Associate Podcaster · Macalester College · Anna Chu

Through collaborating with Creative Process, I want to learn about writing and conveying other people's stories in an honest and evocative way. This past year, I met a Professor at Macalester who could draw a story out of me and others just by asking the right questions and being an attentive listener. She encouraged me, as a writer, to dig deeper into researching when I'm writing. I want to meet more people, learn how to interview people professionally and personally, and also learn about other people's creative paths.

As a creative writer, I'm focusing on writing short stories at the moment. I've recently had one of my stories, Tom's Tailor, published on an online journal and another story published on a campus publication at Macalester College. I've written a short story focused around sexuality and slut-shaming, and I'm working on campus to develop a possible research project centered around the role of a slut and slut-shaming in media.

When I was younger, all the stories I used to write had a white, female main character because that was the stories I was introduced to and read. However, as an adult, I realize the reason I keep writing and developing stories that deal with more realistic life issues is because I want to be able to see an Asian American girl taking on different problems. As a writer, I can focus my stories on an Asian American girl who can fall in love, work towards her goals, experience mental health issues, and go through other trials in life with her as the main character and not just a side character in someone else's story. I'd love to see more characters like me in the world, but at the same time, I want to see more of the issues I face from the love and challenges of Immigrant parents, stigmas in the Asian community around mental health and sexuality, and also religious issues crossing with mainstream issues.

 https://thescriblerus.com/2019/12/toms-tailors-anna-chu/

Creative Works Curator · Collaborative Coordinator & Podcaster · Tulane University · Eliana Chiovetta

The arts and creativity is an expression of the purest form, serving as a communication transcending language. The arts depict cultural, political, social and historical trends while creativity is that spark that continues to society advance socially, technologically, medically, politically, culturally and physically. That is why both the arts and creativity are important.

From my collaboration with The Creative Process I am gaining more knowledge and experience of curation and interact with a broad range of art institutions and artists, enhancing my knowledge of the business side of curation.

Recently, I have been coordinating potential partners for historic houses in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I have also planned, coordinated and promoted several art events at school (mainly art-based stress reduction and one partnered event that showcased the artwork of several inner-city youth). Additionally, my fashion designs were recently shown in a show in downtown New York. My future plans include working at in antiquities and art authentication and ethical sourcing/ trading for museums and cultural institutions.

Associate Podcaster & University Liaisons · Mt. Holyoke College · Fanrui Shao

Storytelling and creativity mean two things for me: to explore oneself and to connect with other people. For example, I could not appreciate modern or contemporary poems before I wrote one as homework for my creative writing class. Practicing and trying help me to understand the process and significance of the things that were unknown to me. 

Another example, after I took an advanced oil painting class at my university, I just feel that art history hardly grasped the meaning of art. As I experienced many class critiques and most of my classmates are professional artists, talking with them and listening to them totally changed my comprehension of art. Artists actually do not think in the way that art history scholars supposed. 

Therefore, through my collaboration with The Creative Process, I am getting to know more writers/artists and their works and further develop my communication and organization skills. 

I have taken storytelling, creative writing and art studio classes, and have always cherished group critiques. I have always enjoyed writing as part of my art studio classes. I helped my instructors to explain or expand difficult concepts to my classmates and helped some classmates to proofread their studio-related writings. I'd love the opportunity to incorporate my knowledge of literature, psychology and languages into a more creative process.

I am now in the middle of my GAP year. Now I study at Alliance Francaise in Paris and plan to take a French C1 exam this May. I read 10 pages Andre Gide everyday and am qlso endeavoring to pick up my German. I look forward to taking part in The Creative Process’ interview with the director of the Goethe Institut in Paris. I plan to read der Zeuberberg in the next few months. This fall I will go to Dartmouth College for my graduate study at the Comparative Literature Department.

Love Poems

Some prefer to express love in foreign tongues,

And brag to others how much love they deliver.

But mistakes, misspellings and misuses are tons,

That I often doubt if they can be less clever.

English? Too public and common to be a love-carrier.

Do speak French! l’Amour, l’intimité, et la romantisme*.

When mimicking a Werther*, please use hubsche, edele but not tolle*.

But I know in native language you can write a love poem better.

My friend says to me: do not be

So harsh on the lovers, who love

Despite the imperfection in language

Of the missing noun (subject, object or both) and verb.

I just wish the lovers to learn from my father

To “borrow” a finished flawless poem and never mention the author.

l’Amour, l’intimité, et la romantisme*: French, love, intimacy and romanticism

Werther*: the sentimental protagonist of a German epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

hubsche, edele, tolle*: German, handsome, noble, great (all in female form). The former two are commonly used in Old German chivalry poems to describe a fair lady. The latter is a comparatively mundane and unclear adjective to praise a lady

l’Amour, l’intimité, et la romantisme*: French, love, intimacy and romanticism

Werther*: the sentimental protagonist of a German epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

hubsche, edele, tolle*: German, handsome, noble, great (all in female form). The former two are commonly used in Old German chivalry poems to describe a fair lady. The latter is a comparatively mundane and unclear adjective to praise a lady

Feeling naked. Feeling wicked.

You can feel naked without being naked.

Some studio classes have models naked, I wonder

If the witness exacerbates the feeling from naked to wicked.

In a writing critique, I feel half naked.

My words are like newborn babies that flounder.

So you can feel naked without being naked.

A painting critique is worse, I feel fully naked,

When people are standing by my paintings and when they ponder.

Because the witness exacerbates the feeling from naked to wicked.

I may feel less naked,

If I am going to rework on the works that now stagger.

But still I can feel naked without being naked.

Optimistically, in academics, I feel somehow less naked,

As quotes and analyses are various kinds of armor.

