Faculty showcases creative writing talent
Imaginative voices are always reaching for immortality.
And at Utah State University, those voices are beginning to be heard.
“Creative writing is you trying to find your own voice, but at the same time mimicking other writers. Put something on the page that will last longer than you do,” Chris Cokinos told Susan Andersen’s English orientation class.
Cokinos, USU’s creative writing chair, describes the university’s creative writing program as “an arcane, obscure part of the English department.”
Currently six total creative writing classes, four undergraduate and two graduate, are offered at USU.
Although creative writing is not an official graduating track, the hope among teachers and students is that it soon will be.
“The classes are in place and the program is in its preliminary stages,” Cokinos said.
Jeffrey Smitten, head of the English department, said, “There is a huge demand for creative writing and we hope to make an actual graduating track by next fall. The issue is in the first stages of discussion and has not yet been approved by the faculty or administration.”
When the program is established, it will be a very selective program. Students wishing to pursue a degree in creative writing would be required to undergo some sort of review process to be accepted into the major.
Every year the English department speakers series begins with a creative writing sampler of faculty work.
The sampler gives the faculty an opportunity to share their writing and at the same time provides advertisement for creative writing opportunities.
“The Speakers Series was started three years ago to showcase the faculty as well as visiting writers,” said Marina Hall, Speakers Series coordinator.
According to the English department’s Web site, the Speaker Series was established to promote the value of arts and humanities in American public life.
This year, the opening sampler will feature the work of four female professors: Leslie Brown, Evelyn Funda, Anne Shifer and Paige Smitten.
Both Brown and Funda will be reading memoirs that were published in a new book of writing by western women, “Crazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West.”
The book, which will be for sale at the sampler, contains 153 stories of women west of the Mississippi and the ways they shape their community.
Shifer will be reading poetry and Smitten will be reading a memoir called “Links” that shows the connection between an old seashell of her grandmother’s and their shared experience of having breast cancer.
Upcoming Speaker Series participants include Pat Gantt, associate department head, who will talk about women’s oral histories in October and Terry Tempest Williams who will visit campus in November.
Other precursors to the establishment of a creative writing track include the radio program “Synecdoche”. The program airs on Utah Public Radio two to three times a year in an effort to make writing available in a dramatic format.
Synecdoche is a literary term that refers to a figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole.
“Short stories and essays are like that,” Hall said, “they’re small, contained forms, but at their best they address larger, more universal meanings and themes.”
The program’s second series premiered at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
The creative writing sampler will run 12:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Haight Alumni Center. Café Sabor will be catering the refreshments, which are offered on a first come, first serve basis.
-amcconkie@cc.usu.edu