With the remarriage of her mother to Robert Burgen, she moved to Milan, Michigan, a small town south of Ann Arbor.
Nicholas then switched her major to Latin-American politics, Spanish, and English before dropping out after her second completed academic year.
[4] Nicholas dropped out of Tulane University as well, this time to join the Free Southern Theater (FST), during the Civil Rights Movement.
[5][8][9][10][11] From the stage of the St. Mark's Playhouse in New York, Nicholas was cast as Liz McIntyre, the Guidance Counselor on ABC series Room 222.
I'm Back!, a sitcom that aired on CBS in 1978[14] Nicholas wrote the song "Can We Pretend," which her then-husband Bill Withers recorded on his 1974 album +'Justments.
It received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was selected as one of the best books of 2005 by The Washington Post, The Detroit Free Press, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Newsday and the Chicago Tribune.
In November 1972, Nicholas told authorities that Withers flew to Tucson, Arizona, where she was filming The Soul of Nigger Charley, and assaulted her in a motel room after she threatened to end their relationship, but she refused to press charges.
[19][23] In February 1980, Nicholas's younger sister Michele Burgen, a 26-year-old editor for Ebony magazine, was shot to death.
[5] While coping with the loss of her sister, Nicholas met CBS sports anchor Jim Hill at a Sacramento poetry reading in June 1980.