Start off your summer with the “Literary Reading with Wilkes Graduates” event at the Bowers Writers House on Saturday, May 11 from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. The event will showcase the current writing projects of three Elizabethtown College faculty and staff members: adjunct English professors Tyler Grimm and Jeff Minton and Integrated Marketing Manager Donna Talarico-Beerman and their current writing projects.
Grimm will share some of his young adult novel that will be released sometime next year. Minton will also share some of his varied works. Talarico-Beerman will provide a different, interesting writing style for the event and share a small portion of her own works.
After deciding to finally follow his true passion in his 20s, Grimm earned his graduate degree in creative writing in 2012 at Wilkes University. While Grimm is new to the profession, he is eager to see what the future holds. “Truthfully, I am new to this career. It’s been growing over the past three years or so. This major life and career transition has been a very recent one and, because of that, my experience is somewhat limited, but I look forward to many years as a writer and educator,” Grimm said. During his time at Wilkes, he wrote his first novel, which he will introduce to guests at the event. Grimm plans to read a portion of an earlier chapter which will highlight the love story between the two main characters and hint at the central themes of the story. The main character is involved in both a romance and a protest movement. “Subsequently, on his search for the truth about his love’s existence, he gets pulled deeper into the movement, where his life takes on a new purpose – stopping the revolutionary group’s violence while giving it social meaning. It also deals a lot of the fine lines separating love, addiction and madness, while examining how the media and pop culture affect the way we perceive reality, both in the past and in the present,” Grimm said. The still untitled novel is set to be released sometime within the next year.
Grimm is currently working on writing pieces for PANK magazine, polishing up short stories and working on the screenplay for a short film. However, Grimm will mostly be devoting his time to completing his first novel and working on his second novel, “High-Rise,” by working in an office on the side for research, an experience he is curious about.
Similarly, Minton is new to Etown after earning his masters degree at Wilkes. Minton moved from Kansas City, Mo. in January to teach here. After studying music to score films for six years, Minton discovered his love for writing in his mid-20s. “I find composing music and literature to be similar ventures, and the two greatly inform each other in my work,” Minton said. He will either be reading short excerpts from his novel about disc golf or one of his longer short stories. “I always imagined myself writing epic magical tales, full of action, humor and wonder, but what tends to come out are real-world moments of quiet significance. I’m something of a reluctant realist,” Minton said.
This summer, Minton will be finishing a novel about a young man living in a disc golf park and writing various short stories. He also plans to explore his other passion: music. “I’m also working on a pedagogical presentation for AWP, examining the orchestration of narrative voices as instruments,” Minton said.
Talarico-Beerman has been a part of the Etown family for three years. “I love the Etown campus and community. I love creating conversations and telling the Etown story,” Talarico-Beerman said. She is in charge of social media for the College and also has shared her experiences with the profession in presentations at many industry conferences. Prior to Etown, she worked in radio, both on air and as a promotion director. Additionally, she earned marketing experience while working for a digital marketing company.
Talarico-Beerman will be reading an excerpt from “Door to Door,” a piece which “explores my childhood being raised by popular entertainers in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains and follows me through adolescence, where a geographical leap would distance me from my adoptive father. I avoid being alone with my abusive, unemployed step-dad by starting an after-school job selling newspaper subscriptions door-to-door,” Talarico-Beerman said. Additionally, she will read an entry from a memoir project. This summer, she will be speaking at two conferences at Penn State University. She plans to spend most of her time revising “Door to Door” and working on Hippocampus, an online, creative nonfiction literary magazine in its third year. Additionally, she plans to spend time with her husband and enjoy the arts and culture of downtown Lancaster, where she lives.
The three Wilkes graduates are excited to present together. Their different contributions will make for an interesting event. Come out to the Bowers Writers House on May 11 at 7 p.m. for a real treat before departing for the summer.
