Alumni Update: Creative Writing major Garrison Stima (2018)

Alumni Update-- Creative Writing major Garrison Stima (2018)

Since graduating from AU in 2018, Garrison Stima (Creative Writing major) has been busy! He and his wife Jamie moved to Mansfield and he has been working with writing in some capacity ever since graduation.

Garrison worked at McGraw Hill Education in Ashland for several months and then started working on Fiverr.com as a ghostwriter and is always on the lookout for new writing opportunities. Other than that, he says he’s trying to get a book series off the ground. His wife, Jamie, is a teacher in Crestline and Mansfield at two different Catholic schools. “Altogether, we’re well, just really busy!"

He gave us a short description of his book, The Lost Voices:

“It’s a steampunk, fantasy adventure that follows four different perspectives during a swelling conflict. Each perspective has their own stake in what’s happening, but also has their own reasons to want the conflict’s conclusion. As the story unfolds, the concepts of loss, purpose, friendship, nationalism, and war-time morality are brought up time and time again.

The story is understandably geared toward anyone eighteen and older.”

A summary of the book is below:

“Malien Kinray has lived a quiet life in the corner of his home country: Terrarin. However, with the recent passing of his father, Malien's old life is uprooted and the political arguments against magic have reached critical mass. With the changing era, a terrorist organization threatens to dismantle his society with bullets and blood.

Soon, a grieving machine-smith, an immigrant to Terrarin with burning memories, a man who knows everyone's secrets but his own, and a foreign agent seeking answers to the mysterious Old World, will intertwine in a conflict beyond them. The world of Regelia is swelling with fear and, as wonder meets peril, no one can ignore what's coming.

The Lost Voices dives into the phantasmal world of Regelia, brimming with new machines, an industrial revolution, magic, and political strife. In this world, what unites people in a genuine, lifelong manner and what can separate them in the end?”

Readers can find sample chapters of the book and keep up with Garrison at: https://medium.com/@havenlayne7

Reflecting on his time as a student at Ashland University, Garrison notes: "AU did a wonderful job of engaging me in different forms of literature and media, which showed me how each work could be used as a lens or platform to enhance the others and sometimes understand them. It helped me realize that any form of writing can say something that someone needs to hear. Writing can always give the world something new and I love AU for showing me that."

Middle Grades Major on Theater Opening Night Performance

An Enemy of The PeopleAbigail Wilhelm, Junior Middle Grades Education Major

I attended the opening night of Arthur Miller's play An Enemy of The People at Ashland University. I really enjoyed the play and was very impressed by the casts’ compelling performances. Overall the theatre department put together another excellent show, with a very timely message.

I particularly enjoyed how appropriate the themes in the play were for today’s society. The idea of media influence and motivators struck me as extremely suitable for the current political climate. Also, I had read the play before seeing Ashland’s rendition and I was pleasantly surprised to see that many of the characters that were originally written as men were being played by women. This changed the dynamic of some aspects, such as a brother-sister relationship rather than two brothers. This gender change also conveyed that women belong in the work force and politics too. Most importantly, it made the play feel more modern, fresh, and relatable to me as a woman.

Dr. Sharleen Mondal Attends Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference As Contributor in Fiction

Dr. Mondal with her workshop group

The annual Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Ripton, VT is the oldest writers’ conference in the United States. Its faculty over the past 94 years have included Robert Frost, Toni Morrison, George R.R. Martin, and Anne Sexton. The conference hosts writers from across the country in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry workshops over a period of ten days. Dr. Mondal had this to share about her experience as a Contributor in Fiction at this year’s conference from August 14-24.

What prompted you to apply to Bread Loaf?

I recently made a switch from publishing literary criticism to writing fiction as my primary work. In the fall of 2017, I did a program through the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity called Post-Tenure Pathfinders, which helps tenured faculty determine their post-tenure focus, rather than simply being reactive to whatever they are asked to do without a clear sense of purpose. Dr. Dawn Weber, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, sponsored my participation in this life-changing program. I was able to make a realistic plan for working on my novel. I reached out to writers who are doing what I wanted to do--write fiction without having earned an M.F.A.--and they helped shepherd me through the steps I would need to take, including finding writers’ conferences that were a good fit for me, which for me meant well-established conferences that had a reputation for either supporting writers of color or making significant efforts to welcome writers of color. I applied to VONA (Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation), Kundiman (for Asian American writers) and Bread Loaf. I did not get into VONA or Kundiman but got into Bread Loaf, much to my gratitude and delight, since the acceptance rate this past year was just 26%!

Meadow at Bread Loaf

What did the application process involve?

There was a general application form, scholarship application, and a writing sample. For my writing sample, I selected the fourth chapter of my novel and requested comments on it from a number of colleagues and fellow writers, as well as sharing it twice with the Akron Writers’ Group, once at a Motivating Writers session where we read our work aloud for positive reinforcement (sort of like a community reading), and once at a Writers’ Workshop where I circulated hard copies and got very detailed feedback from extremely diligent and generous readers.

What was it like to be at Bread Loaf? What were some of the most meaningful or memorable moments of the conference?

