A launch party for the book will be held from 5:30-6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Kennedy Library.
Ghost stories, hard times, love and the tale of the purple hippo are all narratives that can be found in a student-created book that asks locals how they #KeepMuncieWeird.
The 180 page book, titled “#KeepMuncieWeird … and Whimisical!,” contains 75 different stories based on different Muncie residents’ memories.
The book was written by 12 students in the English department’s immersive learning class “Creative Writing in the Community.” Darolyn “Lyn” Jones, the professor in charge of the class, tasked her students to find members of the Muncie community, write their memoirs and publish them within a single book.
“I told them it couldn’t be anybody on campus,” Jones said. “I told them, ‘You have to go way off campus. I want you to go to libraries, I want you to go to McDonald’s, I want you to go to bookstores, I want you to go to Walmart, I want you to ride the buses, I want you to go to community centers, I want you to go to nursing homes, I want you to get out.’”
The students were asked to write at least seven memoirs each on top of everyday coursework.
Once students found a subject willing to share their story, they interviewed them, wrote a first draft of the story and brought it back to the subject for approval, something senior creative writing major Vanessa Miracle-Haro said she was nervous about at first.
“I didn’t want to do that because I was like, ‘I’m trying my best and if they don’t like it, I don’t know what I’m going to do,’” Miracle-Haro said. “But after showing it to them and seeing their reactions, that they were really happy, it was amazing because it reminded me it was a collaboration, it’s not just about me.“
After getting approval from the community partner, each memoir went through several rounds of edits within the classroom, the best part for senior creative writing and rhetorical composition major Charlie Cain who acted as a teaching assistant for the course.
“Getting to work one-on-one with a lot of other writers was really fun for me,” Cain said. “In the writing department there’s a lot of work shopping but that always seems like it’s a one-off thing and that it’s over at the end of the class period. So my favorite thing was how that relationship didn’t end at the end of the classroom.”
Writing, editing, designing and publishing a book in a semester is no easy task, Jones said, but with the dedication of the students, she said they were able to pull it off.
“I had students who had classes over and done, some were even graduated, that still continued to work on it because that’s how much the project meant to them,” Jones said.
The final proof for the book, which features designs by Ball State students and photos from one of Jones’ students from her first year as a teacher, was complete July 1, a feat Jones said both she and her students were proud of.
“When you finish anything, before anybody else sees it, it sort of gets to be this private thing that all of the hopes that you want it to be are still sort of valid,” Cain said. “When you finish something, it can be really stressful because suddenly everybody else can have an opinion on it, but this project was something, where when we finished it, I was just really proud.”
The book is now fully complete and printed, though in a bit of a different way from past immersive learning products. In the past, all the immersive learning projects were printed, Jones said, but this year, she turned it into an independent press.
The book is now sold through 409 Press on Barnes and Noble and Amazon. This way, any funds earned from the $15 book can be put back into the course, which is also funded by an endowment from the Hiner family.
Jones said she is still hearing back from community members wanting to share their stories. In the future, Jones hopes to make it a year-long project. For now though, she is happy with the message the book has sent.
“We’re not just this university that sits by itself. We live and we reside in a town with people,” Jones said. “This project is critical, it says thank you for letting us be here. Thank you for supporting our university. We want to give something back. We want to honor who you are and your story. We value you.”
Contact Brynn Mechem with comments at bamechem@bsu.edu or on Twitter @BrynnMechem.
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