Instructors recruit at festival

The Creative Writing department carved out its own niche at the Texas Book Festival.
Department Chair Charlotte Gullick was at the festival letting people know about the unique resource the department represents. ACC is one of a small number of community colleges in the nation to offer an Associate degree in creative writing.
"We are a valuable educational institution," said Gullick, and she wanted "people who read and write books to keep Austin Community College at the forefront of their minds."

The Creative Writing department had a booth in the exhibitor tent where Gullick as well as other department faculty members talked to interested people and sold copies of their books.  All of the faculty members in the department are practicing writers.
Gullick hopes that the department's presence at the Book Festival will attract more students to the creative writing department.
"I like being at Austin Community College," said Gullick. "We take all students. People who come into our creative writing program have probably had more challenges in their life to their education, and I find that for those students, the process of telling their stories can be more important than for people who are at the four year institutions."
The Book Festival, which was hosted at the State Capitol on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, featured over 200 authors. The festival was established in 1995 by former First Lady Laura Bush. The first festival took place at the State Capitol in 1996.

This year's Texas Book Festival is the first for Gullick. She moved to Austin from northern California only three months earlier. She says she is amazed by "the fact that [festival attendees] get to go into their state capital as a way to advance literacy. It's stunning to sit in the House Chamber and have say Colson Whitehead and ZZ Packer talk about fiction and racial identity. It is really amazing feature about this city."