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diversions
Talent abounds
at event
By Jamie Rogers
On-line Forty-Niner
The voice of a
child singing Chinese Opera filled the faculty development
center Thursday afternoon during the first annual Women's
Literary Conference.
Anchee Min, author
of the critically acclaimed memoir, "Red Azalea"
and novel "Katherine" was the first of three award
winning authors to speak at the event. While Min read passages
from her memoir, her daughter portrayed the life of a child
growing up in Maoist China through opera and ballet.
The English Students
Association organized the conference and it was a great success,
according to co-presidents Cassandra Hearn and Kelly Schendel,
"The place was packed," Schendel said. "It
was wall-to-wall people."
Following Min,
Janet Fitch, author of the New York Times best seller "White
Oleander," spoke. Her more traditional reading was as
enjoyable as Min's performance, according to Hearn. "She
really invoked the characters voices," she said.
According to Fitch,
the characters in "White Oleander" may have never
existed, had she followed advice she was given as a child.
"I showed
a teacher some of my work and she marked it all up in red,"
Fitch said. "There is a special place in Hell for teachers
like that."
Sena Jeter Naslund,
author of six novels including her latest, "Ahab's Wife,"
spoke, and agreed that writers and their critics should be
kind to a work, at least in its early phases.
"Writers need
to turn off their inner critic in the process of getting a
first draft done," she said. "Then revise, revise,
revise."
Members of ESA
said they were pleased with the authors' willingness to come
to Cal State Long Beach and talk with the students.
"They were
just regular people who write really good books," Jason
Murphy, ESA treasurer said. "[The students] were really
able to connect with them."
Dr. Sylvia Maxson,
assistant professor, said she was impressed with the members
of ESA for pulling an event like this together.
"It was just
wonderful," she said.
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