Imago Theatre Presents "ZooZoo"

I wasn't sure what to expect.  All I really knew was that the penguins on the posters in the stairwells looked pretty cool:

So Rob and I got tickets, and Tuesday night we went.

It turns out ZooZoo is a collection of elaborate costumes, simple sketches, good acting, comedy, and dancing.  It's a show in which actors imitate animals and objects: frogs, rabbits, anteaters at a restaraunt, even accordians.  My favorite was a toss up between the cat caught in the giant paper bag and the penguins playing musical chairs.

The Degenstein Campus Theater was packed mostly with kids and parents, and all the little kids around just made the show more and enjoyable.  The whole evening had a fun circus-like atmosphere, with kids laughing and cheering and penguins and polar bears spilling out into the audience.

But words don't quite do it justice.  You should check out the video below.

Road Trip To Widener, A George Saunders Reading

At 5:30 in the morning Dr. Dent drove the university van right up to the doors of our dormitory, and six of us writing majors sequeezed in a for the three-hour drive to Widener University, where we would get to meet essayist and short story writer George Saunders.

Saunders, whose quirky stories frequently appear in magazines like The New Yorker, Harper's, and Esquire, recently appeared on the Tonight Show with David Letterman promoting his newest book, a collection of essays titled The Braindead Megaphone.

Widener University is located in Chester, Pennsylvania, about nine miles south of Center City Philadelphia. Susquehanna connected with Widener through FUSE, the Forum for Undergraduate Student Editors, a burgeoning network of student writers and editors who share ideas and review student-run literary magazines.

The faculty at Widener graciously invited Dr. Dent and some of her students to come to their campus for the Saunders reading. Emphasis on "graciously." Not only were we able to attend the reading, we were also able to sit in on a class discussion with Saunders and eat lunch with the author. The students and faculty from Widener were just wonderful.

As was Saunders. When we pulled into the parking lot at Widener, I wasn't sure what to expect. Saunder's work is so quirky and surreal, like "The 400-Pound CEO," which chronicles the rise and fall of an overweight employee at "Humane Raccoon Alternatives," or "Sea Oak," in which Aunt Bernie returns from the grave. As it turns out, the man behind these stories is warm and thoughtful and very smart about writing.

At the reading, he performed a story he published about two years ago in The New Yorker called "Victory Lap." I say "performed" because he did a different voice for every character. The story is excellent, hilarious all the way through and deeply meaningful at the end. Rather than spoil it by summarizing it here, I'm simply going to recommend that you read the story for yourself. The entire thing can be found on The New Yorker website.

After the reading, we got our books signed and then piled back in the van for the three-hour drive back to Selinsgrove, exhausted, but grateful to have made the trip.

Below are two videos. The first is a Widener video of the actual conversation we had with Saunders during our time in Chester. Below that is a video of a short reading Saunders gave for a Minnesota Public Radio event. The story is "Pastoralia," not "Victory Lap," but it's still definitely worth checking out. It'll give you a really great sense of his voice as a writer.

A Conversation with George Saunders at Widener University


George Saunders reading from "Pastoralia"


Other Links:
"Victory Lap" by George Saunders
George Saunders on David Letterman
The FUSE Blog
The FUSE Website
The Blue Route - Widener University's Online Literary Magazine

Dig In

This past weekend, 100 students from campuses all across Pennsylvania met here at Susquehanna University for the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship "Dig In" conference, 24 hours of worship, scripture study, and socializing.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is not (contrary to popular belief) some sort of Christian athletes club. It's an international organization, started in Great Britain (where "varsity" is a common abbreviation for "university"), that is dedicated to creating communities of Christians on college campuses. Susquehanna's chapter currently has about 45 active members.

At the conference freshmen, sophomores and juniors from Bucknell, Penn State, Lehigh, Bloomsburg, Alvernia, Albright, and SU did an in-depth study of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Seniors like myself spent the conference talking about what it looks like to have faith after college in concrete terms.

