Cover Story: English Festival Celebrates 40 Years

Reading and writing were not a big part of Trenton Merricks’ upbringing. “I was from a family that was pretty blue collar, and definitely in no way part of the world of writers,” Merricks recalls.

“We just were not a house that had that many books in it.”

The YSU English Festival changed that.

It was 1980 and Merricks was a seventh-grader at Glenwood Middle School in Boardman when he attended the Festival on the YSU campus and won the Candace Gay Memorial Essay Contest, including a $100 cash prize.

“My main memory is just being overwhelmed by winning,” he said. “It seemed to me like a very big deal, and it was a lot of money to someone like me then.”
With the prize money in his pocket and a newfound sense of confidence and accomplishment, Merricks went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Ohio State University and master’s and PhD degrees from the University of Notre Dame.

Today, Merricks is Commonwealth Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia, author of three books and dozens of articles, and recipient of several academic honors, including two National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships.

“The English Festival was the first affirmation of my ability to write, and I do think it was the first big moment in my life where I realized that I could perhaps aspire to a life of scholarship and writing,” he said.

The English Festival at Youngstown State University celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, and stories like Merricks’ are aplenty.

In four decades, more than 100,000 junior and senior high school students from more than 300 school districts and at least eight states have attended the three-day event on campus. Those participants have read an estimated 750,000 books, written thousands of essays and had the chance to meet dozens of the nation’s most prominent and successful authors of young adult literature.

Along the way, the Festival has earned its share of national recognition, including the Intellectual Freedom Award from the National Council of Teachers of English. It has been the topic of scholarly articles and presentations at state and national conferences. And, maybe the biggest honor of all, the Festival’s concept has been replicated from Georgia to Guam.

“We always wanted this to be a celebration of reading and writing,” said Gary Salvner, who, along with fellow English department faculty James Houck, Janet Knapp, Thomas and Carol Gay, created the Festival.

“It’s a euphemism, I know, but we wanted to encourage and reward reading and writing among young people. And I think we have been pretty successful at doing just that.”

YSU Magazine celebrates that success with the stories of a handful of participants who say the YSU English Festival was an integral influence on their professional and personal lives.

"I couldn't let go"

If she heard it once, she heard it a thousand times: “You should go into the sciences, or engineering, or something like that.”

In junior high school, Angela Messenger won contests to attend a week at the U.S. Space Academy Summer Camp and another at B-WISER, Buckeye Women in Science and Engineering Research at the College of Wooster, as well as a week in high school at the U.S. Air Force Academy. She even majored in Combined Sciences as a student at YSU, earning a bachelor’s degree.

“But the one thing that I couldn't let go of was writing,” Messenger recalls.

And she credits the YSU English Festival.

Now, as coordinator of the YSU Writing Center and co-chair of the Festival, she’s still not letting go.

“I want to make sure that this event is around for years to come,” says Messenger, who attended the Festival through junior and senior high in the Youngstown city schools.

“Because I hadn't known a time without the English Festival, I thought that every child had such an opportunity to share in reading and writing. It was only years later that I fully came to appreciate how unique and special the Festival is.”

Messenger, who advanced to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English, also at YSU, said the Festival remains an inspiration for students, librarians and teachers across the region.

“It is rare that young people get a chance to interact with others about their reading and writing on the level that the Festival provides,” she said.

NPR reporter destined to write

In some ways, Solvejg Wastvedt was destined to write.

The daughter of an English professor, Wastvedt, as a student in the Wilmington schools in Pennsylvania, was always encouraged to take an interest in writing. So, it was natural that she’d find her way to the English Festival at YSU.

At the age of 13, as a seventh grader attending her first-ever English Festival, she won the Candace Gay Memorial Essay Contest. “I don't remember the specifics of the essay I wrote, but I remember putting in quite a bit of time to get it just right,” she recalls.

“Winning the contest proved to me that I had some writing ability, which definitely figured into my career. Gaining that boost of confidence early on helped me stick to my dream of becoming a reporter.”

Solvejg graduated from Wilmington Area High School, earned a bachelor’s degree from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., worked internships at Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine and at NPR in Los Angeles and then accepted a reporting position at a small public radio station in Binghamton, N.Y. Two years ago, she moved on to Minnesota Public Radio News, where she covers education.

“The most interesting stories to me are the ones where I get to interview people ‘on the ground,’ rather than in official positions,” she said. “Student, teacher and parent interviews can really make a story come to life for our listeners.”

Read her stories at mprnews.org.

'Good writing is a cornerstone'

Ryan Loew attended the English Festival starting in 1998 as a seventh-grader at St. Rose Catholic School in Girard until he graduated from Ursuline High School in 2003.

And he’s been writing ever since.

“I’ve been working as a journalist for about 10 years now, and while much of my career so far has focused on visual storytelling, good writing is a cornerstone of all forms of journalism,” Loew said.

“So for me, whether it’s something as simple as a photo caption or as complex as a video script, my job as a journalist always comes back to the fundamentals of writing – what’s the most engaging aspect of this story? How can I explain something complicated in an easy-to-understand way? How can I keep the audience interested? These are all lessons I began learning as I was attending the English Festival.”

Loew is currently a visual storyteller/producer for PublicSource, a nonprofit online news organization in Pittsburgh that focuses on in-depth and investigative journalism. He previously worked at the Lansing State Journal in Michigan, the Roanoke Times in Virginia and WESA, Pittsburgh’s NPR member radio station.

