By Jimmeaha Mack, Staff Writer
Susquehanna’s Forum for Undergraduate Student Editors (FUSE) chapter hosted the sixth annual national FUSE conference, bringing many distinguished speakers to campus and allowing students from different chapters to meet.
The conference took place at Susquehanna from Nov. 1 to 3. According to their website, the mission of FUSE National is to “foster visionary magazine work and to support undergraduates who are eager to pursue careers in writing, publishing and editing.”
“FUSE was born at Susquehanna,” said Director of FUSE Catherine Zobal Dent.
“In 2003, Susquehanna creative writing students and their faculty advisor hosted an event tailored for undergraduates at the national conference of AWP (Associated Writers and Writing Programs),” Dent said.
“The conference event, called FUSE, was a success, and so Susquehanna continued annually to propose AWP panels, invite other undergraduate institutions to participate, and host a website with an online forum for students to share their ideas about literary journals and editing. Then, FUSE took the next step by becoming the ‘FUSE Caucus at AWP’ and starting to plan a conference of our own,” Dent continued.
This conference consisted of many panels and Q&A sessions with presenters and accompanying presenters from Susquehanna and eight other universities. This year’s three-day conference began in the Degenstein Center Theater with a poetry reading from Martín Espada from his novel “Vivas to Those Who Have Failed” (2016).
This event was co-sponsored by both the Susquehanna Common Reading Program and FUSE National; both programs’ themes this year are resilience, and Espada’s poem “En La Calle San Sebastián” was featured in this year’s Common Reading anthology.
On Nov. 2, the first of the Panel and Q&A sessions began with Andrew Ciotola, the managing and book review editor of “West Branch,” Bucknell University’s literary journal.
This was followed by a creative writing workshop with Martín Espada where he read a poem called ‘My Last Name; A family elegy’ by Nicolás Guillén.
Afterwards Espada asked the workshop attendees to spend 45 minutes writing about their own names. “I tried to remember the emotion and passion Espada used in his reading the night before in my own writing,” said sophomore Jordyn Taylor.
“I have always had problems and misconceptions with my name throughout my life so this exercise seemed perfect for me,” Taylor continued. “Something that Espada said that inspired me was ‘You write what you know. Here, he writes what he does not know.’ This inspired me to look up more about my name and write something I may not have before, and it turned out better than I thought.”
Some of the other panels during the conference weekend included “Publishing & Editing at Susquehanna: Origins, Experiences, and Ambitions,” “Breaking Through to the Editors: Our Journey So Far,” “Resilience in Writing: How to Keep Writing When You Feel Stuck” and “Finding and Emphasizing Character Resilience.”
At the conclusion of the night on Friday, an Open Mic took place at Trax that was sponsored by both FUSE National and SU Slam; over thirty students chose to read their poems from Susquehanna and other universities who attended the conference. At the conclusion of the conference, Dent explained the significance of FUSE, saying “Relationships are a large component of the publishing world, and often FUSE provides a first look at how professional writers and editors are always … in conversation with each other. Our students benefit from this exposure, and they are able to compare their experiences at Susquehanna to what students learn at other institutions.”