By Brenna McGuire
This past Tuesday, Sept. 22, the Creative Writing Department hosted the first of this year’s Seavey Reading Series, starting off strong with author, Yah Yah Scholfield. Catherine Dent, the head of the department, revealed them to be the first student elected choice for the Seavey Reading Series. President and Vice-President of the Writer’s Institute Club, Jules Marzluff and Ashton Hall,were primarily responsible for the selection and planning of the events.
Yah Yah Scholfield is a short story writer and novelist based in Atlanta, Georgia. Their work has been featured in numerous horror and speculative fiction magazines and anthologies. They’ve also published a short story collection titled, “Just a Little Snack.”
They were officially introduced to the crowd by Creative Writing and Publishing & Editing senior, Katie Murray. Murray talked briefly about Scholfield’s work and why they stood out to students. Mentioning a variety of their work, but specifically emphasizing Scholfield’s short story, “Strange Fruit,” which won Best Short Stories in 2025, and made Scholfield an O. Henry Prize Winner. Murray said that they had read numerous of the winners’ pieces in class but had been particularly struck by Scholfield’s language and narrative.
“Strange Fruit” is a prose version of Billie Holiday’s 1930s hit by the same name. It’s a visual and raw story, creating characters that feel real. It details the narrator alongside family and friends, venturing out to a field where they are sent to harvest fruit. Only, it is later revealed that they are not there to pick fruit after all, they are instead retrieving the dead bodies of their family members who have all been victims of a lynching.
Scholfield wields power with their pen, using metaphors and subtext to both disguise and convey the hidden meaning of their work.
During the reading, Scholfield read aloud the first two chapters of their debut novel, “On Sundays She Picked Flowers,” originally published back in 2020. The book focuses on horror and trauma as well as the grotesque and taboo.
The novel opens in Georgia, with Judith Rice, a 41-year-old woman, being beaten by her mother. Scholfield’s writing is extremely descriptive, the gory nature intense and vivid. We learn a bit about Judith’s relationship with her mother and her experience growing up in an abusive household, unable to escape even now.
By the end of the first chapter, Judith and her mother have had another, more final brawl, in which Judith ends up stabbing her to death. Without a plan, she ends up fleeing the home and escaping to the forests of Southern Georgia.
From the very first line, Scholfield managed to capture the attention of each audience member.
Overall, this was a captivating and tantalizing start to this year’s Seavey Reading Series. Next up, on Oct.13 is Susquehanna University’s very own Professor Monica Prince. Make sure to attend, as these nights are impossible to forget.