The conference gives students the opportunity to work with C-SC faculty and students on a variety of approaches to writing, such as creative writing, non-fiction writing, music and playwriting, among others. Students from a variety of local high schools attend the conference.

Bailey Williams ’19 will be the keynote speaker. Her poetry collection “Utter & Unutterable” was published in 2019. Williams now is an administrative assistant at the Missouri School for the Blind in St. Louis.

Other participating authors will be:

• Mary Mock Harroun `66, who has self-published three books on elder care — “The Grow Program: Getting Residents Out of Wheelchairs,” “Advising Parents on Elder Care” and “The Grow Program: For Home Care Exercises.” Harroun now lives in Mundelein, Ill.
• Kiarra Lynn Smith `13, who has published five books — “Collective Face: A Series of Quatrains on Community Building,” “Let’s Speak! Kiswahili: 3 Short Stories Teaching Basic Kiswahili Words,” “The Book Cart Dance-Off: A Library Tale,” “Vibration: A Collection of Poetry, Essays and Art,” and “The Ballad of the Bleached Out Face.” Smith now works for EyeSeeMe Books in St. Louis.
• Kyle Darnell ‘10, who has published three books — “Evansville Monsters,” “Weird Tales of Goblins” and “Ghouls and Ghosts.” Darnell lives in Evansville, Ind., teaches at the University of Evansville and is a print/ceramic/fiber artist.

It took the death of a family member to be the catalyst for her to start writing again and eventually create her first book.

Williams, a 2019 graduate of 91ֱ�� who grew up in North County in St. Louis, recently wrote “Utter & Unutterable,” a 50-page paperback collection of poems. She has copies available for sale. It’s also available on Amazon.

A review of the book on the website said, “B.E. Williams manages to capture the indescribable pain of depression, power of the mind and the beauty of life. This is a thought provoking must-read that should be added to every young woman’s collection.”

Williams said she had stopped writing for a period of time until she started working on her book last June, only a few days after the death of her uncle, Kevin Garnett. He was diagnosed with cancer in March 2018 and died two months later.

“We kind of joke about how my uncle was everyone’s favorite family member, and he really was,” Williams said. “He was that story teller, the really funny guy. Regardless of what was happening, he would crack a joke and everything would be OK.”

Garnett died on May 26, and his funeral was in early June. Williams started writing about a week later. However, it wasn’t easy.

She admits struggling with feelings and emotions when she writes. While she was home from C-SC last summer, Williams was caring for her 70-year-old grandmother, helping keep an eye on other family members and working as a tutor for inner-city children at Applied Scholastics, a nonprofit educational organization that makes available L. Ron Hubbard’s educational technology.

“With (my uncle’s) passing, it was such an abrupt tearing away,” Williams said. “Writing it out was kind of how I coped. His death gave me the jump I needed to sit down and write and formulate my words into a way that made sense. I just had to make sure my family was OK and functioning in the midst of that kind of tragedy.

“Being able to sit at my computer and write after I got off work was like therapy. I had to get it out.”

Williams told no one of her work. She said she wrote for about six months, followed with about a month and a half of editing by friends and peers, before submitting for publication in February.

“I wanted to do it before I graduated college,” she said. “It was something to put on my resume and to see if I could actually do it, but I didn’t know how the publication process was going to work out, and I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.”

When she received copies of her book, Williams called her sister, Brooke Boyd, and was sobbing.

“And she was like, ‘What? You wrote a book and didn’t tell anyone?’” Williams said.

She wants to write more books, but for now, she recently started a new job with Pleasant Grove Publishing in St. Louis.

“Writing poetry doesn’t provide the most lucrative career,” she said. “But I love doing it.”

HOW CAN I GET A COPY?

It’s available for $15 at 

26 May 2018

There’s only one thing
Worse than pain
The absence of it,
The hole where it
Should be.

Pain fades
But that empty, that
Person-shaped hole
Hollows out and it
Never fills again.

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