About 50 students told their stories as a part of the Creative Writing Open House and Showcase held in the Carleton University Art Gallery (CUAG) on Nov. 26.
Students from the creative fiction, creative non-fiction, and literary hybrid courses shared their work by speaking to audiences. Students also presented multimedia displays, sculptures, and photography.
Professor Nadia Bozak said showcases are an essential component to a writer’s development.
“It can be very difficult as a writer, usually an introvert, to stand up in front of an audience and to read, but it’s a really vital part of being a part of a writing community,” she said. “[You get to share] your work with an audience and get feedback from the audience.”
Although many of the presenters were self-proclaimed, for lifelong writers like Tanner O’Neil, writing is a new hobby.
“I started writing in Grade 11 when I took a writing class but didn’t do anything between Grade 11 and the summer of third year . . . where I started working on my portfolio,” he said. “It allows me to express myself in a very articulate way. I am able to get my emotions across best for an audience to understand what I’m trying to say.”
O’Neil’s story was a hybrid, written onto a wooden paddle.
“My story was about mourning. The character that I wrote is a father who lost his daughter in a canoe accident . . . It’s mostly about the internal struggle of that loss,” he said. “I wrote this song first, and that’s what inspired the longer fiction piece.”
For Gabriella Robichaud-McDonald, her piece was the result of a rant.
“It happens really often where someone just comes up to me and is like ‘hey, what are you? Why is your skin colour like that?’ And so I guess I was just really pissed off about that so I wrote a piece about it,” she said. “It’s really hard to describe inspiration, sometimes the flow happens and sometimes it doesn’t and when it does you got to make it work.”
She also said writing is intoxicating for her.
“I love that I’m the boss, I’m in control, and my characters do whatever the hell I tell them to do,” she said. “It’s amazing to sit in the class and meet writers who take writing as seriously as you do, and who had so many incredible ideas.”
