Students channel holiday spirit
The Daily Pennsylvanian
November 13, 2001
Sometimes titles can be misleading.
"Inspired Profs: A Reading by Penn's Creative Writing Faculty" brought together four English Department instructors -- poets and journalists -- for a reunion of sorts with their former students on Nov. 2 in the Kelly Writers House.
"I feel like an imposter," joked Michael Vitez, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and adjunct Penn instructor, in a preface to his reading at the event. "I'm really a journalist."
English Professor Deborah Burnham, who read poetry, joked, "I'm honored to read in the same hour as these prose writers. [It's what I] really want to be when I grow up."
By blurring the lines of what constitutes creative writing, the professors only helped to illustrate the diversity of literary genres represented by the Creative Writing Program and the Writers House.
Styles ranged from Professor Greg Djanikian's hilarious poem about an imagined trip to Oklahoma to Professor Paul Hendrickson's vivid and factual account of a suicide outside the Pentagon.
Writers House Acting Director Teresa Leo said that the protean event, which drew more 20 people, was first developed to entice the Homecoming crowd. However, the program also managed to lure others in, such as current students and parents.
Hendrickson, an accomplished author and former Washington Post reporter, dedicated his reading to all the current and former students in the audience.
"I'm convinced they will be up here with a published book of their own," he said.
It was clear that the true impetus behind the event was a commitment to teaching and inspiring aspiring writers of all ages.
After the reading, the professors took time to chat with the alums. After a swarm of students let him go from their vise-like attentions, Hendrickson went over to a current student in desperate need of some writing advice.
Djanikian, director of the Creative Writing Program, said the event reminded him of his own college days at Penn.
"I remember when I was a student," he said. "I could actually talk to the writers" on campus.