William Gillespie’s MFA Reading
William Gillespie’s MFA thesis reading at Brown University was a resounding success. William is the second writer to complete the Brown MFA creative writing program with an electronic writing fellowship (or third, if you count Noah). William enlisted me as his “band from New Jersey” to help with an Unknown reading to kick things off. It was the first time in a while that we read the Unknown without a screen and projector, with just the callbell to clue people to links. It worked pretty well. Although he didn’t have a screen or projector and wasn’t reading strictly electronic work, William did an excellent job of integrating interactivity and multimedia aesthetics into the rest of the reading, which included readings from his box of notebooks (the audience chose entries on the basis of titles) while harmonica blues played in the background, and a reading of a newspoem which juxtaposed a news story about a school shooting with a news story about a NASA malfunction arranged into a tapestry of sound that included outer-space radiation and a haunting walkie-talkie rendition of children running amuck as they shot up their school. Well done, Gillespie, and good luck with the next stage of your career.