OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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On a given evening in Moreland Hall, you might happen upon a group of students huddled over manuscripts, giving each other feedback on their latest short story drafts. In another corner of the building, you might hear a discussion of the role of the cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland, or music playing as students share their favorite song lyrics with one another over baked goods. These are the scenes and sounds of two new-to-SWLF, student-run clubs: the Creative Writing Society and the Literary Club. One focuses on the sharing and generating of new writing, while the other brings students together over a shared love of the literary. Below, student leaders of each club describe what they’re up to in their own words.
Sheyanne Loose and Cooper Theodore on the Creative Writing Society:
“This past year the Creative Writing Society has greatly expanded its scope of interaction with OSU’s writing community through inspiring writing activities, event tabling, social media presence, and guest speakers, in addition to the club’s original core activity of weekly workshops. The guest speaker series included our very own John Larison, Brandy St. John, Liddy Detar, MFA students, and Maricruz Trenado-Frias, editor-in-chief of Prism; Brandy St. John’s visit included a workshop in world-building, an event that led to the creation of a number of the submissions you’ll see in this year’s edition of Prism. All of the activities hosted by the Creative Writing Society are intended to spark inspiration and support our club members’ writing endeavors.
We’ve also transformed our tried-and-true weekly workshops to focus even more on building community, establishing a comfortable place for submitting creative work, encouraging productive discussion with feedback for authors, and expanding guidelines to incorporate more genres. As a result, we’ve seen a huge jump in the number of club members submitting for workshops. To us, the Creative Writing Society is a community of student writers from all backgrounds, majors, and interests that allows members to support each other and grow, both in their own writing and in providing feedback to others.”
Left to right: Schoepflin (Secretary for 23-24), Cooper Theodore (current Vice-President), Sydney Marker (current Secretary, Vice-President for 23-24), Sheyanne Loose (current President), and Kat Puglisi (current Treasurer, President for 23-24).
Members of the Literary Society enjoying cookie night at a meeting this spring. They enjoyed favorite cookies and discussed memorable book series from their childhood, current reads, and books they’re excited to read in the future.
Heather Sievert on the Literary Club:
“Students in SWLF wanted to start a community of people to share their love for literature, film, theatre, writing, etc. outside of an academic setting. Over Winter quarter, which was our first term as a club, we had weekly themes of things more general like poetry, and more specific topics like Alice in Wonderland. It was important for me to create a space that felt safe and comfortable for everyone to share their ideas but, also not feel like participating in the club was added work/stress on top of academics. Right now, we do not have a specific or solid structure and allow for more free-form conversations and seminar-like discussions to share our interests in specific classes or just the arts and literature in general. I also like to say that there is no bureaucracy in the club. We are all on the same level and everyone's opinions/ideas are respected and discussed. We have a lot of fun things planned for Spring term like: Cookie Night + a favorite book/series discussion as well as a picnic outside planned for Week 10 to celebrate the end of the term! The Student Literary Club is a safe space for all students interested in humanities and literature to de-stress from school or to find community.”
