USF undergraduate student Karen Gonzalez-Videla鈥檚 first publication, 鈥�,鈥� appeared in Sidereal Magazine鈥檚 sixth issue. The piece was a midterm lyric essay, written and revised in Professor Gurleen Grewal鈥檚 course, LIT 3093 Contemporary Literature: Poetics of Loss, in spring 2020.
Amidst the grim disruptions of COVID-19 came the good news from Gonzalez-Videla. 鈥淭his was my first acceptance from a magazine and I could not be happier,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 just wanted to thank [Professor Grewal] for inspiring me to write it, and for teaching the art of memoirs, personal essays, and nonfiction in general so well! If it weren鈥檛 for [Professor Grewal鈥檚] class, I would have never written nonfiction and fallen in love with it.鈥�
Assignments in the Contemporary Literature course allowed for both analytical papers and creative nonfiction writing. Gonzalez-Videla responded to an assignment where students were asked to write about losses experienced, using as a model Brian Arundel鈥檚 short prose piece 鈥淭he Things I鈥檝e Lost.鈥�
鈥淒r. Grewal鈥檚 teachings and passion for nonfiction opened my eyes to the possibilities of this art, one that I will continue to explore for years, and I could not be more grateful.鈥� Gonzalez-Videla said. 鈥淎s a fiction writer, I had the incorrect idea that to write nonfiction meant to replace the creative use of language that I was used to with something uninteresting and tedious. And yet, I鈥檝e been at the height of my creativity when writing my now-published nonfiction essay 鈥楢 Catalog of the Events After I Boarded a Plane in Buenos Aires, Argentina.鈥欌��