Seniors Keegan Brown and Katelyn Rieder have been chosen by Liberal Arts faculty to receive the Department of Liberal Arts award this year.
Keegan is majoring in Liberal Arts with a concentration in history and a minor in Educational Studies. Katelyn is a Liberal Arts major with an English concentration and minors in Communication and New Media Studies and Creative Writing
Both avid readers, they willingly pinpointed one novel from among many favorites when asked to talk about one from their four years at the Mount.
Katelyn’s choice was “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” by Ocean Vuong, which New York Times readers picked as one of the 100 best books of the 21st century. She was able to make connections to her own life in the book, which critic Ron Charles describes as “a lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universal…Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning.” A writer herself, Katelyn was drawn to this story of Little Dog writing to his Vietnamese mother who can’t read and may never read his letter. She was fascinated to learn how Vuong wrote a lot of the book while physically sitting in a closet, a detail that struck her as a fellow writer.
Although Keegan is “not a fantasy person” and generally finds this genre “boring,” he spoke about J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” which Dr. Drew Shannon introduced him to this semester in his course “Of Dragons, Wizards, Goblins, and Elves: Fantasy Literature from Tolkien to the Present.” Having enrolled in this course because he wanted to try some fantasy novels, Keegan says, “I loved this book, and discovered that fantasy can be good if it’s done well.”
Among the highlights of Katelyn’s years as a Liberal Arts major, one she remembers with pride was being invited by creative writing teacher Dr. Brian Whalen to do an independent study with him to continue working on a piece from the previous semester.
“It meant a lot that he recognized my talent and wanted to continue to give me his attention and feedback,” she says. Her novel-in-progress is titled “Afterworld.”
Keegan is proud to claim the status of a “founding member” of the one-credit Writer’s Block course, enrolling all eight semesters of his Mount career. He feels privileged to have worked with all four of the English faculty who mentored creative writers in Writer’s Block over his four years: Professors Elizabeth Barkley, Jeffrey Hillard, Elizabeth Mason and Brian Whalen.
“I loved having a chance to write from prompts and give feedback to others writers on their creative work,” he says. “Some of my best writing has come from prompts Writer’s Block professors gave us.”
He remembers receiving a small slip of paper from Dr. Mason with the phrase “footsteps in a hospital hallway,” and thinking “that would be like the sound a can of spray paint makes when someone is creating graffiti.” From that insight flowed his short story “Painting the Town Orange.”
Keegan and Katelyn look forward to careers where they can draw upon their liberal arts education and their writing skills. After graduation, Keegan will take a gap year, hoping to find work related to his interests, perhaps in municipal government or a museum, as he begins applying to doctoral programs in history. Katelyn is already applying for jobs that involve writing, such as marketing or communication, doing work similar to her co-op the past few years with the Sisters of Charity Communication Office. And, of course, she will continue for her creative writing.
When Katelyn remembers applying to “a lot of colleges” four years ago, she is happy that she chose the Mount.
“The one-on-one attention from professors in all departments is special, and I feel close to all who have taught me,” she says.
Keegan adds, “Every professor is here because they care and they want to teach.”