Our Summer Literary Festival concludes each year with a celebratory reading featuring Young Writers Camp participants. The focus of this year’s festival was What Would Nature Do? Young Writers Camp instructors Derek Delgado and Donna Peacock explored with students ways they have been inspired by nature and experimented with bringing these muses to the page in prose and poetry. The following is one of the stories that was created during the Young Writers Camp:
“BIOHAZARD”
By: Javi Fernández, age 11
Julian Maldonado, age 10
A stick and some moss were laying on the ground by a nuclear plant. Suddenly the alarms went off. The nuclear plant exploded, nuclear waste going everywhere and melding the moss and the stick together, giving it a temporarily paralyzed mind. A month later a 10-year-old boy, Teddy, finds it and takes it to his tree house to use as a duster. The boy uses it once, then leaves it in a corner and forgets about it. Twelve years later the moss stick comes out of its coma realizing it can think and move independently. It names itself “Gorge” and heads into the forest. Thinking he’s still a plant, he tries to put himself in a tree. Suddenly a bird lands on him pushing him off onto a turtle, and he walks away saying, “Why were you in my way?!” Then the turtle says, “Where are your manners?” And Gorge says, “What are manners?” And the turtle says, “Oh, you aren’t educated,” and the turtle taught him everything that Gorge should know. Being educated, he names himself Frederick, and goes out to get a job. He tries to work at a law firm. They all ran away, scared. Then he tries to work as a mechanic, but he gets kicked out. After that he tries to work as a warehouse helper. They all hide from him. Dismayed, Frederick tries to work at McDonald’s. But the workers all walk away. Feeling useless, Frederick goes back to the tree house. Just then Teddy comes back from college. Then, he and Frederick team up to protest against nuclear waste and stuff.
Ed. Note: Javi Fernández and Julian Maldonado will attend NEISD’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Middle School this Fall. “Gorge” is pronounced “George.” One of the authors explains that when “Gorge” named himself the first time, he was not yet educated.
Mobi Warren, a local educator and master naturalist, leads monthly Haiku Hikes through the inspirational terrain at Government Canyon State Natural Area. As an environmental activist/poet, she has organized poetry readings at Mitchell Lake Audubon Center and at Luminaria 2010. Warren is also an experienced workshop facilitator who loves to weave observations of the natural world into everyday happenings.
Warren will teach the class, Dawn and Dusk: Crepuscular Writing, during Gemini Ink’s Summer Literary Festival. The class will take place July 18th-20th at Government Canyon State Natural Area and Gemini Ink. At the state park, class participants will hike at dawn and dusk, create journal entries about their experiences, and then, craft their journal entries into poems at Gemini Ink.
Gemini Ink intern Iris Ayala interviewed Warren about her upcoming class, the relationship between nature and art, her favorite poem about nature, and the current state of the environment.
Local college professor, San Antonio Current columnist and editor, and employee at the public library, Lyle Rosdahl manages to juggle each vocation and still find time to put pen to paper for his personal writing. Additionally, Rosdahl journals, communicates, and encourages other writers via his website. Incorporating both Oulipo, a literary technique that advocates constraints in writing, and flash fiction, Rosdahl continues to produce innovative and inspiring pieces for the writing community.
Rosdahl will conduct the class, Structural Biomimicry in Short Prose, during Gemini Ink’s Summer Literary Festival. The class will be held the week of July 12 through July 15. Class participants will examine some of nature’s processes and models and use those insights to create similar structures within their writing.
Gemini Ink intern Megan Peak interviewed Rosdahl and discussed his writing process, fascination with Oulipo, and what inspires him to write.
Gemini Ink’s summer faculty member Mobi Warren and Communications Director Jennifer Herrera were featured along with Sandra Cisneros in July’s SA ArtsBeat program. The episode spotlights literary arts in San Antonio, focusing on Gemini Ink’s upcoming Summer Literary Festival and Cisneros’s Macondo Foundation. To view the program, visit SAHearts.com or watch SA ArtsBeat three times a week on TVSA (cable channel 21); Mondays, 7 pm, Tuesdays, 10:30 am and Fridays, 4 pm.
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