Today was the fiction reading I coordinated for my creative writing students, and it went well. About 25 people showed up, and a few even stayed the whole time. (Since this is a mandatory/graded assignment, it’s during class, and the class time is awkward: 11-12:15 on a Wednesday. While there are some hour and fifteen minute classes, most Wednesday morning classes are fifty minutes and start on the hour.)
There were some slight technical difficulties: the AV people didn’t bring a mic stand (I have to remember to specifically request one next time apparently) and one of the speakers didn’t work (so it was hard to hear if you were sitting on the right). Thankfully, both of those things were rectified before the event was over.
The speaker thing was a bummer, though, especially because there was some, let’s say, ambient noise coming from the rest of the library AND some of my students are really soft-spoken. Still, I am impressed with how well they managed to ignore all of the chaos around them. I had heard all of the stories before when we practiced during class, but I still enjoyed hearing them again. A few students from some of my other classes showed up, and they were pleasantly surprised at how good the stories were. One student said to me later, “I didn’t know they were going to be sad.” And most of them were but all of them weren’t. I think he missed some of the funny ones that came a little later.
I am so glad I started doing this last semester. I already talked to the poetry teacher, and we’re going to do a joint reading again in the fall since our classes are back-to-back. I’m really excited about that one because I teach during her poetry class this time, which means I’m going to force that class to go. Mwahahahaha.
I am ALSO probably going to force all of my students to do some kind of Banned Books Week readout. One of the librarians and I have been plotting. Mwahahahahaha some more.
So yes, one month from the end of the semester, so of course I am planning for fall. Right on schedule.
The Englishist 