A group of SCAD-Savannah professors showed up in the Trustees Theater to flex their creative muscles during the second-annual Writers’ Assembly on April 8.
And although not many tuned in for the simulcast here in Atlanta, the show went on anyway.
The lineup of award-winning writers, many returning for the second time, included professors Stephen Geller, Mary Kim, James Lough, Angela Merta, Dennis Randall, Lew Tate, John Valentine, George Williams and Weihua Zhang, who all shared their works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and dramatic writing.
George Williams, the first presenter of the night, read his short story “At the Chamkar Cafe,” which Williams said he wrote partly for Corra Films.
Some of the writers shared works of personal reflection, like Zhang’s “Forever.” Written in the rare second-person point of view, “Forever” is a piece Zhang calls her “reflection on the physical and emotional bond I had with my daughter during the pregnancy, our separation, reunion and beyond.”
Other presenters, like Merta, Valentine and Kim, shared a number of poems from of a wide range of topics.
In a way, poetry is not far from nonfiction, Merta noted in an e-mail interview. She said she considers poetry her favorite genre, but that she also dabbles in nonfiction.
“… On some level I think certain poets are just lazy nonfiction writers,” Merta wrote in the e-mail. I fall into that category. Not all of the time, but quite a bit.”
At the Writers’ Assembly, Merta shared narrative poems “ that had to do with place and how seductive travel is.”
Valentine’s selection included a poem about how to tell if poem is the truth — suggested burning the poem in question at a stake.
Kim read four poems, including “Freeing Verse,” a performance piece about free verse poetry, and the more serious “Eating Tongue with Sweet Vinegar” about Asian family violence. “Eating Tongue,” Kim said during the assembly, was in response to a question asked of her when she worked with Asian family violence victims: Why is there a separate program for Asian victims when family violence is universal?
Tate and Geller chose fiction pieces to present.
Tate read an excerpt from “Teacher of the Year,” a work in progress he said he hopes will develop into a novel.
Geller, who assembled the event and was the night’s final presenter, read “Storm,” a chapter from his novel “Fiest.” The novel is inspired by his research of the Deep South and what he calls “the period of that most uncivil American war.”
For the one audience member watching the Writers’ Assembly in the Hub, Geller’s presentation was the highlight.
Arts administration graduate student Michael Trent said he was excited to see Geller, who was his professor in the screenwriting program at Boston University.
Although the audio was fuzzy at some points throughout the presentations, Trent noted, he still heard well enough to pick his favorites of the night.
“I thought Ms. Kim and Geller were probably the best, as far as the visual and their speaking voices,” Trent said. “They were really into the story. There was a connection.”