Creative Writing Graduate Students on Access Utah

Last semester, English Department graduate students in Professor Jennifer Sinor’s creative nonfiction writing workshop focused on how to write joy and sorrow. Jennifer says, “Both of these experiences take us to non-verbal spaces, places where language fails—so writing about them is a difficult craft challenge. In many ways, we explored how joy and sorrow are contingent upon one another—that it is difficult to write about joy without naming sorrow and that explorations of sorrow often seek moments of joy.” Recently, the class had the opportunity to speak on Utah Public Radio’s show, “Access Utah,” about what they learned through the class about their writing of joy and sorrow.

One of the main texts that students looked to was The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. Every day, Gay writes what he calls a “delight” to increase the joy in his life, not to decrease the pain or sadness. The students in the class took the same challenge and found they wanted to share the joy of delights. One student in the class, Clarissa Casper, works for UPR and pitched the idea of the class going on the show. “We wanted people to hear each of our voices and we knew that a discussion of our delights would foster the most interest,” Mya Bethers says. “As a class, our main goal was to inspire others to write their own delights, and we knew ‘Access Utah’ would give us that opportunity.”

The students each shared a delight on the show, including stories of making people laugh at a restaurant, seeing others take photos of the sunset, learning about a family’s trip to the library, and realizing mistakes were part of being human. Mya reflects, “As I've trained myself to see delights in my life, I've gained a more optimistic view of the natural world and people around me. I feel more gratitude for the small things in life and I find it easier to share that joy with others.”

Amber McCuen shared that many of the delights she wrote about came from the English 1010 class she taught as a graduate instructor. “A lot of the time, they were a bright spot in my day, and I'm really going to miss them,” she says. “I can only speak for myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if, for a lot of other instructors in the English program, their students were also spots of delight in their day.”

Beyond the delights, the class discussed what they learned through the class. Paul Burdiss discussed the examined versus the unexamined life: “The idea in its broadest scope is that our self-examination, thinking about what we're thinking and doing in our daily lives, can lead to a broadened perspective on life, empathy for others and more generally positive outcomes for ourselves and our relationships with others.”

As the class wrote about joy and sorrow throughout the semester, they came to understand the intersection between the two. Amber explains, “A similarity that we found between the two of them is that when you're at the height of joy or in a depth of sorrow, both of them are quite isolating feelings. Experiencing either of them is often an experience that is hard to communicate, and that would be difficult for someone else to fully understand. When you're experiencing either one of them as well, it can often feel in the moment as if that is how you're always going to feel. They're both very all-encompassing.”

Ryker Eggenberger said he found joy and sorrow to be inseparable. “I have often heard that sorrow is necessary because it helps you understand joy, but as part of this class and the experiences I have put to writing, I see sorrow as more than just a counterpart to joy. Sorrow holds its own meaning and value that is just as important to our human experience as joy. Sorrow helps us know the truth of things, breeds empathy, and enriches our lives with depth and texture. Writing the truthfulness of life requires both sorrowful and joyful stories, and where one is found the other isn't far,” he reflects.

The students shared their newfound appreciation for writing about joy as they’ve often written about sorrow. “In the realm of writing, we noticed that most people engage with stories of sorrow. We discussed that this may be because as humans, we often want to know that in our moments of sorrow, we are not alone. Because of that, joy is something that isn't written about as much. But really, we all came to learn through writing these delights that the joy is just as interesting because more often than not, the sorrow lies within that moment as well,” Mya comments.

Amber reflected on her own habit of writing about sorrow more often than joy and said she is going to make a dedicated effort to write about the positive: “It's harder to write about happier things because there's an inherent gravitas that comes with heavier subjects. When writing something positive, it's very easy to feel that you aren't answering the question of ‘Why should this exist?’ So that's something I want to practice working against, and I want to try to balance out the more taxing subjects in my writing.”

The students said going on “Access Utah” was a new, positive experience. “I've never been on radio before, so it was interesting to me to see the behind-the-scenes of a live broadcast like that,” Paul says. Ryker adds, “Sharing our delights together for so many people to hear was incredible, and every moment we spend together makes me so happy. I also cherish any opportunity to get my writing out to the world, so big thanks to UPR  and anyone who listened.”

Mya included that the experience gave her a strong appreciation for radio in terms of writing: “It's a form of writing that employs different rhetorical elements to engage the audience. It's journalism at its finest, and this experience helped me realize how important that is for our community.”

The full radio show can be found here for anyone interested in listening.