A dark screen appears, three discordant notes from a piano resound, and a door slowly creaks, as "Faust (the classic German legend) sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for wealth and power” appears on screen.

Columbia alumna and adjunct associate professor of writing in the School of the Arts Hannah Lillith Assadi, CC ’08, SoA ’13, stumbled upon a photo of her grandmother as a young woman, wrapped in the arms of an unknown man as they both smoked cigarettes. Assadi never knew her grandmother, and the resulting wonder around who the man in the photo could have been inspired her second novel, “The Stars Are Not Yet Bells,” which was published on January 11.