After studying a few of Jesus' parables, we talked about how our faith can play active role in our jobs, careers, budgets, housing situations, and romantic relationships. We discussed the problems many twenty-somethings run into when they try to find a church and how we can actively seek out Christian community wherever we end up.

It was busy 24 hours, but I still found some time to connect with some old friends from Lehigh that I've gotten to know through other IV conferences. Susquehanna and Bucknell students opened up their rooms so students from the more distant schools would have a place to crash for the night.

At Susquehanna, a bunch of us ended up in a basement in one of the West Village buildings, spread out in front of the big screen TV, and we talked through all of The Italian Job. InterVarsity conferences are the only place where I've seen such vibrant community spring up so quickly among complete strangers.

Used Books

It was snowing big thick flakes when Justin and I left the campus center to make the walk to the rare-and-used book store, DJ Ernst, on Market Street. It’s a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon, scanning the old cracked spines to see what jumps out at you. Because you never know what you’ll find, and as cliché as that sounds, it’s true. I picked up John Updike’s Terrorist, Graham Greene’s The Power and The Glory, Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage, and an autobiography of the Dalai Lama.

Justin was broke, and all I had was a dollar in my wallet and some quarters in my pocket, but we were still able to walk out with ten 50-cent paperbacks between the two of us.

We came in about twenty minutes till closing time, but the store owner had no problem chatting with me about books while Justin made his final selections. The owner has always struck me as a person who just genuinely loves books. He reads and has read many of the books that pass through his store.

When Justin had his third and final book in hand, the owner rang up the purchase on an antique cash register, tapping its metal keys, rattling it like a typewriter.

Writers Institute Ribbon Cutting

Susquehanna’s creative writing department has officially moved from the lower level of Hassinger Hall into a building of their own, and I got to attend the ribbon cutting ceremony.

What was once the parish attached to the St. Pius X Catholic church (the congregation has since moved to a larger facility about a block away) is now the new writers house. Completely renovated, the house is now filled with dark wood floors, faculty offices, a conference room, a classroom, and shelves and shelves of books, books written and signed by visiting writers and our own professors as well as plenty of copies of SU's student-run literary magazines and a whole host of chapbooks featuring the work of past SU writing majors.

Before the cutting of the ribbon, Dr. Fincke, our department head, gave a brief speech tracing the history of SU’s writing program, from when it started with three minors in 1992 up through to today—the program is now thriving with 152 majors and 20 minors.  A friend of mine caught the whole speech on tape:

Then, after the speech, the writing faculty armed themselves with scissors and officially opened the new building:

• For more information on SU's writing program, as well as pictures, video, faculty bios, and excerpts of writing from Susquehanna students past and present, visit The Writers Institute website.

• For a more on Susquehanna's writing program, read some of my other Campus Life posts about the Writers Institute, or visit my other blog, Workshop, and follow me through my freshman Intro to Fiction workshop class.

Meeting Steve Yarbrough

When I read Steve Yarbrough, I’m reminded that stories matter. In deep weird ways, stories are a part of who we are.

Like in the title story from his collection Veneer. The narrator sits in a restaurant with an old friend, and he tells her about his worst Fourth of July ever: the summer before his family lost their farm, when they splurged on a grill and some steaks and pretended it was the best meal they’d ever had even though they’d accidentally burnt the meat to a crisp.

The way I tell it, it’s just an anecdote, but in Steve Yarbrough’s hands, this story tells us everything we need to know about the affair the narrator’s about to have.

What I love about Yarbrough’s stories is the way he layers them, stories within stories, the past on top of the present. When you finish his stories, you never quite arrive where you thought you would, but you know you’re in the right place.

He knows how to tell stories. He’s published five novels and three short story collections. His work has appeared in the Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. He’s the winner of the California Book Award, the Mississippi Authors Award, and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction. His novel Prisoners of War was a finalist for the 2005 PEN/Faulkner Award. He’s also chair of the writing department at Emerson College in Boston.

