November 04, 2016
Alumni authors bring their literature to life at ‘Veritas and Values’ panel
By DEB HAZIAN
In reading excerpts as diverse as the writers themselves, four alumni related the struggles and rewards of being an author and how — without realizing it — their literary work began as Providence College undergraduates.
The Veritas and Values panel discussion, “Published and Proud: Millennial Authors and Their Stories,” took place in the Ruane Center for the Humanities. Sponsored by the Department of English, the Student Alumni Association, and the National Alumni Association, Veritas and Values facilitates interaction between alumni and students.
Moderator Epaphras C. Osondu, a novelist and a PC associate professor of English, welcomed the College audience that filled the lecture hall and introduced the panelists: Emily Benfer ‘99, clinical professor of law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law; Alison Espach ’07, assistant professor of English at Providence College; Michael Hartigan ‘04, communications director for U.S. Congresswoman Niki Tsongas of Massachusetts; and Matt Weber ‘06, director of digital communications strategy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Each began the program by reading from their books and essays and reflected on how deeply their College experience influenced their writing.
Weber has written Operating on Faith (Loyola Press, 2016) and Fearing the Stigmata (Loyola Press, 2012). With humor, he explores the joy in shared religious experiences. While Weber was always interested in storytelling, his work at PC-TV as an undergraduate gave him a public platform to write short, creative scripts that he produced and aired.
“Having that immediate feedback loop allowed me to strengthen my writing,” he said.
An American studies major with a film concentration, Weber is an Emmy-nominated and Telly Award-winning writer and producer on CTV. He also created and hosts the education podcast, The Harvard EdCast, and has interviewed more than 200 national figures. His work was noticed by Loyola Press, which approached him about transferring his television stories to book form. PC clearly influenced Weber’s writing.
“It is always a profound joy to come home to a place that instilled in me a true sense of community, passion, faith, and joy,” he said.
Espach arrived at PC as a math major. Her love of contemporary fiction and writing won over, and she would stay up late writing short stories and observations. Her English professor, Dr. Peter M. Johnson, now emeritus professor, encouraged and critiqued her work. When she showed him a manuscript, he returned it with large parts crossed out.
“But I learned through it. His vision, mentoring, and ability to tell me, ‘No, this isn’t working, keep going, keep trying,’ opened up my writing and made me a better editor,” said Espach, who joined the College faculty in 2013.
Her novel, The Adults (Scribner, 2011), was a New York Times and Library Journal Editor’s Choice, a Barnes & Noble Discover Award selection, a Wall Street Journal “Top 10 Novel of the Year,” a Chicago Tribune #1 Reader Recommendation, a finalist for the Pen/Bingham prize, and is being adapted to the screen by Electric City Entertainment. It is the coming-of-age story of a teenage girl in an affluent Connecticut town who witnesses a traumatic event.
Providence College, Espach said, “was small enough that everyone got individual attention. For someone interested in becoming a writer, that was really important.”
Hartigan’s award-winning psychological thriller, Stone Angels (Merrimack Media, 2015), about a Providence College senior’s guilt over the death of his friends and his road to confession, “was born here at PC,” he said. An English and psychology double major, Hartigan was interested in exploring strong feelings of guilt. He was influenced by some of the literature he read at PC as well as his College experiences and conversations, made possible by small classes and a smaller campus atmosphere.
“I think back to those conversations,” he said. “My writing had a lot to do with my College experience and finding myself.”
Over 10 years, those short stories and observations begun in college led to Stone Angels, which won the Merrimack Media 2015 Outstanding Writer Award. “The story is fiction but grounded in real human emotions … emotions I’ve had, emotions I’ve seen friends have, emotions we’ve all had. College, for me, and my characters, is really the time to understand how we each deal with those emotional challenges and come out better people on the other side,” he said.
Hartigan is also an accomplished travel writer and journalist.
As the director of the award-winning Health Justice Project, a medical-legal partnership, Benfer was named one of Chicago’s 40 Promising Lawyers Under 40 by the National Law Journal. Her writings focus on her career in social justice and advocacy and her Peace Corps experiences in Belize, Zimbabwe, and Thailand. An English major and a writing minor, Benfer credits her PC professors with teaching her to write.
“They weren’t afraid to be critical and to challenge me to push boundaries,” she said. “I learned that literature was not about creating a world in which to escape; it is about diving into the human experience and finding the common elements that connect us.”
Benfer advised students to “pay attention to what grounds you, pay attention to life in a thoughtful way. Be present and ask why things are the way they are.”
She applauded students who strive to become strong writers. “Even if you’re not publishing novels, you are developing the ability to communicate. The ability to do that puts you heads and tails above your competition,” she said.
The authors, who earlier in the day participated in classes, toured the campus, and met with students and faculty, advised students to keep writing.
“I tell my students to write everything down because it’s very helpful to have a collection of observations, thoughts, and story ideas,” said Espach. “You’d be amazed how many details you would forget.”
“Keep writing in various forms,” said Hartigan. “You can write a quick article, essay, or short story and submit it because you never know what may become of it. It could be a couple of chapters of your next novel.”
Students in the audience said they appreciated hearing from the alumni authors.
“It’s really great that PC offers things like this,” said Courtney Saponaro ’17 (Bellingham, Mass.) “It’s kind of inspiring.”
“It’s cool when you can relate to these authors, and one of them is your teacher,” said Anna Munroe ’17 (New Providence, N.J.). “They came from the exact same starting point as we do.”
