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In the mid- to late-1990s, Robert Lamb kept hearing in his Fiction Workshop classes (English 465) student stories that he believed were good enough to be published if the market for new writers were not so abysmal.
After he bemoaned the situation in class, two lawyers who were taking the course suggested a solution: Lamb should publish the stories himself.
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| Robert Lamb |
They even helped the adjunct professor of English form a small limited liability corporation, Red Letter Press, which he used to publish The Class Menagerie, a 1998 collection of 18 stories produced by the students.
"I called it The Class Menagerie because you hear a little of everything in the class," Lamb said. "It was a collection of all these different voices and it seemed to work. I used it mainly as a teaching tool, because when students saw it and realized the stories were done by other students, they unconsciously said, 'I can do this, too.'"
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| Chuck Curran |
Now Lamb has published The Class Menagerie II, 26 more stories he edited with Chuck Curran, a retired professor of library and information science who took Lamb's course. The first volume was co-edited by Chris Horn, periodicals director at University Publications after graduate student Kevin Durden helped pick the stories to be included.
Rights to the stories in both editions are reserved to their authors.
Lamb plans to use the new book in the classroom the same way he did the first volume. Students will read and analyze the stories and then write several paragraphs on what makes the stories work, and why.
Lamb, who also is a former periodicals director in publications, paid for both books out of his own pocket, though the second volume was considerably less expensive thanks to advancing technology.
The Class Menagerie II was produced by an on-demand printer from a PDF file prepared and edited by Lamb and Curran. The book is available for $20 from the USC Bookstore or from Lamb at redletterpress@gmail.com.
Lamb sees in the books potential for another idea: evening readings by students of their poetry or prose in a Columbia nightspot or an on campus site.
"These volumes have been very helpful," said Lamb, who sees the anthologies as "proof of how much talent is out there among our students and proof that you really can write publishable fiction if you set your mind to it."
7/06
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