Poet Stephanie Horvath and fiction writer Rogelio Juárez caught the audience’s attention and held it close in the Feb. 26 Stegner Fellow Reading. Reading from inventive and intricate work, Juárez and Hovarth reminded us of the reasons we unite around literature.

Each writer’s pieces shared entangled themes of how people live and breathe and how nature lives and breathes alongside them. From exploring deep life decisions to small everyday details, both readings stood potently and decisively. 

When creative writing program director Nicholas Jenkins took the stage in front of an eager audience, he introduced the evening as “a Stegner Fellow Reading like no other.” Jenkins emphasized the importance of community amid the “often lonely and arduous” act of writing. This theme of community and the power of words served as a strong undercurrent throughout the evening, a particularly relevant message as advancements in tech threaten to throw the arts off kilter. 

The voices of the Stegner Fellows are “the sounds of the future,” Jenkins said. 

Second-year Stegner Fellow Nevarez Encinias introduced Juárez with an excerpt from one of Juárez’s stories, highlighting how his work “narrates, and often prays for, change.” Juárez is able to write characters who are “as doubtful as they are devout,” said Encinias. Soon after, Juárez’s reading delivered on that promise.

As Juárez started to read three sections of a single story, the audience sat still and attentive. He managed to hold this attention, unwavering. The story began in a hospital setting, with a character afflicted with an unfamiliar disease — only a brief line is provided about a symptom of growing “multiple limbs.” 

When the first story section ended, Juárez said to “imagine some connective tissue” between the excerpts. “Also, imagine that it’s good,” he joked. 

The story’s plot wove in affectionate descriptions of food and traditions in a story about what it means to grow up in California. The narrator recounted learning about the mission system, “how death was always there… a slow, steady decimation.” 

Juárez’s story explored bigger life milestones, too. The story featured a female narrator in the throes of law school and the world of academia, hoping that “that everything would happen right on time.” Midway through, Juárez employed a volta, a literary turn, from the past into the future. More than heart-wrenching, the sweeping story seized minds and toyed with the bodily. 

Some time later, the sick character seems to have transformed into a tree (multiple limbs, anyone?). Though some audience members might have missed the eccentric evolution, Stegner Fellow Adedayo Agarau did not. Agarau said the event overall was “a never-been-done-before kind of reading” and added, “Rogelio was crazy.”

Next, Stegner Fellow Luciana Arbus-Scandiffio introduced Stephanie Horvath, describing Hovarth’s poetry as having “the sensibility of the traveler” and focused on “the details of lived life” in a way that makes it feel true.

Horvath read poem after poem in a neat row, maintaining an emotional presence and a still disposition. The poems were fragmented and packed with descriptions, inspiring snaps and even a verbal “damn” from the audience in response. 

There was certainly no mistaking Horvath’s work for prose — her snippets were pure poetry, lyrical and in pieces. In an interview afterwards, Jenkins said both Juárez and Horvath created and took the audience to “an imaginative place never seen before.”

In the Q&A portion, readers answered questions about being parents while writing, the recency of their work, their mutual focus on natural landscape and what makes a good ending. 

“My son has taught me so much about language,” Horvath said about being a writer and parent. In response to the final question about endings, she said, “sometimes, the poem ends itself.” 

A throughline of the Wednesday night reading was the holding of space for the continuation of the world of writing, reading and literature. Juárez noted that “it’s confounding” that literature still matters to us in a world with technology that is so ready to steal our attention. He added that “AI is doing many things, but it’s not imagining anything.”

Jenkins said the readings and the audience’s reactions to them “proved the point of having evenings like this.” Arbus-Scandiffio reflected that the readings were “deeply moving, incredibly relevant,” and the event as a whole underscored “the importance of writing, and the potential of words to make a difference.” 

Gathering artists together to share and talk about literature is something to hold dear. The good news is, we are still doing it.