BETHANY CLANCY
Staff Writer
This past Friday, Sigma Tau Delta, the English honor society, set up a “coffee talk” with two new creative writing professors, Eric Schlich and Sarah Green. This gave students an opportunity to ask them questions about their journey as writers, along with asking about the work they’ve published and how they came about teaching.
Starting off the Q & A session was Veronica Arce, a senior English major who is a part of Sigma Tau Delta — the honor society that most students in attendance were apart of.
She asked the two about the start of their journey as creative writers and how their paths led them to Fredonia.
Schlich was born in Lexington, Kentucky and went to school for degrees in Spanish and English in his home state. After completing undergrad, he continued his academic career in Ohio, where he received his masters. From there, he went to Florida State University in Tallahassee for his Ph.D, which he is still working on. He was not expecting to get a job here, he explained.
Another professor, Natalie Gerber, believes there’s a reason Schlich chose Fredonia.
“He couldn’t resist the lure of the blizzards,” she joked.
Green was born in Kentucky and raised in Massachusetts. She attended Oberlin College in Ohio because of how liberal the school was, “as if Massachusetts wasn’t liberal enough,” she said.
Originally, she was there to be a theatre major, but also took classes in creative writing. It wasn’t until one of her creative writing professors gave her a lot of praise that she realized that this was something she was good at and could succeed in. She became an English major with a concentration in creative writing and a minor in gender studies. She did not know what to do after graduation. While on a family vacation, her advisor recommended she attend Purdue University for her masters.
“I did my phone interview for Purdue in my hotel bedroom while my family and I were vacationing in North Carolina. After that, I prepared for the GRE in a little library in the beach town,” Green said.
Her time at Purdue lasted five years, then she was an adjunct professor for creative writing and literature in Massachusetts for another five years. At that time, adjunct professors were being replaced in Massachusetts, so she went on to get her Ph.D in creative writing at Ohio University, studying with a poet she admired, Mark Halliday.
As a follow-up question, James Lillin, a senior acting, English and gender studies major asked the two how and when they knew creative writing was for them.
Schlich started attending workshops in undergrad, and that’s when he really learned the craft. He knew that going into creative writing would be risky, but he was willing to take that chance. He talked about how he loved the classroom and learning; he wanted to flip the role of a student and become a professor. In college, he wasn’t fortunate enough to have publications like “The Trident,” so he started his own publication — which further ignited his love and passion for creative writing.
Green had a little more difficult of a time getting into the creative writing field. Her first two years at school weren’t her best because she didn’t fully allow creative writing in her life and she would skip class to attend riots and rallies. One day she realized that she would rather be writing than getting arrested, so she took creative writing seriously. When she did that, she felt a lot happier and healthier. But because she missed so many classes to participate in protests, she could only accept creative writing as a concentration.
“Missing classes for protests was a very Oberlin thing to do,” she said.
The two professors went on to talk about what special classes they are teaching next semester. This question was brought on by Gerber.
Schlich is teaching a humor creative writing class which he designed himself. It focuses on different types of humor in creative writing and building it into a script. He mentioned bringing in pieces from “Saturday Night Live” and the mock journalism site, “The Onion.”
Green is teaching environmental literature, which will mainly focus on “black nature,” which is African American nature poems from the past 50 years and what separates humans from animals.
The two writers ended this coffee talk with getting to know the seven students gathered around the table. Although most were involved in the English department, they eagerly listened to what the students wanted to do with their futures and talked to everyone, encouraging all to keep moving forward with what they were doing. They ended with one piece of advice, which was to wait to get your MFA, don’t get it right after undergrad, especially if you’re going into writing, because first, you need an adventure and a life to write about.