Literature Conference

Update: it went fairly well; here's a program!

Coming up at SU on February 21st is the annual Undergraduate Literature and Creative Writing Conference.  The theme is Literature and Creativity in the Digital Age.  I will be reading my short story "Routine" at this conference during a panel titled Literature and Gender 1.  I have never been a part of an academic conference before, so this will definitely be a first for me!

In an earlier post I talked a little about the conference and also about the story I'm reading.  It's titled "Routine," and I wrote it in Dr. Bailey's Intro to Fiction course last semester.  It's about a couple who meet on Halloween their freshman year of college.  The two characters, Belinda and Cyrus, are dramatically different.  Cyrus spent his Halloween drinking, then being offended by frat boys who treat creativity as a one night stand; Belinda is alone in her dorm room typing up an essay on The Fountainhead, dressed in costume, just to be festive.  And of course, in that story-like way, they have this whole opposites attract thing going on and fall for each other.  The story then takes us through multiple Halloweens with them and shows the decay of their relationship.

In that previous post, I also mentioned how nervous I was when I first received the program and found out I'd be reading during a panel on gender.  I'm still sort of scared that people will call me out for stereotypical gender roles--yes, the woman does want to get married, and yes, the guy is just terrible at commitment--and yet, I don't think I'm actually embarrassed by the role gender plays in my story.  The story may look at gender in a conventional way, but I don't think unconventional must always be preferred to conventional, if that makes any sense.   In attempts to combat gender stereotyping, and provide strong female role models, there's been an influx of sassy, spunky, snarky independent girls in books (specifically in my beloved YA genre)--and that's great, really.  But that is not representative of all girls.  Not every girl breaks the mold.  Some fall into it.  Some are domestic, and some are concerned with romance, and some are timid, and some are weak, and girls who fall into any of these traits aren't any less interesting to me just because those traits line up with some sort of female archetype.  Not if they are treated as complex, flawed people.  In Belinda, I wrote a character with whom I can relate, and I don't think that would be the case if I forced her into someone less stereotypical for her gender.

Thinking about being on this panel has provoked some thought in me, obviously.  I am hoping that it somehow manages to be thought provoking, in some way, to others.

Things I've Learned From College #1

I thought it might be fun to sprinkle this blog with some short entries on the topic of "Things I've Learned From College."  These probably won't be academic-focused, because let's face it, I'm learning a lot academically and this blog shouldn't be a textbook.  Mostly, I will concentrate on things I'm learning about college life, whether that involves living in a dorm, scheduling classes, or being independent. 

Things I've Learned From College #1:
Never forget your cell phone charger at home.  Ever.  I brought my charger home with me during Fall Break.  I thought it was packed securely in my laptop case on my way back to SU.  Not the case.  Luckily my parents found the charger and sent it to me in the mail.  Even so, as a college student and a teenager, those phone-less days, well, they were trying times.  So a word of wisdom--to everybody else out there, and mostly to myself: always check that you have your cell phone charger with you before heading back to campus.