Tag Archives: writing

How to “Create Dangerously”

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Hello, I’m Olivia Perry, a senior and Social Media Assistant for The Admission Office.

I wanted to share my amazing experience last night that was provided to me by this great school!

I was invited by President Ronald Thomas to join him, his wife, Mary, professors, faculty, and students to have dinner with acclaimed Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat! As a Creative Writing major, and as someone who read her in a class at Puget Sound, I was very excited to see Ms. Danticat lecture “Create Dangerously”, and to meet her was a bonus!

Edwidge Danticat and I at the reception/book signing after her lecture

Edwidge Danticat and I at the reception/book signing after her lecture

At dinner, President Thomas opened up the floor to ask Ms. Danticat questions, an opportunity I was quick to take. I first asked when she decided that she wanted to be a writer. She told us that she was given the book Madeline when she was four. When she realized this was a way to tell stories without verbally telling them, she decided that was what she wanted to do.

Found on Pinterest from flavorwire.com

Found on Pinterest from flavorwire.com

I later asked if she had any advice for a writing major, a specifically woman of color, and her advice was something that I took to heart. She told me that I just need to write. I should always have a project to work on as leisure. As someone who feels the need to explain herself, a woman of color needs to not be deterred in anyway from what she has chosen to study and create. And as she spoke, she looked right into my eyes, giving me a sense of how genuine she is.

Her lecture, Create Dangerously, named after her 2010 book Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist At Work, was not as long as expected but was full of insightful anecdotes and ideas. She spoke of writers becoming the reader and what should and shouldn’t be written about. When she was finished, she answered questions regarding education and politics in Haiti and the Caribbean and shared her excitement for the next generation of, not only Haitian, all up and coming Caribbean writers.

They were selling her books at the lecture and reception, so naturally I bought one and she signed it for me!

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My new book

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“To Olivia, keep writing. One day, I hope to read you. In Sisterhood! -Edwidge Danticat”

Last night was a great event that I would never have experienced if I did not come to this school and become involved around campus. As a senior, I have to say, go to as many lectures as possible! I have gotten to see amazing and well known people, like Junot Diaz and Anis Mojgani, speak in my years here. It is a great opportunity that current and future students should always be taking advantage of!

 

Introduction

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Hello! My name is Casey O’Brien. I’m a freshman here at Puget Sound. I am a part of the Humanities program. I love theater, creative writing, and the outdoors, among lots of other interests! At this point, I am thinking that I will be a Sociology and Anthropology (SOAN) 1796685_10152717894357521_5398993623880789982_nmajor with a double minor in Theater and Latin American Studies.  I come from the Bay Area in California, so the lovely fog and rain in Tacoma is home to me. I grew up within ten minutes of the SF bay, so I also love being on the coast.

I am learning so much here on campus! There’s always something happening here, so there is never an opportunity to feel bored. This weekend was a special one for me, because I was a director for the Town Crier Speaks Festival, our student theater festival, which went up this weekend. Town Crier is a one act festival written, produced and directed by students—it is such a unique and wonderful venue for Puget Sound creativity. My own show, Game of Life, was a truly incredible process. My cast helped me to grow as a person and an artist, and I feel so lucky to have met them. What is so very interesting and dynamic about our campus is that people from so many different areas—ages, majors, etc—can interact and learn from one another. One of my actors is graduating this semester as a Biology major; with my interests, we might never have even met, let alone gotten to know one another, at a different school.   At a larger university, or a university that didn’t encourage students to try new things the way UPS does, a first semester freshman would never have directed a one act at all.

Town Crier opened on Thursday night and closed on Saturday, which meant that today was definitely bittersweet for me.  My parents, here visiting for Family Weekend, went home to California today, but my sadness at watching them go was matched by the contentedness of knowing that I have two homes now, one in Washington and one in NorCal. Our president, Ronald Thomas, aka RonThom, famously opens his speech at orientation by saying “Welcome Home”—and truly, we are. Puget has stolen my heart—from the moment I stepped on campus, doors have been opened for me.

This been a weekend of beginnings, endings and special moments. When my cast handed me the big bouquet of red roses they had bought for me, a handwritten card on top, I felt like crying for joy and sadness all at once—which is a good sign. Puget is a place where students will make connections, will feel deeply. Loggers are genuine, and they throw themselves in. In the spirit of the Northwest, we’ll always go on an adventure. We show up—as Town Crier’s full house and standing ovation testifies. This has been a weekend to remember…. Just as so many here are.