Bread Loaf was busy! The schedule was non-stop from morning through evening. Each workshop had ten participants, a faculty member, and a fellow who co-taught with the faculty member. We had to submit our manuscripts that we wanted workshopped in advance of the conference (I selected the eighth chapter of my novel for this purpose). We read and commented on our workshop members’ manuscripts ahead of time (so we came to each workshop with written comments prepared, which we’d hand back to the writer after we discussed their work). There were 186 pages of writing for me to read carefully and comment on before I even got to Vermont! The workshops were humbling and deeply gratifying since everyone’s manuscript was of such high quality. My workshop leader, Ravi Howard (author of the novels Like Trees, Walking and Driving the King), established a wonderful workshop environment from the outset and my group members were at the top of their game, so every workshop was laser focused, full of insightful critique. When I wasn’t in workshop, I was attending the daily lectures by faculty; readings by faculty, fellows, scholars, and fellow contributors; craft sessions; panels; and meetings with literary agents. There were also book signings, meals in the dining hall, and plenty of other opportunities to socialize with other writers.

Robert Frost's Cabin

Some of the most meaningful moments for me--apart from having my manuscript workshopped--included attending the amazing poet Jericho Brown’s reading and most especially hearing him read his poem “Bullet Points.” I loved gathering in the Little Theatre with my fellow Bread Loafers and watching The Pieces I Am, the documentary about Toni Morrison that Bread Loaf leadership got special permission to screen for us. I enjoyed hiking with fellow Bread Loafers up to Robert Frost’s cabin (he was a regular there for many years) and hiking the nearby Robert Frost interpretive trail which includes Frost’s poetry throughout the trail. Other memorable moments happened when I was out by myself; I went out birding nearly every morning, usually in the meadow across from the Bread Loaf Inn, and saw my first Indigo Bunting--and one morning I even saw a baby bear! though thankfully it scampered away as soon as it saw me and was on the other side of some trees that separated us.

Is there anything else you want to share with your students or colleagues about your experience at Bread Loaf?

Yes: keep writing and do it every day. I established a daily writing habit in the fall of 2012 (writing at least 30 minutes a day every weekday whenever possible) and it is one of the most important habits I have ever formed. Were it not for daily writing, I could not have finished so much of my novel, revised it, applied to and gotten into Bread Loaf, or be moving forward on the manuscript now with such regularity during my Senior Study Leave. Try daily writing. It will change your life. We even have a group at Ashland that I normally direct when I am not on leave, the Ashland University Research and Writing Community (the interim director for the 2019-2020 academic year is my colleague Dr. Mason Posner), that supports faculty (full-time and part-time), staff, graduate students, and College of Arts and Sciences students who want to establish a daily writing habit--please check it out if you are interested!

Alumna Attends Folger Shakespeare Summer Institute for Teachers: Part Two

Valentina Gheorghe in the Paster Reading Room, Folger Shakespeare Library

By Valentina Gheorghe, class of 2012, Integrated Language Arts major

Being a huge “Shakespeare nerd” also made the experience of attending the Shakespeare Academy unlike anything else. We were given many opportunities to let our “nerd flag fly” through not only using a primary text from The Vault for a lesson presentation, but also through exploring the Paster Reading Room and performing on the actual Folger stage. Surreal is the idea that you are standing on a stage in a recreation of an Elizabethan theatre treading the boards where actors do such things for a living. I am strongly considering adding “played Laertes at the Folger Theatre” to my resumé, because how many people can say they did that?

Gheorghe learning stage fighting

The cohort was able to select a primary source, from several pulled for us, to use for a lesson presentation and this really allowed me to turn the “nerding out” up to an eleven. Besides the fact that the Folger has the largest collection of First Folios, it has other rare items such as prompt books from productions done in the 19th century, a caricature of Edwin Booth playing Hamlet, and a copy Montaigne’s Essayes owned by John Thompson, an actor in the King’s Men who largely played female roles. The utter bibliophilic excitement of touching a book that was 400 years old was amazing, hyper-real in that the only thing separating me and the owner of this book was time - they touched these same pages!

I picked a fairly newer book to use in my presentation, a copy of Hamlet translated into German from 1928 that had beautiful art deco plates of scenes and various translations of Saxo Grammaticus in the margins. I used this book to springboard ideas for a lesson involving students reading an excerpt of Amleth in an Early Modern English translation of the Grammaticus. It’s a vastly more gruesome account of Hamlet’s killing of Polonius, so naturally I assumed it would be perfect for children to read. (...“presently drawing his sworde thrust it into the hangings, which done, pulled the counsellour [halfe dead] out by the heeles, made and end of killing him, and beeing slaine, cut his bodie in pieces, which he caused to be boyled, and then cast it into an open vaulte or privie, that it mighte serve fore food to the bogges.” Doesn’t that sound like a book you’d love to read as a kid?) I could have spent a whole week reading the Early Modern translation of Grammaticus in that book. Wondrously, we were allowed to take pictures of our items, and I found myself wanting to come back just to read everything they would let me read.

On top of all of this we got lessons in stage fighting (prompting curious looks from DC residents as we were literally swinging dowels at each other on the sidewalk), had a very British tea time every day at 3 pm promptly and ogled the graves of Emily and Henry Clay Folger in the Paster Reading Room, who are literally entombed in a functioning staircase.

The whole building, which houses the Paster Reading Room, offices, and vault is a “moniment without a tombe”, and it is so beautiful and so full of the love for Shakespeare that I did not want to leave. In contrast, the Library of Congress, which I visited the weekend after the program ended, represents Shakespeare on his three very real, very unapproachable pedestals. I would recommend the Folger Summer Academy to any and every teacher. Not only is it enlightening to collaborate with some many different educators, but it is transformative in that it gives real, fun, and practical evidence-based pedagogical approaches to teaching Shakespeare that can be applied to almost any text in a remarkably beautiful setting that is, if nothing else, truly Shakespearean.