus. She took summer, night and Saturday school to make up for her lost year.

“I knew I didn’t want to stay in Queens my whole life,” Pegues said. “I knew I wanted more.”

She wanted to go to college as a way out, but with her academic record, she didn’t know how she was going to get there.

“I saw myself and my friends on a fast track to nowhere,” Pegues said. “The easiest way to get out was to go to college, even though it was the hardest way.”

Seven years later, it seems Pegues has found her way. She graduated cum laude from Howard University, where she majored in print journalism and minored in Afro-American Studies. She has done internships with the Military Times and USA Today. And in college Pegues had the opportunity to publish for the campus newspaper, The Hilltop.

She also served as co-managing editor of 101 magazine, a student publication devoted to news and campus life.

Her other passions, she said were soul food and her mother – of course, not in that order.

In the future, Pegues said she would like to write fiction novels and win a Pulitzer Prize. Pegues doesn’t want to limit her career to hard news. Ultimately she wants to become a feature writer. She said she’s working hard on developing her skills as a narrator.

“I try to be a storyteller, not a journalist,” Pegues said. “I want to put a face and feel into my stories.”

– Lelan LeDoux

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