The Allegheny College English department will host the latest installment of the Single Voice Reading Series, featuring authors and faculty sharing their work and insights into the literary world, on Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. in the Tillotson Room.
Assistant Professor of English Lauren Holmes will be reading from her short story collection “Barbara the Slut and Other People” and will likely read a second unfinished non-fiction work tentatively titled “Such a Bad Dog.”
Department Chair and Associate Professor of English Matthew Ferrence will be introducing Holmes at the Single Voice reading event.
“She’s like a multi-tool narrative writer who has come to us with quite a bit of experience teaching creative writing, primarily a fiction writer and a screenwriter,” Ferrence said. “She is someone who can cross different thresholds in our program and meet students in a different way than we’ve had before which we’re excited about.”
Holmes went to Hunter College for her MFA in fiction and during her thesis, she wrote a collection of short stories that later turned into her book “Barbara the Slut.” The book is about a woman who pretends to be a lesbian to work in a lesbian sex toy store.
Through teaching, Holmes said she has continued growing as a writer as she learns along with her students. Some course materials she uses include scripts, shows and movies.
“I think just being engaged in the act of talking about writing and craft keeps those things at the forefront of my mind,” Holmes said. “In some cases, materials I’ve sourced and prepared for classes have made a big impact on my own work.”
One of Holmes’ greatest strengths in teaching is her ability to focus on the fundamentals of character-based storytelling, according to Ferrence
“In the class I was observing — it was an advanced workshop last fall — she made a comment thinking about the difference between plot and story,” Ferrence said. “I think this is indicative of her immense talents and skills as a professor of creative writing.”
Holmes explained that her literary process has involved letting go of the pressure for her work to progress in a specific direction.
“I try to be open to all my ideas about the project and also recognize that my first ideas may not be my final ideas,” Holmes said. “For example, in my current work in progress, I’ve started completely over from a blank page three times, with different formats and scopes, and within each of those rounds I’ve done many drafts.”
According to Holmes, many of the themes in her writing have unintentionally come up later in the process.
“I think for ‘Barbara the Slut,’ some of the common threads in the stories are identity and searching for belonging,” Holmes said. “Those themes have extended to my other work as well.”
In Holmes’ latest project, she explores her search for identity through her experience with adopting a misbehaved dog in her late 20s.
“She helped me figure out who I was going to be as an adult,” Holmes said. “And she gave me an immediate sense of belonging; she was my family.”
Throughout Holmes’ career, she has overcome setbacks and is now grateful for the new paths that have opened because of them. During her publishing journey, her current work-in-progress was rejected in the early version which has led her to start over multiple times and explore different directions.
“Many of the setbacks I’ve faced in my creative career have ultimately been for the best,” Holmes said. “Thinking back to when I applied to MFA programs straight out of college and didn’t get into a single one, that felt like a huge setback at the time.”
Two years after applying to MFA programs for the first time, Holmes re-applied and was accepted in an MFA program she had not applied to the first time.
“I met wonderful mentors, wonderful friends and readers I wouldn’t have met if it hadn’t gone that way,” Holmes said. “It’s the same thing with the initial proposal for my current book, because if it had somehow been accepted, it would have been a very different book than it is now. And I’m glad I’m writing this version.”
Professor of English and organizer of the Single Voice series Christopher Bakken said students will have the opportunity to ask questions and encourages them to ask questions about anything that comes to mind.
“There is something profound about attending a literary reading and simply swimming in someone else’s language,” Bakken said. “I encourage people to come and take notes — not necessarily to summarize what happened, but to record the experience of letting words impact them physically.”