Four University graduate students graced the greenly lit stage at Gallery Art Bar on Wednesday evening, unveiling their original written works.
The bar’s monthly reading series, also known as VOICE, features University graduate students studying creative writing. This month’s event highlighted Tyler Moore, David Miller, Andrea Giugni and Gabriella Paz Hoggatt.
Moore, who serves as the associate managing editor and associate creative nonfiction editor for Ninth Letter, was the first to take the stage. He read from a piece titled “You’ve Been Discovered,” in which he repeatedly used the hypothetical phrase “Let’s say” while weaving sentimentality into a seemingly everyday tale surrounding the Boy Scouts.
“And if I say this now, it’s almost as if I said it then,” Moore said at the closing of his piece. “I said, ‘I love you, Javier. You too, Tony. I think I’ll love you forever.’”
Applause and hollering erupted from the nearly packed bar as Moore read those final words, allowing Miller a few more seconds to prepare himself before he took the stage. A fiction writer from Chicago, Miller is in the last year of his master’s program and works alongside Moore as an associate editor for Ninth Letter.
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Miller read from half a story titled “Chat Roulette.” The narrative follows a man who creates erotic scenarios on video chat sites but struggles to finish them adequately for the individual on the other end.
“But if it’s not his voice, if it’s not his face or voice, what is it?” Miller said. “Maybe it’s just chest. But it’s not like any of them have seen his chest. No one has, not in 10-plus years.”
Toward the end, the narrative reveals that the man suffers from funnel chest, or pectus excavatum, a condition where the breastbone is abnormally sunken. A surgical procedure to remove the cartilage causing the deformity led to six months of isolation, during which he turned to Chatroulette for companionship, forging “five-minute friendships.”
The first half of the event ended with a 15-minute intermission, allowing attendees to mix, mingle and order drinks from the bar.
After the break, Giugni, a self-described poet, editor and translator, read four poems. Her first piece — similar to Moore’s — repeatedly used the phrase “I wish you” to evoke the poem’s subject.
While she withheld explicit details, audience members still gained a sense of the subject through the speaker’s expressed desires.
Giugni then read a sonnet exploring her racial identity and the uncertainty she feels navigating a bigoted world. The poem concludes by emphasizing that, at the end of the day, she is the one who defines her identity.
“Of course, when I turn off the lights, I believe myself,” Giugni said.
The poet drew on her experiences living in South Florida for her final two pieces, “Hurricane Season, 2005” and “Florida Woman: Reprise.” In both works, Giugni transported the audience with vibrant imagery, immersing the audience in the unique atmosphere of Florida.
Hoggatt, a freelance writer and editor, followed Giugni with three diverse flash pieces. The first piece, “Sheer,” depicts a woman touring a glass supply company when things take an unexpected turn. Hoggatt leaves the audience in suspense, ending with a final image of the woman falling through the warehouse.
“As she falls, she falls through past shadows and low molten lights, and the walls close in on the room,” Hoggatt said.
The second piece was a fable about 100 mantises, exploring the cyclical nature of life and death woven throughout the story.
Hoggatt finished their set with “A story to tell a friend in the passing period, or a stranger in line at a busy café, or your sister during a commercial break with the TV on mute.” True to its title, the piece featured rapid-fire, jam-packed sentences.
To enhance the storytelling aspect, Hoggatt employed various vocal techniques, sweeping the audience through the story’s twists and turns.
When the readings concluded, the moderator opened the floor for questions from the audience. Each author answered questions posed by the audience and shared insights into their writing process.
The first discussion centered on the themes of cycle and repetition in poetry and prose. Miller emphasized the use of anaphora in his work to create agency and form.
“I’m very into writers who are excessive,” Miller said, referring to the technique used in his story. “So someone like Thomas Bernhard, who will repeat a word so much that it’s made strange.”
After an audience member mentioned how the master’s program at the University divides graduate students into fiction or poetry, the four also addressed the topic of genre. They questioned how this idea affected the authors’ writing processes and the concept of “blurring lines of genre.”
“I’ve been really interested in not trying to create a dichotomy between narrative and lyric and understanding that I can tell stories in ways that feel true to me in terms of my experiences of time and space and movement through those things,” Giugni said.
Finally, the writers responded to a question posed by The Daily Illini about how public readings might impact their writing process and final products.
“I’ve been really captivated with this idea that reading a poem aloud is publishing it, publishing it verbally,” Giugni said. “Thinking about the ways that my body is connected to my work … I think it ties in thematically. So that’s another level of energy.”
Moore added that he thought more about selecting his pieces than how the event would influence his approach. However, for Hoggatt, reading flash pieces involved additional preparation before presenting to the public.
“There was a bit of a process of practicing reading beforehand … just thinking about how pacing translates differently out loud,” Hoggatt said. “I think it’s certainly a fun transfiguration of a piece into this shared space.”
As the evening wrapped up, animated chatter hummed throughout the room, with audience members consistently praising the four authors. The event proved to be a memorable night of literature, staying true to Gallery Art Bar’s motto: “We cater to the creative in you.”