Announcing Proscenium Journal for New Plays

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I’ve been helping start a theatre journal called Proscenium that’s gearing up to publish plays and theatre-related articles for its inaugural issue this fall. The new journal aims to create the first free, online platform for sharing new plays. More information (and submission instructions) can be found at www.prosceniumjournal.com

The project’s been really rewarding to work on so far. The journal’s received submissions from authors all over the country, some with long production histories and others just starting, and it’s been fun reading and getting to be a part of the amazing work people are doing.

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Proscenium sprang largely out of an absence of opportunities for new playwrights to publish their works outside of large publication organizations like Samuel French. And unlike these venues, Proscenium does not collect royalty cuts from authors – it obtains only one-time publication rights to the pieces it prints. The journal aims to create a new publication model for playwrights.

While there are a variety of literary magazines, journals, and other general publication outlets, there are currently very few similar publications for new theatre. As a result, there are likewise very few opportunities for undergraduates to publish dramatic work. And given the enormous volume of impressive dramatic writing happening at Puget Sound – through playwriting and creative writing classes, Student Initiative Theatre’s playwriting festivals and workshops, Ubiquitous They sketch comedy, and via the theatre department – we definitely encourage campus writers to submit to the journal.

Speaking of submissions, Proscenium is taking submissions up until its August 1st deadline for the fall issue. Plays can be sent to submissions@prosceniumjournal.com – please include a brief 100-word author bio and your piece as either a PDF or Word document. We’re looking in particular for short one-acts and ten minute plays to fill out this first edition.

Besides Proscenium, I’ve otherwise been busy editing XRDS, the national undergraduate magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery. I’m a feature editor for the magazine, which entails brainstorming authors and themes for the publication’s various issues, steering the general direction of the magazine, and lots of editing! I’ve been editing articles for our upcoming issue on natural language processing, an exciting fusion of language and computer science (at least for a dual biblio/technophile like myself). If you want to check out more about the magazine, go to: xrds.acm.org

Between the two magazines, I’ve definitely been forced to brush up on my editing skills! It’s also showing me, though, that there’s almost nothing more entertaining to someone who likes reading and writing then reading and revising new writing and helping bring writing to new audiences.

Major Decisions: Can The Sciences and Humanities Go Together?

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As a computer science/English double major, even I didn’t think I’d find a way to unify such an odd couple. In fact, I never expected to study these subjects before I came to Puget Sound. It was Puget Sound and its combination of professors, liberal arts courses, extracurricular opportunities, and classes in subjects that sounded compelling but that I never imagined studying until college that somehow edged me toward the two disparate disciplines. And it’s largely Puget Sound that’s ultimately done the work of bringing together this odd couple for me.

And as my junior year passes by faster than I could ever imagine and the prospects of internship and job searches loom increasingly close, I’m finally starting to see the connections between English and computer science that only a school like Puget Sound could help bring to light in the first place. This October, I was lucky enough to receive an internship as a feature editor at XRDS, the national flagship undergraduate magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery, a linguo-technophile’s dream come true, where I look forward to applying my interests in technology and writing to the publication. You can check out the magazine here: http://xrds.acm.org

I’m also in the process of developing a web app for Pearson’s first ever Student Coding Contest. The academic publisher sought out proposals for apps that integrate with their online learning module, and I was fortunate enough to have mine accepted. I won’t spill the details yet, but the app is designed to help bring the writing process online. The app’s due at the end of the month, and the ever-too-brief hours of furiously coding have commenced.

I’m a writing advisor, and I’ve also recently started working with some fellow writing advisors at the Center for Writing, Learning, & Teaching to contribute to a writing center blog and vlog, both of which are coming soon! Watch for them at http://www.pugetsound.edu/cwlt. It’s been another exciting chance to fuse my interests in technology and writing with many others who are equally passionate about writing. I also recently had a paper presented at a conference of writing center pedagogy. Another student from the writing center and I presented on interdisciplinary studies in the writing center, and the experience offered yet another chance to learn about how very different subjects can (and often do) collide and enrich each other. (For an interesting take on the humanities/sciences crossover and the ways the humanities and sciences overlap, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/education/as-interest-fades-in-the-humanities-colleges-worry.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

So, I must admit that I was skeptical at first about finding ways to pursue both of my interests in computer science and English. Puget Sound is fairly unique, I think, in encouraging students to pursue such unusual combinations. International Political Economy; Science, Technology, and Society are interdisciplinary mainstays, while a new interdisciplinary biophysics program is developing, and I know countless people pursuing and loving a huge variety of double majors. Puget Sound is also unique in offering highly focused programs so that students don’t ever have to sacrifice depth.