So it goes without saying I was a little nervous about meeting Steve Yarbrough in person to hear what he thought of my own writing.

Every year Susquehanna’s Writers Institute brings about six acclaimed authors to campus through its Visiting Writers Series. Not only do these writers give Q&As and readings here on campus, often they will also guest-teach classes, have lunch with students, and meet one-on-one with upperclassman writing majors to discuss each student’s work.

That was me, the upperclassman writing major, popping another breath mint as I headed down the sidewalk to the Writers House for my conference with Steve Yarbrough. But it turned out I was nervous in vain—not only is Steve Yarbrough a great writer, he’s also a really nice guy.

He told me he enjoyed my stories and asked me about my background, we ended up talking about our families and books we’ve enjoyed (he recommended about a dozen and I wrote them all down in the margins of one of my manuscripts) and we talked about the grad programs I’m applying to. Our thirty-minute meeting spilled over well into four o’clock, and he ended up shaking my hand three times before I left the building.

  

More books by Visiting Writers

(click for larger view)



• Check out all of Susquehanna’s past and current Visiting Writers by clicking here.
• For a more in-depth look at Susquehanna's writing program, visit my other blog, Workshop, and follow me through my freshman year.
• For more information on SU's writing program, as well as pictures, video, faculty bios, and excerpts of writing from Susquehanna students past and present, visit The Writers Institute website.

Iowa Roadtrip

"Ray, people will come Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past." - Field of Dreams

We drove all through the night—it’s about an eighteen-hour drive from Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania to Ames, Iowa—and napped in a Wal-Mart parking lot just over the Iowa border as the sun came up.

We made the final three or four hours of our drive in the daylight down the straightest roads I’ve ever seen. No curves, no diagonals. They cling tight to the cardinal directions and they always intersect at right angles.  Even the broadest curves are heavily marked off by yellow-and-black chevron signs.

If you look at a map, you'll see that in Iowa the roads are a grid of pavement that divides the land into squares of corn. As we drove, we saw fields and fields and fields and fields, all of them stubby and newly harvested. The sky was huge, completely unmitigated by mountains or trees, and it almost made me feel naked.

“It looks like a stereotype,” I laughed and Holly nodded.

*     *     *

For me and Holly the main attraction in Iowa, the reason why we were pushing our four-day Fall Break weekend to limit, was our friend Casey, an SU alum who had just started his first year of grad school at Iowa State studying statistics.

Casey greeted us with a wide-armed hug and then cooked us some grilled turkey sandwiches before he showed us around his new campus. Compared to Susquehanna’s cozy green campus, Iowa State is like a town in and of itself, with tall buildings (the library is four stories!) and traffic and its own busing system.

The town of Ames had that classic college-town feel, narrow streets lined with quirky bars and restaurants that sported the red and yellow of the Iowa State Cyclones. Casey took us to a bar called Es Tas, and we sampled their specialty: fried tacos.  We caught a movie at the dollar-theater, ate at The Fighting Burrito, helped Casey cheer the New York Giants on to victory against the Detroit Lions at a sports bar called Wallaby’s, and, on our final night at Casey’s apartment, watched Field of Dreams—which, Casey explained, is the greatest (and maybe the only) Iowa movie ever made.

*     *     *

Before we left the state, we stopped in Iowa City to see another SU alum, a writing major named Marcus who's working on his MFA in creative writing at the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop.  We circled his block twice before we found his apartment, and then he talked almost nonstop about how much he loves the program.

Then he showed us around the city, and we ended up at place called Shorts, the restaurant that served, Marcus assured us, the best burgers in town.  It was good stuff.

Then, because the MFA program at the University of Iowa is one of the grad schools I'd like to apply to, Marcus took us over to the Dey House, the home of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.  He showed us around the classrooms and the library (stocked with books written by Iowa alumni), and then he introduced us to a few of his classmates and his professor, Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Alan McPherson before we hit the road for another night of driving.

Not bad for a four-day weekend.