Literary Arts Go Live Thanks to Sweet Briar Writers Club

KATIE BETH RYAN '08

Around campus, music majors sing and play instruments, theater majors act, and dancers, well, dance. In contrast to the other arts concentrations, creative writers traditionally have not had a public venue to read their poems, stories and essays. It’s a concern that members of the Inklings, Sweet Briar’s new club for writers, seek to rectify.

“The literary arts are not typically staged arts, because the experience of reading a book is an individual experience,” said Carrie Brown, associate professor of English and creative writing and the Inklings’ advisor. “They were interested in trying to organize some events to sort of bring the literary arts on campus to the stage, or to a public venue.”

The club —the brainchild of juniors Jessica Baker and Julia Patt — is organizing two events as part of the First Wednesday Writers Series. The readings will take place at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 5 and Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2008, in the Wailes Lounge of the Florence Elston Inn & Conference Center. Both readings are free and open to the public.

For the December event, the Inklings are putting together a poetry reading in which different members of the Sweet Briar community will read a favorite poem. According to club vice president Ginny Lightfoot ’09, it’s part of the Inklings’ goal to involve more people on campus with the literary arts.

“It’s to see what everyone’s tastes are, and to get the people we see everyday around campus up there to read,” Lightfoot said.

Fellow club member and self-described “Inklings groupie” Elizabeth Zuckerman ’09 is especially excited about what will happen after the poetry readings. “At the end we’re going to “Mad Lib” a poem,” she said. “We’re going to get adjectives and verbs from the audience, and then read the whole thing aloud.”

Although Zuckerman admits that the Inklings are out to “make writing fun,” the group is also dabbling in philanthropy through the Camel Book Drive. Established by author Masha Hamilton in 1996, it gathers donations of English language books to distribute —via camelback, no less — to communities in rural Kenya. The Inklings have set up donation jars around campus and a box for books in the Mary Helen Cochran Library.

“We’re hoping by the end of the year to have collected a) books, and b) money, so we can actually buy some of the stuff off the wish list on their Web site,” Zuckerman said, referring to hyperlinks to online book retailers from http://www.camelbookdrive.wordpress.com suggesting books that can be purchased for donation.

Inklings members agree that the beauty of the club lies in the ability to praise and critique one another’s works-in-progress at their Wednesday night meetings in the Manson Hall lounge. Each week brings a new topic — previous themes have focused on humorous works and banned books — and the Inklings say they enjoy the relaxed atmosphere for their writing endeavors.

“We have a lot of fun, and I think part of that is because our meetings are so informal,” Lightfoot said. “People will [bring in their pieces] saying, ‘Oh, this is horrible, but I brought it anyway,’ and we’ll read it, and it’s really wonderful to see what people are doing.”