Faculty from the creative writing department have published new works over the summer, including a book-length collection of short stories.
In his new book titled, Vox Populi, Dr. Clay Reynolds, director of creative writing a UT Dallas, puts himself in the shoes of a nameless and sometimes hapless narrator that moves through a series of casual encounters, mostly in the Southwest, with total strangers, average people going about day-to-day, often mundane activities.
“Once in a while, you just need to write a book that’s just for fun. This is one of those books. I hope that those who bother to look into it get a laugh or two of it and that, maybe, here and there, it provokes a thoughtful reflection,” Reynolds said.
The array of characters and voices in Vox Populi reveal both the comedy and the tragedy of individual life, and expose the unique humanity behind the anonymous faces of the ordinary person. Through their candid and unselfconscious revelations, they tell a composite story of the everyday individual moving through everyday life.
Reynolds and fellow creative writing faculty member Dr. Betty Wiesepappe both have published works in a new collection, A Shared Voice, issued by Lamar University Press. Wiesepappe’s story is “Getaway,” and Reynolds is called “Gethsemane.”
A Shared Voice is a conversation in narrative by twenty-four American fiction writers. A total of twenty-four tales, each linked to another by at least one literary element such as character or setting or theme, make up this anthology by writers from Texas and the Carolinas.
“It’s always an honor to be asked to contribute to a volume such as this one, and I’m very pleased that Dr. Wiesepappe and I were invited to write for it,” Reynolds added. “These kinds of collections might be called ‘rubric collections,’ or assemblies of original and sometimes previously published short fiction that all subscribes to or responds to a pre-determined theme.
Dr. Matt Bondurant, assistant professor in creative writing and literature, and Reynolds are also both represented in a new volume of short fiction called Dallas Noir. The book is a continuation of Akashic Books’ series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.