The Russell House Millet Room was so packed on Wednesday night for the Distinguished Writers Series Reading that audience members, made up primarily of students, spilled out into the hallway, onto the stairs, and even to the room across the hall. While Nancy Albert, University Coordinator of Events and Russell House Programs, said the Writers Series Readings had received “tremendous audiences all semester,” Wednesday night was particularly full.
“I’ve been to several of the readings, and none have been so crowded as this one,” said David Kahn ’07.
The reading featured Visiting Writers Alexander Chee and Paul LaFarge, Assistant Professor of American Studies and English John Vincent and Assistant Professor of English Elizabeth Willis.
A large portion of the audience included students from Introduction to African American Poetry, taught by Kate Rushin, Adjunct Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Visiting Writer, and from Distinguished Writers/New Voices, taught by Anne Greene, Adjunct Professor of English and Director of Writing Programs. The writers appearing at Wednesday’s reading conducted classes for the Distinguished Writers course. Students from Distinguished Writers introduced the writers to the audience.
[Chee’s] classes have taught me that the process of writing can be beautiful,“ said Lauren Ross-Miller ’04 in her introduction. She also cited Chee’s several awards, including the 2003 Writer’s Award and the NEA Fellowship in Fiction for 2004. Chee’s short stories, essays and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including ”Boys Like Us,“ ”Artery,“ and ”Interview.“
Soft-spoken and modest, dressed in a casual T-shirt and pants, Chee read selections from his recently published first novel, ”Edinburgh,“ which received the Lambda Literary Awards’ Editor’s Choice Prize, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop Literary Award and the Michener/Copernicus Society Fellowship Prize. His novel traces the life of a Korean-American victim of sexual abuse struggling to overcome the demons of his past. More information about the novel, which is available at Broad Street Books, can be found at www.alexanderchee.com.
Vincent, introduced by Emma Ruby-Sachs ’04, is a poet and critic whose recently published book, ”Queer Lyrics: Difficulty and Closure in American Poetry,“ examines sexual identity in the work of notable queer poets. He is currently working on a new book of poems.
Vincent read selections from his latest project, ”Girls in Reruns,“ an epic in thirteen parts that takes on the shape and format of a DVD, with certain sections labeled as ”Outtakes,“ ”Deleted Scenes,“ and ”Director’s Cut.“ This brilliant and eccentric project portrays the tribulations of popular children’s dolls from years past.
”[They were] starlets in their youth, fell out of fame, [and then] returned to the has-been circuit,“ Vincent said about his story of these dolls.
The sections from which Vincent read feature such oddities as a meth lab made of Lincoln Logs and twisty straws and alien twins smoking a Cuban cigar. It is unknown when this project will be published.
After a short break in which audience members helped themselves to coffee, water, fruit and cheese, Amanda Thieroff ’06 introduced Willis.
”Her poetic spirit and talent shines through in the classroom as it does on the page,“ she said.
Willis has written three books of poetry, ”The Human Abstract,“ ”Second Law,“ and the most recent ”Turneresque,“ published in 2003. Her poems have also appeared in several journals and anthologies.
”When you have a book come out, you’re supposed to read from it,“ Willis said. ”[But] it takes so long for a book to come out that when it does you don’t feel like reading from it.“
Therefore, instead of reading from ”Turneresque,“ Willis read a series of short poems that will soon be published in England as a chapbook. The titles of these poems come from work by Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles and a well-known poet and scientist from the eighteenth century who wrote of botany in verse.
Willis, who works primarily with the lyric form, was intrigued to see ”lyricism submerged within scientific discourse.“ The titles of her poems include ”Grateful as Asparagus,“ ”Irregular Winds from Other Causes,“ and ”Bugs and Bulbs.“
The last writer of the evening, Paul LaFarge, was introduced by Sam Allison ’06. LaFarge has had many of his stories and essays published in such journals as ”The Village Voice,“ and ”Salon.com.“ He is also the author of the novel ”The Artist of the Missing,“ and the 2001 ”Haussmann, or the Distinction,“ which is based on Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann, the architect who redesigned Paris in the nineteenth century. LaFarge won the Silver Medal for Fiction at the 71st Annual California Book Awards.
”In addition to his many accomplishments, he is also an excellent teacher and, above all, a swell guy,“ Allison said.
LaFarge read from a novel he is currently working on about an adolescent boy making his way through the jungle (or, to use LaFarge’s analogy, dark caves) of teenage social life. His humorous description of a small-statured boy more interested in designing computer games than going to parties kept the audience in stitches. LaFarge admitted that his work was still fresh.
”Excuse me if I have to stop to mark moments that are just terrible,“ he said.
He did, but only once.
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