Pearl S. Buck centennial graduation anniversary celebration begins with Anchee Min lecture

Speaking at Randolph College allowed Anchee Min to answer some long-held questions about Pearl S. Buck, one of her literary inspirations who graduated in the Class of 1914.

“I said yes to this invitation because I was very curious about this College,” said Min. “I wanted to know what kind of school had prepared and shaped Pearl Buck’s mind at the critical thinking level and also at the global level.”

Anchee Min signs books after her lecture at Randolph College.

Min, a novelist and memoirist, visited Randolph this week to begin a celebration of Buck’s centennial graduation anniversary. Tuesday afternoon, she attended a combined session of two writing classes and talked about the process of writing, her life in China, and her respect for Buck. She shared her story during a public lecture.

As a child, Min spent her summers not far from the region of China where Buck grew up. She first heard of Buck, though, when she was in middle school, and students were assigned to write essays denouncing Buck and her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Good Earth, which teachers and communist leaders claimed was insulting to Chinese peasants.

Decades later, Min was given a copy of The Good Earth while on a book tour in the United States. Reading the novel she had once denounced was an awakening experience. “I have never read any authors who portrayed our peasants with such love, affection, and compassion,” she said. She decided right then she would someday write a book about Buck.

Min told the audience at Randolph how she set out to learn more about Buck, visiting Buck’s home and interviewing many people who knew her. She wrote Pearl of China, a novel that portrays Buck as the friend of a young Chinese girl. Central to the book is her depiction of Buck as a loving and compassionate person. “Pearl Buck never lost her love and her faith in China,” Min said.

Visiting writer positions named for Pearl S. Buck and Anne Spencer

Randolph College has renamed two of aspects of its Visiting Writers program in honor two authors with ties to the College and Lynchburg: Anne Spencer and Pearl S. Buck, a member of the Class of 1914.

Laura-Gray Street, an English professor and coordinator of Randolph’s creative writing program, announced the new names yesterday during an event celebrating the centennial anniversary of Buck’s graduation from the College. “Both women were from small towns and small colleges, and they produced very powerful writing and changed the world in significant ways,” Street said. “This acknowledges our debt to these writers, and it honors their connections with the College.”

Buck graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in 1914 and later won the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature. She authored more than 100 books, stories, and essays, including many that helped bridge cultural gaps between China and the west.

Anne Spencer, a well-known Harlem Renaissance poet and civil rights activist, lived in Lynchburg with her husband, who delivered mail to the College. She also occasionally met with students from R-MWC at her home. Through a formal partnership, the College and the Anne Spencer House and Garden Museum work together to provide educational opportunities to students.

Street said it is fitting to honor these women. “These are authors who we hold up as examples for our own writers here,” Street said. “Anne Spencer was an important civil rights activist and did a lot in the community. Pearl Buck’s writing takes you into the experience of another culture and immerses you in it in a way that helps you understand things that are very different than your own lives and experiences.”

The College hosts several writers each year for four-week sessions during which they focus on writing, teach a class, and give public readings. Clifford Garstang, a fiction writer who is at Randolph this fall and will give a public reading tonight, is the first official Pearl S. Buck Writer-in-Residence. Last month, Garstang won the Library of Virginia 2013 Literary Award for Fiction for his novel What the Zhang Boys Know, which tells the story of a Chinese family living in America.

Shara Lessley, a widely published poet and author of Two-Headed Nightingale, will be the first Anne Spencer Poet-in-Residence and will give a public reading on March 26, 2014.

The College’s emerging writer position, which brings a writer who has not yet published a full-length book, has been renamed the Randolph Writer-in-Residence.

The Randolph College Visiting Writer Series is supported by The Carolyn Wilkerson Bell ’65 Visiting Scholar Fund, which was created and endowed through the generosity of the Maier Foundation, Inc. in 1976. The Foundation inaugurated the Visiting Scholar Program in order to encourage excellence in the composition of English prose and poetry at the College.

Faculty member tracks sightings of rare white deer

Randolph faculty and staff members have been fascinated lately with sightings of rare white deer.

Doug Shedd, the Catherine Ehrman Thoresen `23 and William E. Thoresen Professor of Biology, said white deer of any kind are fairly rare, and true albino deer are nearly unheard of. But last year, some members of the College community noticed a ghostly white deer near the campus and began asking Shedd about it.

Since then, Shedd has collected information on white deer sightings, including descriptions and photos. He has seen white deer a couple of times near the College campus, and some have reported seeing a deer on campus.

Shedd has determined that there are multiple white deer in the neighborhood, although most probably are not true albino deer.

Anyone seeing a white deer in the area can contact Shedd with details about the sighting so he can learn more about the campus wildlife.

Visiting writer Clifford Garstang teaching at Randolph, will give public reading Nov. 13

Just a few weeks after winning a statewide literary award for fiction writing, Clifford Garstang is teaching Randolph College students about the craft of writing.

