amaranth News and stories from the Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature at Hiram College
hiram’s eclectic
scholars VISITING WRITER KAREN SALYER McELMURRAY AUTHOR ALISSA NUTTING
Spring 2015 www.hiram.edu/lindsaycrane www.facebook.com/lindsaycranecenter
am a ranth noun
1. a Vachel Lindsay poem published in The Congo and Other Poems in 1914 2. an imaginary flower that never fades 3. a highly nutritious golden seed 4. any of various annuals of the genus Amaranthus having dense green or reddish clusters of tiny flowers
Volume 4, Issue 1, Spring 2015
amaranth is a bi-annual publication of the Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature
staff
Editor-in-Chief Graphic Design
Kirsten Parkinson, Ph.D. Sarah Bianchi
contributing writers Kirsten Parkinson, Ph.D. Kristie Schroll ’16 Maya Watkins ’17
contributing photographers Karen Donley-Hayes ’86, MAIS ’06 Kirsten Parkinson, Ph.D. Samuel Adams
mailing address Hiram College P.O. Box 67 Hiram, Ohio 44234
© 2015 the Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature, Hiram College
LINDSAY-CRANE CENTER FOR WRITING AND LITERATURE
On the cover: the Brainerd Stranahan bench in the gardens behind Bonney Castle
amaranth News and stories from the Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature
spring 2015 3
STUDENT PROFILE
4
AUTHOR ALISSA NUTTING
Meet the Lindsay-Crane intern for the spring semester
Maya Watkins ’17 recounts the fall visit of Alissa Nutting
6 10
LIGHT OUT OF THE DARKNESS Kristie Schroll ’16 talks with author Karen Salyer McElmurray
ECLECTIC SCHOLARS
Learn about Hiram’s partnership with the Anisfield-Wolf Awards and students’ involvement with local high schools
From Director Kirsten Parkinson, Ph.D. Spring is writing contest season at the Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature. While one of our contests, the Gillmer Kroehle Creative Nonfiction Contest, happens in the late fall, most of our writing contests take place during the spring semester. I didn’t create this cycle, but it make sense. Students can take work they have created in courses throughout the first part of the year and submit it for judging as the academic year winds toward its close.
Judges for this year’s writing contests: •Gillmer Kroehle Creative Nonfiction
For a small institution, Hiram College is fortunate and unusual in having so many
competitions for its students. Many of its cohort schools have no such opportunities for their students. We have to thank the Gillmer Kroehle Foundation for creating and funding the Gillmer Kroehle Creative Nonfiction Contest. The family of Barbara Thompson ’77, particularly Ruth Thompson and Doug and Robin Thompson, support the Barbara Thompson Award for Short Fiction. We also have two poetry contests, the Vachel Lindsay Poetry Contest and the Geoffrey H. Stamm Contest for Formal Poetry. The judges for each of these contests is a publishing writer in the genre of the contest.
Contest:
Karen Salyer
Literary Competition. Students from six small institutions, including Hiram College,
McElmurray
compete in the genres of fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry. An independent
•Barbara Thompson Award for Short
The Lindsay-Crane Center also runs a regional competition: the Echo Student
coordinator handles entries, which are then judged by English and writing faculty from the six colleges and universities.
This year, the Lindsay-Crane Center has instituted a new contest for high school
Fiction: Kevin P.
students. The Emerging Writers Nonfiction Contest invited high school sophomores and
Keating
juniors to submit their best work connected to the widely construed theme of “In the World.”
•Vachel Lindsay Poetry Contest and Geoffrey H. Stamm Contest in Formal
We received wonderful entries and have just forwarded a group of 15 finalists to our judge, acclaimed young adult and children’s author and book critic, Tricia Springstubb. Winners will be notified in March, and all of the finalists and their sponsoring teachers will be invited to join us for the Evening of Hiram Writers to be recognized for their accomplishments.
These writing contests are so important because they provide opportunities for
Poetry: F. Daniel
students to envision an audience for their work beyond the classroom. Too often students
Rzicznek
write with only the teacher and the grade in mind, but contests help students see their words
•Emerging Writers Nonfiction Contest: Tricia Springstubb
and ideas as part of a larger conversation—with other ideas, other people and the wider world. And that, of course, is what writing and communication—and the Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature—are all about.
