By
Devon Wenzel
Class of 2022, Humanities Writer, College Editorial Team
One of the touchstones of UChicago’s Program in Creative Writing is its range of programming about writing and the writing life for all students.
When the Program learned that Spring Quarter was going to be held remotely and online, they designed the Writers in Residence series to bring their events to students scattered around the world.
The series featured a mix of programming—live readings, pre-recorded readings and other videos released from previous quarters’ events—all compiled to sustain a creative community during a time of social distance. Anyone in the UChicago community was invited to participate and read a piece of their choosing, whether it be their own work or another’s.
Rachel Galvin, associate director of the Program in Creative Writing, wanted to create an event series that provided a similar sense of community that live readings offer. In keeping with the style of previous events the program has held, these videos featured established writers among the UChicago faculty who showcased their work.
For the first reading, Galvin partnered with Rachel DeWoskin, associate professor of practice in the arts. “It was a Rachel-to-the-second-power reading,” Galvin said about the first reading with a laugh on the coincidence. The two authors both read recently composed poems originating from time in quarantine.
Any writer knows that an essential part of the process is revision and within the revision process, feedback is crucial. The Writers in Residence series helped UChicago community members feel less isolated and share their work with other creative minds.
“Sharing the writing process is important for student writers and between our colleagues as well,” Galvin said. “A crucial part of writing is all the stuff that happens between the moment you start writing and the moment a piece is published. To have openness and generous exchange is important.”
Third-year Sham Dilmohamed, an astrophysics and math major, shared a poem, titled “Axiomatic Thinking,” which he originally wrote for the creative writing class: “Writing and Social Change.”
“I wanted to make people aware of what I had dealt with, because I don’t think it is a unique experience to me, and writing it and performing it felt like one of the best ways to get it out to as many people as I could,” Dilmohamed said.
By offering weekly times for students and faculty to chime in and hear their peers and mentors read work, the department managed to bring back some normalcy to its proceedings. However, the series also addressed the seriousness happening outside of writing life.
“It feels equally crucial to address what is happening and to talk about the kinds of new stresses and anxieties and challenges that the coronavirus is presenting,” Galvin emphasized. “Literature can be a way to take refuge and get some respite from the stress and the crisis that is happening right now, and a way to help us imagine other worlds that we know or that we don’t know yet.”
The full series is located on the Department of Creative Writing’s Youtube Channel.