LHU hosts authors Kristen Kovacic and Jim Daniels
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By KIARA TINNIN
ktinnin@Lockhaven.edu
LOCK HAVEN -- Lock Haven University welcomed renowned authors Kristin Kovacic and Jim Daniel to campus on Tuesday as they discussed juggling writing, teaching and relationships.
Kovacic teaches creative writing at the Creative and Performing Arts High School in Pittsburgh. Her short fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in many literary magazines, including the Kansas Quarterly, Cimarron Review, and Women's Studies Quarterly. Kovacic's most recent book called "History Of My Breath," is a personal essay that explores the intersection of marriage, parenting, childbirth, love and pain.
Daniels is an American poet and writer. His literary works have been recognized and highlighted at Michigan State University in their Michigan Writers Series. Daniels has been on the faculty of the creative writing program at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He won the inaugural Brittingham Prize in Poetry in 1985 from the University of Wisconsin--Madison.
The event was held in the PUB's multi purpose room, which was filled with students and faculty.
Daniels started the event by reading his poems -- "Red Vinyl, My Machine" and "Up on Blocks," that dove into his life in Detroit and the urban setting that surrounded the writer. He talked to the crowd of students about the Eight Mile Road that separated the two counties in southeast Michigan, and how life might be for those living on either side.
Daniels explained the mundane complexities of dealing with keeping children satisfied, explaining when his daughter's toy puppy that poops suddenly stopped. He somehow finds a way to get the toy's poop back inside, so when she came looking for it the next morning he could give her the toy just how she first saw it.
Kovacic eased her way to the podium and talked of her most recent book then described the many ways she filled the pages with adventures of parenting, childhood and of her husband Jim. She read an essay titled "Preserved from History of My Breath," detailing the summer Jim and their children stayed in Paris. They enjoyed the warm weather at a more up-scale cafe, for the day was her birthday as she sipped on a glass red fitou (fe-too) and pondered how to handle the bill with a forgotten debit card.
Daniels and Kovacic craft the sometimes-mundane into something notable. They stood together taking questions from the crowd, answering how they balance finding good writing material between each other, when they are each others' material. They are both careful not to use the same material when writing about each other.
Daniels describes his inspiration in writing as, "Stories that revolve around a place … the characters show up from story to story but I'm very interested in where we come from and where we grow up affects who we are regardless where we go from there."
He continued, "Even though the stories don't all take place in Detroit, the people who leave Detroit take Detroit with them in terms of shaping their attitude towards the world."
Most of the students who attended the event were liberal arts majors like juniors Symone Tyrell and Raven Fortson who were excited to be at the reading.
"I enjoyed Kristen's pieces more. They had more imagery and gave you the feeling of how she was feeling," said Tyrell. Fortson cosigned, "It was very insightful, like even when you're doing the most mundane things, your mind can be thinking of so many other things."
When asked what advice she would give a student looking to publish a book of their own someday, Kovacic said, "Read books. Younger writers want to be published but they don't want to read the places where they might be published."
She continued, "Read books of poems, read magazines that publish poetry and that will show where your poems can be published. You're looking for poet allies, people who are doing work you admire or what you aspire to do. That's where you look to be published, but you need to be reading those places."