We invite you to join us to celebrate the achievements of these young writers on
Tuesday, April 7 at 7 p.m. in the Pritchard Room of the Hiram College Library when the winners of this year’s writing contests will read from their works. 2 amaranth | spring 2015
Meet The Lindsay-Crane Spring Intern Marcus Lawniczak ’15 Major: My major is political science. I chose this simply based on the fact that I have never disliked a class in that field and that my favorite classes have been in that field. Favorite Hiram class (so far): Anarchy. This is a class that covers all of the political models that are based upon anarchy. Karl Marx, for example, created the Communist Manifesto, a political model that is anarchical. I enjoyed this class because it stripped away my preconceived notions of communism and ideologies that do not put private property on a pedestal. It really gave me new insight into systems that are not capitalistic. Most memorable Hiram experience: My most memorable Hiram moment as of yet has been my acceptance to the Garfield Scholars Program. I am proud to be a part of such a prestigious group. Favorite book: Animal Farm by George Orwell. The book is extremely relevant to society and how we, as people, function. There will always be a group that wants to rise and dominate, even if they were once on the bottom. Orwell is clever to show this through the eyes of farm animals; the pigs who once hated the humans revolt against them, and in doing so, essentially turn into them. What I want to gain from the Lindsay-Crane internship: The Lindsay-Crane Internship will give me much needed writing experience and broaden my writing ability, especially on the creative side. I have written many papers in classes I’ve taken, but never an article that is placed in a newsletter or journal. On the other side, I will gain experience to organize events and plan meetings. Overall, I hope to improve my writing and my skills in professionalism during this internship.
If you’re a Hiram student looking for more information about internship opportunities with the Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature, contact Kirsten Parkinson at parkinsonkl@hiram.edu.
www.hiram.edu/lindsaycrane 3
A Visit with Author
ALISSA NUTTING By Maya Watkins ’17 Having read Alissa Nutting’s short story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, I was well aware of her irreverent and explicit writing style, and I was a little worried about how Nutting would be received at her reading at Hiram College in October. However, I needn’t have worried. The reading inspired amusement in the audience, including myself; almost
WESTERN RESERVE BOOK FESTIVAL from the moment Nutting began speaking, I was shaking with suppressed laughter.
CELEBRATES OHIO’S LITERARY WEALTH By Kirsten Parkinson 4 amaranth | spring 2015
A few listeners did appear unsure what to make of the ex-
Nutting continued this discussion with my writing class later
cerpt from a novel-in-progress about a soon-to-be-divorced
in the day, commenting on the lack of diversity in both the writing
woman moving in with her father, who is in a relationship with
and publishing industries. She talked about one of her own stories
an incredibly (and uncomfortably) realistic sex doll. But even the
from Unclean Jobs called “She-Man,” which features a transgender
uncertain among the audience seemed to enjoy themselves.
character. When she first wrote the story, she was ignorant about
I find it hard not to like Nutting’s writing. Her stories pull in
much of the transgender community. She now recognizes, howev-
the reader with their funny and bizarre twists, but it soon becomes
er, that “she-man” is an offensive title for the work and that some of
apparent that there are deeper subjects at work. Unclean Jobs deals
the content is offensive as well. She said she is embarrassed that the
with issues of loss and painful memories, familial relations and
story is out in the world, but she is trying to rectify her mistakes.
humankind’s insatiable desire to connect.
Nutting even asked my class for sug-
Nutting writes fabulism and weird tales,
gestions, and a few days later a post
stories that involve subjects most would
appeared on her website and Face-
consider abnormal. “Which is the only
book page: she will be sponsoring a
thing I care about!” she told my class after
contest for a transgender author to
the reading. Nutting has the quirky per-
write a replacement story with all
sonality I would have expected from her
future profits split equally between
stories. She’s an introverted person who
Nutting, the author of the new story,
spends much of her time with imaginary
and a charity the author chooses.
people. She once set a place at the dinner
table for one of her characters before re-
with the world,” Nutting said, point-
alizing, as she explained with wide eyes,
ing out that her writing is ultimately
“That’s creepy.” Though she has done
for herself. However, she knows
some editing, she told us that, “If I didn’t
that reactions to her work, such as
write, I’d probably be in jail.”
the criticism she received from the
transgender community about “She-
At her reading, Nutting was asked
“Writing is my way of coping
about the challenges of writing about
Man,” can help her learn and grow.
topics many people feel are inappropriate
Nutting seems to enjoy challenging
for women writers. Nutting has garnered
people’s views about the world, par-
a lot of criticism for her work, some of it
ticularly about women, and encour-
pretty extreme. She received a few death threats for her first novel,
aging deeper thought among her readers. “At the end of the day
Tampa, about a female teacher who seduces her fourteen-year-old
you’re alone,” she told my class. “You’re writing all this stuff alone,
male students. “People expect certain things of women’s writing,”
and it’s good to be part of this larger conversation.”