“In many ways, the English Festival was a preview of college – lots of new people, new surroundings, more freedom than your typical high school day,” he remembers. “And like in college, whether you would do well in any of the contests or learn something in any of the workshops all came down to your interest level and willingness to succeed.”

Then and now: 'Doing what I love'

“Hmmm…that was a long time ago,” Diana Awad Scrocco ponders when asked to recall some favorite YSU English Festival books.

After some digging and thinking, she recalled “A Door Near Here,” a book about a teenager’s struggle to keep her family together despite overwhelming parental neglect; “A Lesson Before Dying,” about a dying kid and the struggles of teaching him how to be a man; and “My Brother Sam is Dead,” the story of a family torn apart by the Revolutionary War.

“The Festival provided me with an outlet to learn more and experience more than I ever could in the classroom, reading books that introduced me to concepts and topics outside of the mainstream,” she said. “Thanks to the Festival, I was drawn into the field of English.”

That interest for reading, writing and learning continues today in Awad Scrocco’s role as a member of the English department faculty at YSU.

“I enjoy working with students who, much like myself, share a passion for reading and writing,” she said.

Awad Scrocco attended her first festival in 1997 as a student at St. Charles School in Boardman and later as a student at Cardinal Mooney High School. After high school, she attended YSU, graduating in 2006 with a double major in English and Psychology. Five years ago, after earning master’s and PhD degrees, she returned to YSU and joined the English department faculty, teaching professional and technical writing and composition.

“The Festival enabled me to do what I loved, back then and today,” she said. “I can’t believe I get paid to do something that I love so much.”

Candy counter, Arby’s, a lifelong connection

Scott Schulick was a 13-year-old seventh-grader when he first came to the YSU campus to attend the English Festival.

It was 1985 and the start of a lifelong friendship.

“I remember being in awe of the place and having the opportunity to wander from campus building to building for the workshops,” he said. “Going to the Kilcawley candy counter was a special experience, with lunch at Arby’s a close second. Those encounters during the Festival had a direct impact on my decision to attend YSU.”

Schulick has experienced YSU on just about every level – as a student, a two-time graduate, a part-time faculty member, a trustee of the YSU Foundation, president of the Penguin Club, chair of the YSU Board of Trustees and, for six years between 1985 and 1990, a participant of the English Festival.

A Webster’s dictionary Schulick won as a writing prize at the Festival still holds a prominent place on his bookshelf, and his Festival nametag is still stuck on the first page. Also on the shelf is an autographed book by Robert Cormier, award-winning author and frequent guest at the Festival.

“I know I also have a book signed by M.E. Kerr, as well, but that must be on another shelf,” continued Schulick, vice president of Investments at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. “Wow! I remember meeting and listening to the lectures of Kerr, Richard Peck, Ouida Sebestyn, Cormier, Rosa Guy and Cynthia Voight. I still have many of those paperbacks, too.”

Schulick says the Festival instilled in him a love for writing and reading.

“Sadly, writing is a dying art in a world of texting, tweeting and e-mail jargon,” he said, “and that’s why the English Festival is so important, now more than ever, to instill the fire for reading and writing. Done well, they are lifetime gifts that allow you to communicate in a world where, despite new technologies, people seem to have trouble communicating.”

In Fall 1978, Professor Thomas Gay and Dr. Carol Gay of YSU’s English Department established a fund in memory of their daughter, Candace, who died a year earlier of cancer at the age of 13. That fund turned into the YSU English Festival, a three-day celebration of reading and writing on campus. Here, the Gay’s three surviving children reflect on their parents’ legacy. By Jason Gay, Pamela Gay-Kileen and Penelope Gay To read, to write, to grow It’s hard to believe that the English Festival is 40 years old! So many memories around its inception still linger with us after all these years. After the death of our sister Candace from cancer at the age of 13, our Mom and Dad were desperate to distract themselves from such an unimaginable loss. With four other children to guide through this impossible time and with a need to channel their grief, they began to envision a way to remember our sister. Our parents joined forces with their close knit group of colleagues at YSU and soon the idea of an essay contest in Candace’s name grew into a much larger project bursting with vitality. Little by little they helped to create an event dedicated to what they loved – books, reading and writing. Our parents wanted to create an event where all students, not just the honor students, could participate. They wanted kids in the Youngstown area to be able to spend the day on a college campus, planting the seed that they can go on to be college graduates. They wanted students to be able to meet authors in person and to feel the accomplishment of reading an impressive number of books and writing about them. They wanted to give out lots of prizes so that students could feel honored academically. The Festival soon became a central point in our parents’ lives and in all of our lives, while making Candace’s memory live on longer than the short time she had with us. As the Festival passes yet another remarkable milestone, we can’t say enough about how grateful we are for the continued, tireless and enthusiastic work of all the members of the English Festival Committee, the advisory board, the countless volunteers, the guest authors and speakers, and the amazing area teachers that have kept this wonderful event alive and expanding for 40 years. Thanks to them, we feel privileged to have participated ourselves as students attending the Festival, to have had our own children participate in turn, and to see the many generations of students continue the tradition. We know our parents would be absolutely thrilled, and thankful as well, that thousands of students continue to come to the Festival year after year – to read, to write and to grow.