Building a community for creative writing alumni
By MARISA MATA, Student Writer
“We have a tight knit community within the [creative writing] program, but once people leave it’s much more loose,” Jefferson Beavers (1996, 2007), president of the newly established Creative Writing Alumni Chapter, said, “We all see each other at readings all over the community, but there’s nothing specifically for alumni.”
“We’re very interested in that because those are the people we read and there are so many commonalities and connections that can be made, but we don’t know each other or we only know each other in name — we’ve read the writing but haven’t met the person and heard the voice — so I’m really hoping this chapter can help bridge some of those gaps.”
The chapter’s first event was held at Mia Cuppa Caffe’ in Fresno’s Tower District, an area with a long history with Fresno poets and a social, community atmosphere. It included a raffle for books written by local authors and 20 people — alumni, students and community friends — who read their poetry or prose at an open mic in front of a crowd of about 70 people.
“The chapter was really blown away by the response to participate in the event. When we called for readers…20 people said they wanted to read. It’s always fun when you get 15–20 readers. You only get three to four minutes a piece, and you hit a lot of different kinds of styles…I think the audience liked the variety too — definitely a lot of different types of stories and voices. It was emblematic of the students that come out of here.”
“There were a lot of people that stayed for a while, congratulating each other and meeting each other. I saw some writers reconnecting and some people meeting new people. I think that’s definitely an element we want to develop in the future, more one to one time.”
The chapter currently doesn’t know when or what its next event will be, but it has a few ideas — all aimed at bringing together different generations of alumni.
“The writers that come out of the university are such good, really interesting people. There are so many great writers doing great things, but they don’t really have a social atmosphere to connect, they don’t always get to see how cool and awesome they all are. I think an event like this really gives people the chance to do that.”
Click here to connect with the Creative Writing Alumni Chapter.
Related stories:
We’re nerds and we love Fresno, so we started ZappCon
Hmong Alumni Club, preparing students for life after graduation
