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| Read about Creative Nonfiction Week |
by Patricia Orozco
Staff Writer |
For the first time in Columbia’s history, three departments are joining together to promote nonfiction. Essayists, journalists and novelists will unite for one week in order to enhance what the English Department considers to be “the most effective application of fictional techniques to nonfiction writing.”
The English, Fiction and Journalism departments will co-sponsor “Culture, Identity and the Arts: Creative Nonfiction Week at Columbia College” from Dec. 6 through Dec. 10. The week will begin with student and faculty readings and will end with a panel discussion, featuring some of Chicago’s magazine writers and editors.
“[Creative nonfiction] helps [the students] evaluate and write about the world around them and to seek creative solutions to dilemmas surrounding them,” said Renee Hansen, an English instructor at Columbia. Hansen will be handling the student reading at the Residence Center, 731 S. Plymouth Court, on Monday, Dec. 6 at 1 p.m. Full-time Fiction Writing faculty member Eric May will be helping Hansen, and a faculty reading will take place the same day at the Hokin Hall Auditorium, 600 S. Michigan, at 6 p.m.
“We have a new minor that’s shared between the English, Journalism and Fiction Departments,” said Tom Nawrocki, full-time English faculty member and coordinator of the event. “We wanted to have a week [to promote creative nonfiction].”
Nawrocki said the idea for a creative nonfiction week came from the chairmen of the three departments: the English Department’s Garnett Kilberg Cohen, Fiction Writing’s Randall Albers and Journalism Department’s Carolyn Hulse.
Among those who will take part in the event is Marita Golden, a novelist, essayist and teacher. In her book, “Saving Our Sons, Raising Black Children in a Turbulent World,” Golden focuses on the “crisis of violence and the culture of death” which young black males have dealt with in America.
Amid her many accomplishments, she founded the Washington D.C.-based African Writers Guild and the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. The foundation holds an annual workshop for black writers and presents a national award to black college fiction writers. Golden is also the author of nine works of fiction, nonfiction and various articles. Her reading is scheduled for Wednesday Dec. 8 at 7 p.m. in Columbia’s Music Center Concert Hall, 1014 S. Michigan Ave.
“The writers of these books wrote in such a powerful way,” Nawrocki said. “[They] have very strong voices. They develop characters the way novels do.” Nawrocki added that creative nonfiction book sales are on the rise.
“[Creative nonfiction is] some of the most intensive writing today,” said Nawrocki. “There are more nonfiction books on the bestseller’s list today.”
The permanent editor of the Anchor Essay Annual, Phillip Lopate, will appear at the Music Center Concert Hall, on Tuesday, Dec. 7 at 7 p.m. Lopate has authored three essay book collections, two novels and two poetry collections. He has also edited two anthologies, which include “Journal of a Living Experiment” and “The Art of the Personal Essay.”
The three departments, which currently share a Creative Nonfiction minor, will end the week with “Not Just the Facts: Making Journalism Literary.” The panel discussion is expected to include editors of Chicago magazine, Harper’s magazine and the Chicago Reader. Rosalind Cummings-Yeates and Shane DuBow, part-time instructors in the Journalism Department’s magazine program are also expected to take part in the panel discussion.
Ted Allen, contributing editor of Esquire and of Chicago magazine, Susan Burton, contributing editor of Harper’s magazine, and Jonathan Eig, former Columbia instructor and current executive editor and feature writer at Chicago magazine, are among the panelists. The director of the Magazine Program, Barry Rice, and the Journalism Department’s Artist-in-Residence Clare La Plante, will be the moderators of the discussion. The panel discussion will take place Thursday, Dec. 9 from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. in the Ferguson Auditorium, 600 S. Michigan.
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