February 24, 2015

The NER Out Loud program began with a welcome by Debanjan Roychoudhury ’16, who served as MC and introduced the speakers and authors, offering the audience a little information about each student’s upcoming theatrical and oratory works. “All the readers you see up here are members of a new student organization called the Oratory Society,” he said. “We train each other as speakers, we run workshops and work with professors in their classes, and we produce and co-produce speaking events like this one.”

Caitlin Duffy ’15.5 reads “Shark Fishing”

The event included performances from seven Middlebury student readers from the Oratory Society (see below). Eliza Goodhue provided ASL interpretation.

NER editor Carolyn Kuebler spoke about the magazine and thanked collaborators Dana Yeaton, Associate Professor of Theater and head of the Oratory Society, and Liza Sacheli, director of the Mahaney Center, both of whom brought expertise and “unstoppable energy” to the project. “I’d read all these pieces probably a hundred times before tonight, and thought I’d caught every nuance, but these students have managed to reveal even more layers, more possible ways of hearing the language as it was written on the page.”

At the “s’more readings” reception after the event, copies of NER were available, along with three student publications, and student contributors read selections of their own work. NER intern Dustin Lowman ’15 introduced the student magazines and readers, including Blackbird editor Nick Kaye ’17, Room 404 editor Dylan Redford ’15, and Sweatervest editors Emily Luan ’15 and Doug LeCours ’15. In addition, reading for Blackbird were Isabelle Stillman ’16 and Edward O’Brien ’17; Alice Oshima ’15 read for Room 404.