Members of DiScoUrse, a selective, 12-member writing society, read samples of their work from throughout the past year to a full crowd at its annual showcase April 8.
The array of pieces read included short stories, poems, and creative non-fiction, some of which are set to be published in the University’s literary magazine, Weal, later this month.
“The showcase is very important to the society because it gives the community a chance to see what we do and how we spend our time,” said junior Adam Zielonka, who will be the president of DiScoUrse for the 2015-2016 academic year. “Our writers are fantastic at the work they do, whether that’s poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction—some people, I think, excel at all of the above.”
Eightnew members of the club were also inducted at the event, with five of them replacing outgoing seniors and three of them being graduating students earning admission as honorary members. To win entry into DiScoUrse, students were required to submit pieces of their writing to the club’s advisors, Juilene Osborne-McKnight, associate professor of English, and Dr. Stephen Myers, professor of English.
Osborne-McKnight and Myers started the club in 2009 to offer aspiring writers a constructive environment of like-minded students and the opportunity to publish their work. Members now benefit from exclusive meetings with published writers brought in to read at the English department’s annual poetry festival, local writing seminars and lectures, and the annual showcase event.
“A great deal of the value of the poem happens orally and sonically, so it’s tremendously important to actually hear what’s being written,” Myers said. “Robert Pinski, the former poet laureate, talked about how the poet uses their whole word producing mechanism, with the production of air and the diaphragm and expelling it, and the mouth shaping the words. He talks about it as playing a musical instrument, so this is how we hear the individual musical instruments of the people performing.”