Tag Archives: author

The Hazel I. Jackson Lecture Series featuring Amina Gautier

Next Thursday November 7th from 7pm – 9pm in the SMC MPR 114, Millersville will welcome award-winning author Amina Gautier for a reading as part of the annual Hazel I. Jackson Lecture series. She will will share some of her work and also discuss her life, especially as an artist, followed by a time for Q&A. Amina Gautier specializes in the short story genre. She has published over 140 short stories, many of them collected in her four books, which have won major awards. In 2018 Gautier became the first African American woman to win the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story,  an award that recognizes writers who have demonstrated exceptional achievement in the short story form. Gautier’s most recent collection The Best That You Can Do was mentioned by Oprah in her February’24 “best new books” recommendations.

Dr. Katarzyna Jakubiak, Associate Professor of English at Millersville, shares her thoughts on The Best That You Can Do:

I’ve read this collection, and I am captivated.  Most of the pieces are flash fiction and have a powerful lyrical quality. The first section is partly autobiographical, based on Gautier’s experience of growing up in Brooklyn. Like Gautier, the young characters negotiate their dual African American and Puerto Rican identities, switching to different codes and rhythms during summers spent in PR, as well as building their sense of self on tropes found in popular 80s TV shows. Gautier is also quite original at portraying women’s experiences – paying attention to women of all ages and various social standings, masterfully blending the personal and the political.

You can check out more about Gautier on her website or take a look at her works like The Best That You Can Do (2024) and The Loss of All Lost Things (2016).

This event is sponsored by the Hazel I. Jackson Committee. See the incredible list of previous Hazel I. Jackson Lecturers here.

 

 

Highlights from Reading and Conversation Event with Julia Fiedorczuk

This week, Millersville welcomed renowned Polish writer, poet, translator, and researcher Julia Fiedorczuk on the last stop of her North American tour. She read from her latest collection of poetry, Psalms, which was awarded the prestigious Wisława Szymborska Prize in Poland in 2018 as well as selections from her unreleased novel, The House of Orion, providing context and insight on her process and conceptual and physical groundings.

She sat facing us, a mixed crowd of approximately 40 community members, faculty, and students, in a red armchair in the Ford Atrium. Beside her, Dr. Katarzyna Jakubiak acted as moderator and co-presenter as each poem presented was read twice, first in Polish by Fiedorczuk and then in English by Dr. Jakubiak. Fiedorczuk remarked that she prefers to not read her poems aloud in English stating “I can’t read them not because I dislike them, they’re beautiful, but because Polish is so connected to me,” expressing a gratefulness to Bill Johnston, the translator for both Psalms and an earlier work Oxygen. The depth of her connection was evident, even to non-Polish listeners. She spoke in a soft breathy voice with conviction and pressing flow, transporting the audience in gentle percussive insistence into her work that interweaves narratives of human trauma and resilience with environmental beauty and catastrophe.

In simultaneously engaging two often juxtaposed topics, she masterfully shapes a dialogue that addresses both the ongoing climate crisis and human crises (most notably the great migration crisis in Europe that begin around 2013) challenging divisions of science and humanities, noting that these are the same struggle. The ongoing loss of biodiversity is inextricable from the loss of human life and language and vice versa. As such, Fiedorczuk powerfully argues for “science to be informed by poetry” stating that “literature needs to be precise and science needs to be imaginative.” Poetry specifically offers the ability to tap into human imagination that she describes saying, “imagination is a wonderful thing and imagination is a wild thing,” noting that human imagination is collective and often “more than” human. This ability to place ourselves in collective imaginings is key to understanding Psalms that explores the complicated interplay of two primary emotions: despair and joy.

Placing these two emotions in confluence creates a needed perspective that shares moments of the “absolute unconditional acceptance of life” and the “possibility of having real authentic joy” in the face of the complex fears of global climate and humanitarian issues. This is partly accomplished by centering the physical experience of language drawing from its oral beginnings and exploring how “little portions of sound” can create meaning. Describing this work as a “somatic translation,” that is partially a translation and interpretation of the Biblical poems of the same name, Fiedorczuk studied Hebrew and even memorized some of the verses so she could sing them and embody the experience of language. Despite the religious nature of the original material, she emphasized that her poems are not religious at all. They are “prayers” but only in the sense that they address someone who can potentially respond – like a crying child, who uses sound before they can construct meaning, is still calling someone, addressing someone. In this way, her Psalms are meant to invite or invoke another presence.

Humble and honest, Fiedorczuk also shared her struggle to find relevance as a writer in the face of such extreme human and natural suffering. After visiting the Białowieża Forest in 2021, a place for her that is rooted in mystical reverence as it is one of the oldest forests in Europe, she found herself questioning her value as a writer while witnessing the struggles of migrants who were displaced in the forest, sold on a false dream that it would offer an easy way to enter Europe. Her doubts about whether or not it was meaningful for her to write anymore had overtaken her until a friend reminded her “but that’s what you do, just do your job.” This experience is reflected in her poem “Cold” that states “Even when bombs are falling you ought to write” that also uses part of a phone call from someone who became trapped in the forest as part of Poland’s response to the migration crisis. She recognizes that her approach to these circumstances is not necessarily a solution, stating that while writing is “not going to solve problems, I’m a writer and that’s my contribution.” She also stated that even in the face of the global epidemic of hopelessness and numbness, “something can always be done” and that there is “always a way to help someone. Always a way to deeply care for someone or something.”

For many of us in the discipline of English and World Languages studies, that way is writing. Fiedorczuk suggests that when we feel hopelessness creep into our own lives to practice “place writing” that centers noticing and knowing what is immediately around you, leaving preconceived ideas behind; “start where you are, start with small things, start with noticing what’s around you.” In so doing, writing can allow us to build new ways of knowing and practice resiliency and recognize that “this life is extremely valuable, and we cannot wait for all these crises to be over because that may never happen. The art is to live in the present.”

 

We are very grateful to Julia Fiedorczuk for visiting and sharing her work (despite a twisted ankle!) and to Dr. Jakubiak and the Department of English and World Languages for hosting the event. Read selected poems from her latest book Psalms here: https://www.harvardreview.org/content/psalms/?fbclid=IwAR3mIzvhCxFtylEXd948anhK5FyyH-wpdsjrbKPsxyZBTaOHC8uwD_tz-rs