“I believe in reading stories I’m working on,” announced, author and speaker Dorothy Allison, and launched into reading a number of excerpts from her upcoming collection of short stories at Hege Library on Oct. 30.Her reading was co-sponsored by the English department, the women’s studies program, the academic dean’s office, and an anonymous alumni donor. She was introduced by junior Meredith Luby.

At times, the roughly 65 people among us laughed, at other times, we were introspective. Allison didn’t merely read a story. She felt it, and in turn, we felt it. Her voice rose and fell: quiet when her characters were thoughtful and introspective, loud and boisterous when her characters were energetic. The whole audience was mesmerized by her words, fascinated by the stories she had read so often that she seemed, at times, to have memorized them.

She spoke of famous people, sex, homosexuality, heterosexuality, gender, life and death. She spoke of the rain and how the endless drops could measure minutes and hours. She spoke of flowers.

At the end of the reading, she informed us it was all true.

“I believe in fiction as an act of public humiliation,” Allison said. “I always say you should make yourself as ridiculous in the story as everyone else.”

She asked the listeners who the writers were. A few of us raised our hands.

“I love baby writers,” Allison said. “I think of you as piranhas.”

Allison spoke at length about being a writer and gave advice to the “baby writers” in the audience. The profession, she said, was not for the faint of heart.

“Being a writer is a little bit – I don’t know – like being a homeless person,” Allison said. “Everybody looks at you with a little bit of compassion, but mostly, they don’t look at you and they avoid you.”

Afterwards, the listeners had a chance to talk to Allison, shake her hand, and ask her questions. A lot of people waited to say hello, get her autograph and talk about her books.

Listeners in attendance, who included Guilford students and professors, were all pleased with the reading.

“It was great. She was fantastic. She had a real boisterous personality, lots of fun, appropriately and delightfully irreverent, and a great, talented writer,” Professor of English Jim Hood said.

“It was really good. I was surprised by the length of the stories,” sophomore Izzy Hayton said. “When I hear really good writers speak their work and they know exactly how to use their voice to illustrate that story, I think it kind of gives me a perspective on the way you can speak writing.”

Junior Cristen Kennedy enjoyed what Allison had to say after the reading.

“I thought it was really interesting how she read her story to the audience,” she said. “It made the characters come to life. My favorite part was how she told the audience where she gets her material from. It’s based on her everyday life. I thought that was really cool.”

Interestingly, Allison told The Guilfordian that she hadn’t wanted to be a writer.

“I wanted to be a woman of leisure, and I wanted to be a revolutionary,” Allison explained. “I wanted to figure out how to make a living and I didn’t think I could make a living being a writer, and I was mostly right. You don’t make much of a living. But there is nothing more satisfying, and it is a really wonderful kind of poverty.