she told us, explaining that readers anticipated that Tampa would be more like Fifty Shades of Grey. “I got a lot of Amazon reviewers who were surprised to find it disturbing. Which they should,”
Above Photo: Author Alissa Nutting
Nutting said with a laugh. But some critics and readers felt that it was improper for a woman to use pornographic language to make a point, even satirically.
www.hiram.edu/lindsaycrane 5
LIGHT DARKNESS OUT OF THE
An Interview with Author Karen Salyer McElmurray By Kristie Schroll ’16
I’ve always found phone calls a little jarring—even when it’s just ordering take out or setting up a doctor’s appointment. There is something about speaking to others when you cannot see their face that makes the process frightening and stiff. When it came time to call author Karen Salyer McElmurray, I felt my palms begin to sweat as I rearranged my desk, watching the clock for the appropriate time to call. We agreed on 3:30, but maybe I should wait until 3:35 in case she’s finishing something up. But then what if she thinks I’m late? I settled for 3:33 and breathed in deeply as the phone rang.
6 amaranth | spring 2015
Featured Event on Campus A Reading by Karen Salyer McElmurray Suddenly,
without
much
wait,
a
Feb. 24, 2015 | noon | Pritchard Room, Library
warm voice resonated from the other end. McElmurray’s southern accent struck me instantly, and the tone put me at ease as she asked me to hold for a moment so that she could put her puppy outside. This is a good sign, I thought. Dog people are always nice, good people—an idea my mother instilled in me from a young age. The terrifying image of the accomplished yet unapproachable author was slowly starting to dissipate.
Karen Salyer McElmurray is definitely accomplished—she has published three books, both fiction and nonfiction,
and countless essays, and her work has won several awards and recognitions. She’s working on the seventh draft of another novel now, and she’s always turning new essays around in her head. It’s a diligence that creates her success. If you ask her what her writing process is like, she’ll tell you it’s like any sort of exercise: You have to get up and do it every single day. “It’s plain hard work,” she said.
And even more than that, writing means wrestling with the ghosts of your past. When I asked McElmurray what
advice she could give to aspiring writers, she recited a Dorothy Allison quote: “Until you’re willing to go to the hardest part in yourself it won’t be worth a whole lot.” It sure seemed that way for McElmurray—the more that we spoke, the more that we returned to her life growing up with an unsupportive father and an ill mother and a web of family that helped to shape her into the artist that she is now. While her demeanor on the phone was lighthearted and warm, her writing has a shade of darkness to it—weighed down by a lifetime of rough memories. In a letter to her friend Nancy Peacock on the blog Marginalia, she said, “What I’m struggling with is how to write, not exactly the funny stuff, but light in the midst of darkness. And this, as we all know, is no easy task. Not easy when I come from generations of sadness, of depression, of loss, of tragedies.”
But as McElmurray and I talked (for as time went on it became more like a conversation than an interview, much to
my relief), she began to laugh with me, sharing stories about her mother and father, her granny and her childhood best friends that influenced her to write. And all the while asking me, in return, about my family—if I knew what it was like to succeed in spite of others? What sort of illness does my own father have?—creating an atmosphere where we both shared our ghosts and allowed them to dance together through the telephone wires as we laughed truly “in spite of them,” knowing that perhaps we would feel guilty for it later.
As my conversation with McElmurray came to a close, she asked if I could arrange a lunch with students for her
when she visits Hiram College in the spring. It was so striking to me—how someone as successful as her could also be so sincere, dispelling everything my blue-collar background had taught me to think about people I deem to be “famous.” When McElmurray got off the phone to let her puppy inside, we told each other that we looked forward to meeting each other soon with a mutual genuineness about the remark. Soon after our goodbyes I got on to my email to find a photo of McElmurray’s puppy and another “so good to talk and laugh.” As I cleared off my desk, I found myself laughing at my initial nervousness about the interview, now well aware of McElmurray’s warmth and relatability, perhaps because she has been enriched and propelled forward by her past rather than hindered by it. She had found a certain lightness in the darkness after all.
www.hiram.edu/lindsaycrane 7
By Francis Sugita
8 amaranth | spring 2015
ECLECTIC SCHOLARS IN HIGH SCHOOLS By Kirsten Parkinson, Ph.D.
www.hiram.edu/lindsaycrane 9
Photos: Previous page left to right: John Enasko ’17, Robin Peshick ’17, Maya Watkins ’17 and Seiji Bessho ’18. Below: Robin Peshick ’17 emphasizes a detail in Adrian Matejka’s poem “Cooking Lessons” in The Big Smoke. Right: Willard Greenwood, Ph.D., professor of English, talks to Streetsboro High School students.
