Reading from the Best

By Brianna Luby, Arts & Entertainment Editor 

Starting the fall semester can be tricky for all students, both returning and new. What better way to kick off the writing season than with readings from the professionals that teach us every day? 

On September 3rd, we got to hear from our creative writing professors on campus, as they read from some of their work at the Creative Writing Faculty Reading held in the Shearer Dining Rooms in Degenstein.  

Matthew Neil Null, or the beloved “Pope of Fiction” as some of his students call him, is a writer from West Virginia. He teaches a range of fiction-based classes, centering around both the novel and the short story. He published a novel called Honey from the Lion, and a collection of stories called Allegheny Front. His work has appeared in publications such as, Oxford American, Ecotone, Electric Literature, among others. He has received multiple awards, including the Mary McCarthy Prize. At the reading, he read the opening to a story called “The Ghost Lights,” which included morse code. His fiction work, in both novels and short stories, has inspired many of his students. 

Hasanthika Sirisena is a visual artist and writer from Sri Lanka and describes their love for a “post-punk” aesthetic. They teach both nonfiction and fiction, with a specific focus on nonfiction. They enjoy lyric essays, personal essays, and visual works both in memoir and essay. Their essays have appeared in Electric Literature, Georgia Review, Copper Nickel, among others. They are also a prose editor at Tupelo Press, while teaching both fiction and nonfiction for the MFA program in writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. They also have a short story collection, Dark Tourist, which won the Gournay Prize and was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award. They read an excerpt of an essay “The Simple Voice of Philip Levine,” which discussed interaction with a writer’s mentor.  

Dr. Catherine Dent is the current director of the Writers Institute, and a writer from Maryland, though she has traveled extensively since. She shares her love for writing with her spouse Silas Zobal Dent, who also teaches at Susquehanna. She is a fiction writer and has taught a range of fiction focusing on short stories. She is also one of the leaders of Susquehanna’s GO Southern France program. She has published a book, Unfinished Stories for Girls, and published shorter fiction stories in Harvard Review, PANK, Drunken Boat, among others. Her newest focus is on translation work, specifically from French to English, and she showcased some of that in her reading. She read an excerpt from a French writer, Melanie Fazi, about a character called “Old Shuteye”, more modernly translated to Sandman. The title of the piece was Swan the Well Named. 

Silas Zobal Dent is a writer from Washington. He teaches fiction, specifically focusing on short stories at Susquehanna. He is also one of the leaders for the GO Southern France program. He wrote a novel, The People of the Broken Neck, and a short story collection, The Inconvenience of the Wings. He also has short fiction stories published in Glimmer Train, Literary Hub, New Orleans Review, among others. With some of his work, he even won a fiction fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. After expressing his hatred for running, he read a piece all about walking a dog, called “And We Saw Light.” 

Glen Retief is a writer from a South African game park, and the director of the GO South Africa program. He teaches a variety of literature classes at Susquehanna, including Queer Literature and African Literature. He also teaches various levels of creative nonfiction, with a specialty in memoir, personal essay, and literary journalism. His book, The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood won a Lambda Literary Award in 2011. He has published a variety of travel essays, short stories, memories, and literary journalism pieces in places like the TriQuarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, New Contrast, among others. Inspired by the sharing his memoir classes are doing this semester and last, he shared a personal essay called “Two: After Natalia Ginsburgs, He and I.” 

Rounding out a night, Dr. Karla Kelsey finished with her poetry. Kelsey is currently the most established member of the department, joining the program in 2005. She teaches a variety of poetry and lyricism at Susquehanna, inspiring many first-year students in her introductory classes. She has published multiple poems and poetry collections including, “On Certainty,” “Blood Feather,” “Of Sphere” and others. She finished the night with reading a new poem called “Before Statement.” 

 If you missed the event, look out for the next one to hear more of the work that might inspire the stories of Susquehanna’s Creative Writing students.