Next Wednesday, QC Voices will host a reading in Godwin-Ternbach, and all QC students are warmly invited to participate. The flyer is attached, and I hope that you’ll use it to extend this invitation to *your* students, calling it particularly to the attention of those students who are beginning to think of themselves as writers by some definition of the word.

This event happens every semester, and it is always lovely.

 

Here’s how it works: Students show up with some piece of writing that they would like to read aloud, and they put their name on a list of readers. Everybody who signs up gets to read to the room.

 

The time of each reading varies a bit, depending on how many people show up, but your students should plan to bring a piece that takes a few minutes to read. And they can read whatever they like— a poem, a piece of fiction, an excerpt from an essay, a brief opinion piece, a song— whatever they like.

 

And there is free pizza!

 

We’ve planned to have the event a bit earlier than usual this semester to avoid a conflict with the department meeting in December, because we hoped that you might come with your students. I know we’re all busy, but I can tell you that this event is always life-affirming for me. Our students really bring it and read with their whole hearts. It’s great to see.

 

And the writers for QC Voices will be there, reading in full force from pieces like:

 

• Close Rikers, a really sophisticated perspective on this local issue, placed in the context of a larger argument against mass incarceration. It’s written by Najet Miah, a pre-med student who writes regularly about her own experience of incarceration;
•  Off With Their Heads and Other Considerations: On R. Kelly: Megan Montague (Pindling)’s reflection on the experience of watching Surviving R. Kelly with her mom, also reading the response to R. Kelly through the lens of. fairy tales;
• We Will Be the Gods We Choose to Be, Not the Gods Who Have Been: Jordan Foresta’s narration of how he came to understand himself better in relation to his father’s addition through the unexpected medium of.. video games.

 

And so many others. The writers for QCVoices are killing it every week, and I hope you will follow their work and use it in your classes when you need models of strong student writing.

Also, there will be pizza!