Writing: A Life
Each semester the College welcomes a visiting author to host a reading on campus as well as other events that may include writing workshops or classroom visits.
“Writing: A Life” broadens our students’—all students, not only those in Creative Writing and English—exposure to exciting, vibrant artists and allows them to make connections that will serve them as professionals and as practitioners of their craft, as well as understand the way the arts intersect across all disciplines.
LVC will welcome two visiting writers to campus this fall. Their public readings will take place either via Zoom or in person and will be available free to the campus community and the public. Copies of the writers’ books will be available for purchase and signing at the readings.
A native Southern Californian, alumna of USC’s historic School of Cinematic Arts production track, and graduate of San Diego State University’s MFA fiction writing program, Tara Stillions Whitehead (she/her) is a producer and writer concerned with elevating marginalized voices and combatting institutional and narrative violence in the film and television industry. On the film side of her creative coin, she has logged thousands of hours on set, worked as a producer, sound recordist, and DGA assistant director, and now serves as Assistant Professor of Film, Video, and Digital Media Production at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, PA. Her industry credits span the independent market and festival circuits as well as network television shows, such as The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men. She recently joined the Central Pennsylvania Film Commission’s nonprofit project FACTS (film, arts, culture, and tech symposium) as a Trade-Off production mentor.
A dedicated writer in multiple genres, Tara believes that storytelling is the greatest act of living and that the most powerful stories teach us how to be better humans. Her hybrid collections Blood Histories (Galileo Press), The Year of the Monster (Unsolicited Press), and They More Than Burned (ELJ Editions) use formal experimentation to subvert and critique hegemonic “literary” conventions of narrative.
Tara’s books have been nominated for Aspen Words Award, Maya Angelou Award, and have appeared on Small Press Distribution’s fiction bestsellers list. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, AWP Intro Journals Award, and the Pushcart Prize. Her essay, “The Mother Must Die and Other Lies Fairy Tales Told Me,” was selected as a notable essay in the Best American Essays 2022 anthology, edited by Alexander Chee. She has received fellowship residencies from Sundress Academy of the Arts and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and has served as a visiting writer at various colleges and universities, including Berry College, San Diego State University, Grossmont College, and SUNY Adirondack.
Of Tara’s recent experimental memoir, the poet Katie Farris writes:
“They More Than Burned is an incendiary archive: a collection of jagged memories that tumble and catch one another in the light, an unwinding a spool of film on fire. Whitehead narrates the fire of a burning world—Southern California wildfires, the burning of the Twin Towers, a house set ablaze and filmed—but the real fire in question throughout this book is the passion of this woman who, at sixteen, began to film a generation as it emerged in the shadow of these fires, a product of the gritty Southern California reality where parents are in prison, boys go from being anarchists to soldiers overnight, and going back to the beginning is painful because that’s when everyone was still alive. To bring their lost faces to light, she persists refusing to be dimmed by exploitative Hollywood bosses, sleazy post-me-too producers, addiction and its terrible consequences.
“Southern California’s Gogol, Whitehead records the diary of not a madwoman, but a woman made mad. Watch as Whitehead burns it down, and rejoice at the power of her will and the power of her words.” – Katie Farris, author of Standing in the Forest of Being, finalist for the T.S. Eliot Prize
Outcomes and Reviews
Green Blotter editorial staff members Rachael Speck ’20 and Paige Bryson ‘20, in collaboration with genre editors Sydney Fuhrman ’18 and Jackie Chicalese ’18, published a guide to undergraduate literary magazines for Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies under guidance from visiting writer and reviewer Renee d’Aoust.
As a result of Renèe d’Aoust’s in-class discussion of the value/professional development merit of publishing book reviews, Sydney Fuhrman ’18 published a book review in Alternating Current Press’s literary magazine The Coil. Fuhrman wrote the review for ENG 254 Fiction Workshop.
Cheyenne Heckermann ’17 is now a book reviewer for Anomaly, focusing particularly on works by writers of color and LGBTQ2IA writers. Her reviews are online here.
Read what some of our students have to say about the “Writing: A Life” series.
“The opportunity to meet one-on-one with Adam Tavel and discuss my work was incredibly beneficial, as I was able to receive unique advice and encouragement from a knowledgeable and award-winning poet. As a mentor, Adam was insightful and sincere, and offered his personal experiences and support to assist in preparing me for a transition from undergraduate writing to graduate.” ~ English major
“Another section that I thought was really relatable to me was the ‘real writer’ conversation. Being a musician, when Tom McAllister talked about the set of habits, it made me understand why writers have to practice with workshops and lectures just like musicians have to sit down and play…. he inspired me as a musician to treat music different and to experiment.” ~ music education major