Garstang is Randolph’s writer-in-residence this fall. In addition to teaching a class, he will give a public reading from his novel What the Zhang Boys Know at 8:15 p.m.Wednesday, November 13, in the Alice Ashley Jack Room in Smith Memorial Hall.

What the Zhang Boys Know tells the stories of people who live in the same condominium complex in Washington, D.C., but focuses on a Chinese father and his sons. The book recently won the Library of Virginia 2013 Literary Award For Fiction.

Garstang practiced law for 20 years before he decided it was time for a change. Having always had a love for fiction writing, he turned to his master of fine arts training and started on his first collection of short stories. “It was a new millennium; it seemed like an auspicious time to make a switch,” said Garstang.

His first book, In an Uncharted Country, was a collection of linked short stories that shared some characters as well as the setting. This book caught the attention of Bunny Goodjohn, director of the Writing Program, and Sarah Taylor ’12 when Taylor was working on a collection of linked stories for a senior honors project. “We both fell in love with the work,” said Goodjohn.

While at Randolph for the visiting writer program, Garstang is teaching a special topics class in creative writing. By the end of the class, students will have each finished a short story. Garstang also has encouraged other types of writing. He took students to the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College and each wrote a short piece of ekphrastic flash fiction.

Goodjohn is glad to have Garstang here for the class and for Wednesday’s reading. “He’s a great storyteller and a generous teacher. The combination makes for a wonderful visiting writer,” she said.

Summer Research project plays in film festival this weekend

This weekend, independent film lovers in Oregon will watch a film made at Randolph College.

Beholder, which was created as part of the Randolph College Summer Research Program this year, was accepted in the Mt. Hood Independent Film Festival in Hood River, Oregon. Beholder will be screened at 10 a.m. Saturday, November 9.

“Being accepted to the Mt. Hood Film Festival was both incredibly exciting and validating,” said Ashley Peisher ’15, one of the students who worked on the film. “It’s easy to fall in love with something you pour your time and abilities into, so it was fantastic to hear that it was valued by others on such a level. It felt like we had done the message justice.”

Beholder tells the story of a man who carries his ailing father into the mountains in hopes that his father will learn to see the beauty in the world. Jim Peterson, a Randolph English professor who retired this year, wrote it as a play. Peisher worked with Sonja Cirilo ’15, former Randolph theatre professor Mace Archer, Randolph videographer Skip Wallace, and others to turn the play into a short film. They recorded it on a nearby mountainside in June.

As part of the Summer Research Program, they explored the techniques used in adapting a play for the screen. The experience helped the students learn about everything from storyboarding to post-production editing. “I’ve tried to branch out as much as I can within our theatre department, so it was a truly beautiful experience to dip my toes into film,” Peisher said. “It has given me a new perspective on the difference between the two crafts.”

Corban Addison to speak at Randolph Nov. 13

Only a few years ago, Corban Addison had no idea how widespread human trafficking and forced prostitution had become, infesting cities and towns across the United States as developing countries. His wife suggested a novel on the topic, and after months of heart-wrenching research, he wrote A Walk Across the Sun.

Addison will speak at 7 p.m. November 13 in Nichols Theatre in the Randolph College Student Center.

The book details the adventures of a lawyer who sets out to rescue two Indian girls who were kidnapped and forced into prostitution after a tsunami ravaged their village. Jennifer Dugan, a political science professor at Randolph, invited Addison so students could learn from him about human trafficking, which remains a pervasive global problem.

“It’s one vivid and disturbing form of human insecurity that paradoxically gets worse when the global economy does better,” Dugan said. “It’s one of the more complex issues of our time.”

Dugan hopes students with an interest in global politics and issues will come away with ideas about long-term solutions to human trafficking, but she also hopes students interested in creative writing will learn about the process of translating real-life research into a fictional story.

In addition to his speech Wednesday evening, Addison will visit two classes and eat lunch at Randolph on November 14 to hold further discussions with students.

Retired faculty member donates fossils to Randolph College Natural History Collection

The Randolph College Department of Biology held a reception Nov. 1 to celebrate the donation of about 300 fossils to the Randolph College Natural History Collection.

Chris Goldman, right, donated fossils which
Will Guzman '15 cleaned for Randolph's
natural history collection.

Chris Goldman, a retired Randolph political science professor, and his wife, Carol, donated the fossils and attended the reception.

Goldman has a personal interest in fossils and has collected many found in Virginia and West Virginia. Earlier this year, he decided to donate his personal fossil collection to the College. Students who work with the Natural History Collection moved the fossils to the campus, and Will Guzman ’15 helped clean the fossils and restored a storage cabinet for them this summer.

The fossils are now part of the College’s multi-faceted collection of preserved artifacts that allow students to examine natural history up close. The collection includes bones, rocks, minerals, birds, insects, and other animals that have been preserved for study.