Hardly the witness exacerbates the feeling from naked to wicked.

But once a professor told me my writings are wicked,

She looked at me as if I the English Department murdered.

At this moment I feel so naked without being naked,

Especially her witness exacerbates the feeling from naked to wicked.

Drag Ball 2019

The art of moving without touching

Is hard. That’s why I am going

To a party every year by self-forcing.

Nothing can be learned without practicing.

Collaborating Curator & Podcaster · Fordham University · Joelle Saunders

I  am a student at Fordham University majoring in International Studies and planning to minor in Digital Technology and Emerging Media, and French. I am particularly passionate about creative writing – poetry, prose, and short stories – but also have an affinity for music and comedy. I also perform stand-up comedy. I believe that education is the greatest gift and that teachers are incredibly important because they are the ultimate givers. Personally, the teachers that I have had the privilege of being taught by in high school are some of the most poignant influences I have had in my life. Their embracing of me inside and outside of the classroom and what I’ve learned from them will stick with me forever. That is why I am so excited to celebrate the art of teaching and help students, as well as learn more myself, with The Creative Process! Additionally, I’m currently working towards publishing poetry, as I run my own poetry account on Instagram (@speak.and.play.poetry), and towards getting better at writing and performing comedy!

Young Writers & Artists Curator · Marguerite Hunter · Michigan State University

I would say that a teacher that really inspired me was my high school band teacher, Mr. Lampman. Over the course of four years, he was my mentor, my inspiration, and my biggest supporter. Whenever I needed help or was uncertain of something, he would always make time to talk to me and offer advice. When I told him that I was thinking about becoming a music major, he started meeting with me weekly to check in on how my progress was coming along and helping me take the next steps towards achieving my goal. To me, It made a huge difference to have someone who genuinely supported me. 

I also started doing an independent study for piano with him. He allowed me many opportunities to perform in front of the other bands to try to curb my performance anxiety, and he would introduce me to other musicians that were visiting so that I could see what a career in music could look like. 

It was such an honor to have someone like him in my life that I really admired and looked up to.  I would say that he is one of my biggest inspirations in wanting to become a teacher, because I want to be able to make an impact in a student's life the same way he did for me.

Currently I would say that my biggest project is becoming fluent in French. I am currently living in France on a study abroad program until the end of May. I’m thinking about becoming a French teacher and maybe one day living in France, so being here gives me the opportunity to see if I could envision myself going down this career path.

When I return home from France, I want to get back into playing piano and saxophone. I have a lot of piano works that I’m looking forward to learning, such as the third movement of the moonlight sonata and the revolutionary etude. For me, music has been such an integral part of my life ever since I was 7 years old, so it feels really weird to have music be absent from my life right now.  

My other projects for the near future would be starting my own podcast. I’m not sure of what my subject would be, but I think it would be really interesting to focus on different cultures. In the long term, I would say my projects would be learning other languages as well, such as Japanese and Spanish, and moving abroad to teach.  

This is one of my performances with my high school band. This was during my sophomore year in high school, and we were giving a mock concert before we went to play at a music conference in Grand Rapids, MI. I’m the saxophonist sitting on the edge!

Collaborating Curator & Podcaster · Sarah Lawrence College · Carmel Henschel

I’ll never forget the educator who gave me the world.

I found Indian Cinemas with a hasty need for another course after a scheduling conflict, and serendipitously fell in love with the subject matter and professor, Priyadarshini Shanker, after only a five minute telephone conversation. Priya navigated me through a reality I’d never before known — she introduced me to the spice and honey of an A.R. Rahman score, the national hunger in a Ritwik Ghatak film, and the luster and poetry in the eyes of Guru Dutt.

With nostalgia and romance, Priya illuminated the life-affirming cinematic canon of her youth, where institutional suppression of identity was confronted by the catharsis of theatrical self-creation. She and I spoke abstractly about theater and it’s social notion for segments of time far beyond our scheduled meetings. Through her assigned films and the conversations we had about world cinema in general, she encouraged me to examine more universal casualties of state and self.

By the next semester, I took on a second academic focus in addition to filmmaking: Ethnic and Diaspora studies. My new courses in the Political Ecology of Development and Lexicon of Migration (in tandem with filmmaking courses) constantly remind me of the prompts Priya ignited in me. In deconstructing my own perplexing global footprint and studying the brutal dilemmas of international persecution, I’ve become increasingly motivated to understand the urgency and significance of self-determination within marginal groups.

Every day I am grateful for what she saw in me and what she gave to me.

Most of my energy lately has been dedicated to perfecting my application for Sarah Lawrence’s Consortium of Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education. The academic panel will select two students by March 15th to go to Malaysia over the summer to conduct ethnographic fieldwork on migrant life of Rohingya refugees. My conference work in two separate classes pertains to the crisis.

Through my Directing the Short Film class, I am directing and writing my first short film. Titled Fernanda, the film follows a teenage girl’s infiltration of a modern American family living in Upstate New York.

I was recently elected to the position of New Student at Large Senator in the Undergraduate Student Senate at Sarah Lawrence College. I serve as the representative for all first-year students. During my tenure, I hope to solve the increasingly insidious dilemma of loneliness among young people on campus (especially those who are queer and/or transgender).

As the acting treasurer of SLC's Queer Voice Coalition, I am working on securing a scholarship from the Diversity Advisory and Programming Subcommittee at school. With the funding, I hope to coordinate the school’s first annual Pride Picnic, a Sunday picnic on the South Lawn dedicated to amplifying the diverse voices of our community’s LGBTQIA+ students and faculty.

I am currently in classes for French language and French theater; they serve as preparation for my study abroad at either Sciences Po or the EICAR film school in Paris for the spring of next year.