Listening to our Visiting Writers
Rowan Fitzgerald
Contributing Writer
On Feb. 2 the Visiting Writer Series (VWS) held in The Landing at UMF kicked off the spring semester by featuring writer and cartoonist Tom Hart and reminded everyone why it is important to hear from these accomplished writers.
Hart, a New York-born graphic memoirist, teacher, and comic artist, discovered his love of drawing early on by humbly tracing “Peanuts” comics out of the newspaper. From there, he continued to hone his craft through the years until he self-published one of his first books titled “Hutch Owen’s Working Hard” in 1994 and has continued to write to this day.
What brought Hart to Farmington was the VWS where he read from one of his most recent titles “Rosalie Lightning.” This was the first time the Visiting Writer Series featured an author that utilized a visual element to their storytelling.
“I was so excited,” Hart commented about his reaction to receiving the correspondence from VWS handler Professor Amy Neswald. “I love Amy and I like talking to college students. I like giving workshops…and the train!”
The VWS, in essence, offers students a glimpse into the process that goes into the work of an accomplished writer actively working in their medium. There’s a real value in seeing things from their perspective and speaking to the person behind the body of work.
“You can help people by showing them more of the path…showing them how to get where they want to be, how to do what they want to do, I really like that and take that kind of seriously,” Hart said.
Beyond the authors, Professor Neswald is a huge supporter of the VWS and believes wholeheartedly in its importance for aspiring young writers. She explained how the creative writing professors “create kind of like a vacuum…we’re everyday people for our students. The struggle to write a great novel never ends. This is a way of life and it's important to see how different people are managing the life of an artist and the life of a writer.”
Even students speak to the importance and value that the VWS brings to the school.
“I think it’s always so inspiring to meet successful writers. Especially when we live in this culture that doesn’t seem to value the humanities,” UMF senior and creative writing major Karly Jacklin said.
Jacklin went on to highlight her involvement in the VWS by regarding it as “a really special experience” when she was given the opportunity to introduce Jacques Rancourt in the fall semester of 2022.
“Hearing him read aloud was just wonderful—there were a lot of poems about gay sex, and they were explicit and beautiful, and hearing them read aloud was such an intense moment for me, it was like an emotional upheaval.”
Both the UMF faculty and community of student-writers continue to make the VWS a popularized event on campus. It offers a unique opportunity for students to see that authors are people too and, in fact, they were once sitting in the same seats the UMF students use to listen to these larger-than-life figures. Hart remarked that, “Sharing art is one of the most human things we can do… and it’s a practice we need to value.”