This year four Eclectic Honors Scholars have jumped out of their Hiram College classrooms and into the classrooms of two local high school teachers
ECLECTIC SCHOLARS IN HIGH SCHOOLS
to help teach innovative literary works about diversity and race through a Lindsay-Crane Center pilot program. The partnership with the Cleveland-based Anisfield-Wolf Awards brought together Seiji Bessho ’18, John Enasko ’17 and Crestwood High School teacher Jami Cutlip to teach Anthony Marra’s novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. Robin Peshick ’17 and Maya Watkins ’17 worked with Streetsboro High School teacher Maria Judd to teach Adrian Matejka’s poetry collection The Big Smoke.
10 amaranth | spring 2015
The teachers and students chose their books for a variety of
awards, and authors Marra and Matejka skyped with the classes
reasons. Cutlip enjoyed the opportunity to teach a contemporary
to talk with students directly about their books.
novel, which replaced The Red Badge of Courage in her syllabus
this year. Judd chose The Big Smoke, which is about the first black
discussion with the high school students challenging, the
heavyweight boxing champion, as a new way to connect her
resulting conversations were definitely worthwhile. “One of the
students, especially male students, to poetry. Peshick said she felt
interesting things for me was getting the students to question
herself “leaning toward the book that dealt with the history of
their preconceived notions about the poems and about the
racism in our country as the most likely to encourage the kind of
world in general,” said Watkins. “There was a little while where
meaningful discussions about race that students could apply to
I felt like we were really connecting with the students and they
their lives.” Bessho said he prefers novels to poetry and wanted to
were really with us, and it made it feel like what I was doing was
learn about the Chechen conflict, the focus of Marra’s book.
important and worthwhile. I know they probably won’t even
remember me by the time they get wherever they’re going, but
Thanks to Karen Long, manager of the Anisfield-Wolf Awards,
While the Hiram students said that they found starting
three of the students and one teacher along with Lindsay-Crane
maybe one or two of the things I said will have stuck.”
Director Kirsten Parkinson, Ph.D., attended the Anisfield-Wolf
Awards ceremony in September and met the authors of the books
what they were getting into when they signed up for the
they would be teaching. “I was really impressed by the writers’
Anisfield-Wolf pilot project, but they are looking forward
dedication to their stories, and to the real people those stories
to similar opportunities in the future. “I was excited to see
represent,” said Watkins. “Everyone there was very passionate
the Eclectic Scholars program offer an exciting project like
about the people and time they were writing about.”
this,” said Peshick. “I loved it because it was a chance to be
Throughout the fall, the students worked with each other,
involved in the community, to support a local award, and to
Hiram College faculty members, and their high school partner
start conversations about race. While I wasn’t completely sure
teachers to plan questions and activities for their classroom visits.
I would enjoy doing it, Hiram has taught me that you don’t sit
Enasko and Bessho led multiple discussions in Cutlip’s senior
around waiting for ‘perfect’ opportunities. You take the ones
honors English class during Hiram’s fall 3-Week session. Bessho
you find, and you end up being really glad you did.”
The Hiram College students said they weren’t quite sure
hopes to be a teacher and said the experience showed him “how educators could connect each field of content to another.” Hiram College Instructor of History Don Fleming also visited Cutlip’s class before Thanksgiving to provide historical background on the relationship between Russia and Chechnya, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Chechen conflict. Dr. Parkinson also led a discussion on the novel during the 3-Week term.
Peshick and Watkins joined Judd’s senior English classes
during the early part of spring semester, and Hiram College Professor of English Willard Greenwood, Ph.D., visited her classes in early February to discuss sonnets. In addition, Anisfield-Wolf manager Long visited both schools to talk about the history of the
www.hiram.edu/lindsaycrane 11
Hiram College’s 8th Annual
Emerging Writers
Workshop www.hiram.edu/summerathiram
JUNE 24-27
2015
About the Lindsay-Crane Center The Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature is named for two poets who had close ties to Northeast Ohio. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay attended Hiram College from 1897 to 1900, and Harold Hart Crane was born in nearby Garrettsville, Ohio. The Lindsay-Crane Center offers special opportunities for Hiram College writers and readers in every discipline. The Center implements the College’s writing across the curriculum program (one of the oldest in the nation), brings professional writers to campus for intimate interactions with students and the public, mounts on-campus and regional writing contests and vigorously supports the importance of a liberal arts education in the 21st century. In addition, it offers students, community members and other friends of the College rich experiences outside the classroom that contribute to intellectual and artistic pleasure and growth and maintains a deep commitment to interdisciplinary ventures with other departments and Centers.
To contact or support the Center:
Kirsten Parkinson, Ph.D., director, parkinsonkl@hiram.edu
330.569.5323
LINDSAY-CRANE CENTER FOR WRITING AND LITERATURE