Writers' Festival

When I went to the Writers' Festival, I went to listen to Sarah Scoles, a 2007 Agnes Scott Alum. She read one story and another part of a story.

The first one was about a dorky elementary school student in fourth or fifth grade. Sarah mentioned that she portrayed a little more of herself in this child than in her usual characters. But, this particular little girl is the hall monitor at her school and is very unpopular and picked on constantly. So, of course, her mother decides to take a job at her school as the school's mascot which is a stallion. The little girl is very uneasy about this and she is pretty embarrassed actually. But, her only job is to protect her mother and to protect her identity from the kids at school. When her mom came to school to take pictures with the kids and stuff it was all okay until this little boy and little girl come up and order her to take her mask off and wrestle her until the stallion costume gets ripped on the arm, but the girl's mother's face is still a secret. During the end of the fight, the hall monitor and mascot protector was called a bitch by the other girl and that was when she expected her mom to step up and speak for her, but sadly, she stayed on the other side of the stallion suit. But, she still revealed that the stallion was her mom and asked if she could take off the mask, her mother, however, shook her head no. So, the stallion's identity remained a mystery to the kids in a way, unless they believed the hall monitor.

Her next story that she was going to tell was about another person in a costume, but she decided not to because she didn't want us to thik that she could only write stories about costumes which was pretty funny because she announced this to us.

She did not finish the second story, but what she did read was about an English teacher that hated her husband. It went between them fighting and her life back at school, which was a completely different life. She ends up having an affair with the female principal. But, the principal's husband is suspicious and she says that it has to stop. Then, there is a kid that got caught with drugs in the teacher's classroom and the principal asks her to confiscate the drugs. The last thing that she mentions is where the principal and the teacher are talking and we never find out what happens. She strands her audience in a state where we may never know what really happens. She stops in the middle I guess to kill us with suspense. I really wanted to know what happened, and there isn't any guarantee that that story will even be published because it is still currently just a maybe on the publishing list, according to Sarah. I find it ironic that she went to Agnes Scott and wrote about this kind of thing because, well, because there are a lot of sexual discrepancies here and it makes it that much funnier knowing that. I felt like this author had a lot of talent and her stories kept the whole audience laughing and wanting to know what was coming next. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Writers' Festival 2010.