WesWings makes some good pulled pork sandwiches, don’t get me wrong. But when I was lucky enough to encounter the amazing catering services ofTaylor Steele ’14 on a film thesis shoot this past weekend, I was subject to one of the most amazing culinary experiences I’ve had at Wesleyan. Aside from his launching the barbecuing club “CarnivorWes” (with the slogan, “your carbon footprint never tasted so good”), Steele is an avid reader and writer, actively involved in writing programs across campus. Steele sat down with me to discuss barbecuing, mystery writing, and how to be an engaged reader and a college student at the same time.

 

The Argus: So, what makes you a WesCeleb?

Taylor Steele: I was hoping you’d tell me. I’m really not entirely sure. I’d say this year I’ve started holding more or less weekly barbecue potluck events at my senior house, so lots of people have come for those. It’s pretty open, and my goal is to shift it from me inviting my friends via email, which is what I’ve been doing, to more of a true student-group-style event. I’ve created a student group called CarnivorWes, so part of the goal is to do these open potluck-style meals where we barbecue things, and then the other part that I want to work on, which I’m doing now, is providing a student catering option. I’ve catered a senior thesis film shoot, and I’ll be doing that again this weekend. I live with [Gideon Too ’14,] the captain of the Rugby team, and they have a barbecue at the end of the season traditionally, so I’ll probably be catering that this year.

I’m interested in helping other student groups and organizations have events where food is featured, so that it maintains a sort of all-student, all-Wesleyan sensibility in terms of that all of it is done by Wesleyan instead of having to go outside of school. Getting food from restaurants in Middletown can be wonderful, but it’s also fun to feel like a Wesleyan group can provide food for another Wesleyan group. My weekly potlucks I just hold at my house on Cross Street. My plan is, particularly in the spring, to see whether other people are interested in helping out. I know a lot of people on campus have grills and I assume would enjoy having the chance to use those or to learn more about barbecuing.

We’ve been doing them on Saturday evenings, which is a time when people tend to be free; they’re not quite ready to go out, but it’s a good time to do something. The dining options on campus tend to not be as full-fledged on Saturday night, so it’s a good time to have people come together, relax, and enjoy good food.  I think by sponsoring that, I’ve gotten to know a lot of people and become known for that.

 

A: What kinds of food are you known for?

TS: If you want a brief explanation of barbecuing versus grilling, the basic difference is that barbecue really involves smoking, so using real hardwood rather than charcoal, or hardwood in addition to charcoal. On a grill you can do a lot of things, but it’s more or less like an open-faced oven in some sense, where you use high heat. When you smoke things, you tend to use much lower heat, and you want the smoke to sort of infuse the food. It adds a whole extra dimension of flavor.

Traditional cuts of meat that you would barbecue instead of grill include pork shoulder, which is what you use to make pulled pork sandwiches, which are something I’ve definitely done a few times and I think I’m known for. Barbecued brisket is wonderful, and what else have I done? Pork tenderloins, I’ve done smoked salmon, smoked chicken. My hope is to do something for Thanksgiving, to roast or smoke turkeys. You can do just about anything. It’s definitely pretty meat-centric, but I also support other eating styles and eating habits, so I try to make vegetarian options as well. It can really be interesting when you try. Grilled vegetables are great, but really trying to provide more of an entrée-style vegetarian meal from the grill can be really challenging but fun.

 

A: Tell me a bit about your writing.

TS: [Laughs.] All right. I’m doing a Writing Certificate. I’m a COL major but focusing as well on creative writing. Particularly within that, I’m doing fiction writing; I’ve taken many fiction workshops at Wesleyan.

This year, I’m doing a thesis that will be a murder mystery set at a lightly fictionalized version of Wesleyan. I’m working with [Kim-Frank Family University Writer in Residence] Amy Bloom; she’s my thesis advisor. It will be in the form of a novel, but because it’s a thesis and there are time constraints and page limits, I probably won’t be able to finish it or hand in the whole thing. My final product will probably look like about 100 pages of polished work and a detailed synopsis of the rest of the novel, which is challenging.

It’s one of the things that’s difficult about doing this, because, particularly with the murder mystery genre, for the reader, most of the fun things happen towards the end of the novel. A lot of what I’ll be working on will be the setup and the character development. But those are the things that, as a writer, I really want to work on, rather than just seeing whether I can make exciting things happen at the end. But yeah, it’s already been a lot of fun and quite challenging at the same time, and I hope that that continues throughout the year. It’d be nice to have that balance and to have it be not just a frustrating project, but also something that I can enjoy.

 

A: What types of fiction do you most enjoy? Who are your favorite authors?

TS: I’m terrible at these types of questions. For whatever reason, I don’t tend to gravitate towards having favorites among films, books, authors, et cetera. But if I had to name a few authors who I enjoy and potentially would recommend, David Foster Wallace is one author I really enjoy reading. I’m not particularly interested in writing like him—better read than imitated—but I think he’s an incredibly adept writer and also manages to achieve some of the emotional goals that I think fiction really strives for.

Beyond that, I enjoy, I think, a kind of eclectic group of writers. Just to rattle off a few names: Kelly Link, John Collier, Lydia Davis, John Cheever, Wallace Stegner, George Saunders, and the list goes on. One of the things that’s been great for me at Wesleyan is being exposed every year to different writers, particularly short story writers. Coming into college, I really didn’t know much about the short story form and about short story writers. I’d read, both for pleasure and for school, almost exclusively novels. The past few years, most fiction classes focus on short stories, because it’s almost impossible to write anything like a novel in a semester. Even a novella would be difficult. It just makes sense from a form point of view to look at short stories. Particularly as writers, they’re worth looking at, because they don’t get the same sort of coverage that novel writers tend to get. So it’s been interesting to watch how my tastes have changed as I’ve been exposed to a different form of writing.

 

A: It can be hard to balance pleasure reading or being a “good reader” with the time pressures of schoolwork. Do you have any tips?

TS: I think one thing I would urge off the bat is for students who are even vaguely interested in reading to sign up for a creative writing course. I know they can be difficult to get into. One way to get around that is to apply for a POI course instead of trying to enter into the Techniques level. If you’re able to talk directly to the professor, you have a better chance of getting into a class than if you’re just a name on a computer list.

If you manage to get into a writing class, then you’re guaranteed to have books that you’d normally read for pleasure in your schedule, which I think is enormously helpful. You can still fall into that trap of, if you’re behind on work, then even if it’s a novel or a short story that you’re reading, it can become tedious or frustrating rather than enjoyable. But it is great to shuttle back and forth between academic writing and traditional pleasure reading and writing styles. If you take a writing course, you’ll probably find that you appreciate writing and reading in a different way, and it’s something you can apply even as you’re reading for academic classes.

Even if none of that is really what you’re interested in, or if you’re not able to add a writing class to your load, I don’t have any wonderful tips for anyone, but I think something I tend to do that works well in some ways is to bring a few books to school that you really want to read at some point, to put them on your bookshelf or wherever you keep your academic books. I always find that eventually, at some point in the semester, usually in the fall around November or in the spring around April, I’m fed up enough with the normal course load that I end up taking usually about a week where I take the books I brought to read for pleasure off the shelf, and devote the week to reading those rather than necessarily plowing through another academic tome.

It’s helpful to have those as almost a reward for working through a lot of difficult and not-pleasurable reading. It’s a great contrast in the middle of the semester. But it does take effort, and it does take that sort of leap to say, “I’m gonna put aside the other stuff and pick up the fun book for a little while.” But it’s worth it.