People’s Books and Culture Reading Features Creative Writing Program
December 9, 2019
Jazz music played in the low light of the newly named People’s Books and Culture (formerly Penn Book Center) on Wednesday, Dec. 4, when UArts Creative Writing Program Director Zach Savich and MeeRee Orlandini BFA ’19 (Creative Writing) were invited to read. People’s Books and Culture is an independent bookstore that has been open and serving the community for 57 years.
The event was a celebration of Jonathan Blum’s selection of short stories, The Usual Uncertainties, which “explores the ways our divergent histories tether us together and at times push us completely apart.” Blum explained how his experience as a Jewish person informed the crafting of his text, and read from his short story, “The White Spot,” about a boy who accompanies his physician father to work after his parents’ divorce. The story is woven together with accounts of the Holocaust that ask readers to grapple with perceptions of life and death.
Savich’s reading also focused on these questions through an excerpt from Diving Makes the Water Deep, a memoir about his diagnosis with cancer. Savich spoke candidly about his father’s struggle with the same illness and the way he combines moments of humor with the realities of living with a cancer diagnosis.
Orlandini read poetry from her upcoming collection, Sleeping With Heroes, and her senior thesis, including a poem dedicated to poet Adrienne Rich. She also spoke about how her work with children has impacted her poetry. For example, a recent visit to the Museum of Natural History with the children she nannies inspired a poem. “To love something means it must belong to us,” Orlandini read from the poem in reference to one the exhibits in the museum.
The event concluded with a discussion among Blum, Savich and Orlandini about their writing influences. Blum pointed out the cliche that many authors find themselves in when asked who they write for, usually saying “themselves.” He challenged this perception by pointing out that it is often more complicated than that. In Blum’s perspective, a writer certainly writes for themselves but always should have another audience in mind for their work.