Students shared their original writing pieces in front of their peers at Linfield’s annual Creative Writing Conference on Friday.

Three student panels took the podium, each sharing creative pieces with similar themes. Audience members asked the panelists questions about their writing processes after each group.

The first panel titled “‘Footprints Ingrained in Soil’: Magnetisms of Place and Person” consisted of pieces depicting the significance or importance of place to each writer.

Alex Trang Dinh read from his fiction work, “Returning” while Katie Higinbotham shared her poem. Emma Knudson read an essay called “Night-Song,” and Tor Strand and Quinn Reisenman both shared original poetry.

Each of the five readings in the second panel, “‘The Teeth of Spirits”: Five Hauntings,” creatively tied anxieties that are out of their control into their piece.

Gemma Jackson’s fiction work was about isolation and hope, or loss of hope.

“Toxic Bloom,” by Angelia Saplan, compared human loss to a crumbling civilization.

Rachel Bradshaw’s poem looked again at loss and different levels of harm.

Vera Heidmann read a nonfiction piece about the power of labels and how they create our identity.

Concluding the second panel, Sara Gomez read her nonfiction piece, “Chelsea,” which looked at how a “joyous occasion” can be turned sour by complications of a bad marriage.

During his keynote speech, Professor of English Lex Runciman told the audience some tips on writing that he has learned throughout his career. His advice included: “no one has experienced exactly what you’ve experienced [so] there will always be [a story] to conjure,” writing teaches patience, and “plans are good but surprise is essential.”

Writing pieces in the third student panel, “‘Everyone Act Cool”: Contemporary Anxieties and Absurdities,” all shared a common theme of anxiety and absurdity.

Jana Purington began with a nonfiction piece about her illogical reasoning of needing to kill a chicken in order to have the right to eat it.

Carlee Parsley followed with her fiction story about a man turning into a Tabby cat, rather than a werewolf, with each full moon.

“Unhappy” by Sammy West was a comical piece about a young woman comparing sex and death when suddenly a man emerges from a pool of spilled milk on the floor.

Benjamin Bartu read his poem, “A Word For Love,” which was an attempt to find a synonym.

A long-lost screenplay from the popular TV show The Office was written by Adam Myren. Using the framework of this show, Myren looked at the topic of Black Lives Matter under the absurd viewpoint of Micael Scott.

These stories in full length can be found in the next edition of CAMAS.