By Rose Caisley ‘26, W&M Libraries
Since 2019 Swem’s short story machine has been an outlet for students to take a break and relax from the stress of academic studies. With one, three, and five-minute stories, anyone can walk over to Swem’s entrance and grab a story. But this year, creative writing students at William & Mary have been given the opportunity to contribute their innovative ideas through a collaboration between W&M Libraries and the English department, organized by Professor Caitlin McGill and Instruction & Research Librarian Liz Bellamy.
“I reached out to Caitlin and she's newer, so we haven't really worked together before,” Bellamy said. “I wasn't sure how it would go, but she was immediately like, yes, let's do it.”
McGill, an English professor, started teaching at William & Mary a little more than a year ago. She specializes in non-fiction writing and teaches Creative Writing 465: Flash Nonfiction. “It teaches us so much about how to compress language and image and trust less words to communicate more," McGill said. Students were tasked with writing nonfiction stories of 8,000 characters or less (between 1,200 and 1,500 words). Once written and reviewed by McGill, they were added to the short story machine from November 18th through 22nd.
A reading of all the pieces was held on Wednesday, November 20th so the students could showcase their hard work to friends and fellow students. McGill said of the event, “[it’s] something that's really important to our class and I know the students have been working so hard to make that community and that's been really powerful…the power of coming together and celebrating their words out loud and having witnesses to listen and pizza to celebrate.”
“What we're doing with this project is showing students that consuming information is one side of the library, but also showcasing what students and professors can create as well is another big thing that we're trying to celebrate,” Bellamy said.
As for creative writing in the English department, McGill only had this to say, “we would love to hear from you to help you get into a creative writing class if you're trying!”