It is early summer 2019, and author Marisol Baca, a graduate of Fresno State University, is standing with her mother at Fresno Yosemite International Airport, ready to catch her plane. She is flying there to hold a reading and book signing for her publisher, 3 Mile Harbor Press.
Her first collection of poems, “tremor”, recently celebrated its first birthday and Baca was just named Fresno’s fourth poet laureatethe first woman to serve as the city’s most important literary ambassador.
At the gate, Baca takes a call from a former colleague who asks if she would be willing to volunteer for an unusual publishing project to raise money for a new student scholarship. Her task: to write 15 new poems in 15 days, marathon style, as Creative Writing Alumni Chapter shares the poems in a month-long crowdfunding campaign.
Baca immediately says yes.
“I was so excited,” she said. “I thought it was such a creative, fun and thoughtful way to raise money for scholarships, support Fresno State’s creative writing program and generate a lot of interest and excitement.”
Baca is one of 15 Fresno writers – 13 Fresno State University graduates, Professor Emeritus Juan Felipe Herrera and the city’s current poet laureate, Joseph Rios – who have volunteered to The Fresno 15 Creative Writing Marathona five-year campaign to raise $25,000 for the university’s new Larry Levis Memorial Scholarship, which supports graduate students in the Master of Fine Arts Program.
From 2019 to 2023, the marathon raised $26,238 from 159 donors, exceeding the crowdfunding project’s goal. Proceeds from the Fresno State Alumni Association scholarship will now benefit an MFA student annually and in perpetuity.
Over the course of the five-year campaign, every October three authors took turns publishing 15 new texts in 15 days, spread over the month, while members of the Creative Writing Alumni Chapter presented their work on the FresnoWriters.com Project website. Community members “sponsored” the authors through donations large and small and encouraged them to write.
For Baca, who teaches English at Fresno City College, the writing marathon was a motivation to create a new work on time while supporting her alma mater.
“I felt honored to be asked,” she said, “and immediately afterward I began to think about what direction I would take with the new work.”
Baca first wrote eight poems about the surrealist painter Remedios Varo, whose paintings provoke wonder and curiosity. Then she wrote seven poems with stories about her great-grandmother and her sisters. Several of Baca’s 15-Poem Series have since been published in literary magazines and form the backbone of her second collection of poems, on which she is currently working.
Baca said one poem from the project stood out in particular: “The Gutiérrez Sisters at Boarding School, Grand Junction, Colorado.” It was about her great-aunt Manuelita and her two sisters. The poem later appeared as part of a Interview in Ms. Magazine with the author Chivas Sandage.
“I had been researching my family history and this was the perfect opportunity for me to turn that family history into a poem,” she said.
Baca, who sits on Fresno State University’s Arts and Humanities Advisory Board, said she enjoys the work the English department’s creative writers continue to do and that, as a former student, she is proud to support the Fresno 15’s support of MFA students.
“This project shows that the community loves and supports our writers,” she said. “The more people show interest in the arts, the more the students will feel encouraged and supported in their creation.”
The writers who joined Baca, Herrerra and Rios as The Fresno 15 were: Sara Borjas, Michelle Brittan Rosado, David Campos, Sarah A. Chavez, Anthony Cody, Juan Luis Guzmán, Hermelinda Hernandez Monjaras, Lena Mubsutina, Monique Quintana, Steven Sanchez, Jeffrey Schultz and Brian Turner.
Leverage a community of Fresno writers
The idea for the marathon came from fellow Fresno writer Ronald Dzerigian, who organized the project with the all-volunteer members of the Creative Writing Alumni Chapter. Dzerigian, a two-time Fresno State graduate, works on campus as the coordinator of graduate student success and financial opportunities for the Department of Research and Graduate Studies.
In 2018, after the publication of his first collection of poems, “Raven Fire”, Dzerigian looked for ways to get his writing going again. He took part in a poem-a-day marathon for Tupelo Press, writing new material every day for a whole month. He saw the Tupelo 30/30 Project as an innovative way for the press to earn money while expanding their support network.
“We are surrounded by amazing writers in the central San Joaquin Valley,” Dzerigian said. “So we thought, ‘Why not reach out to Fresno State graduates and writers of varying success from Fresno to raise money for our new scholarship?'”
Dzerigian said his high school English teacher, Mike Cole, introduced him to the world of Fresno writers and he has been in love with the voices of Central California ever since. Cole, also a Fresno State graduate, taught the works of Philip Levine, Peter Everwine and C.G. Hanzlicek, early faculty pillars of the university’s creative writing program. He also taught established writers such as Corrinne Clegg Hales, Dixie Salazar, C.W. Moulton, Sherley Anne Williams, Luis Omar Salinas and others.
These poets inspired Dzerigian, who initially earned a bachelor’s degree in art from Fresno State, to return to campus to earn his MFA in creative writing and later become a member of the alumni club.
“My goal was to contribute to and hopefully become part of a new generation of Fresno writers,” Dzerigian said. “Bringing together generations of well-known and new writers associated with Fresno and Fresno State to raise funds for a scholarship named after an important Central Valley voice like Larry Levis – that made perfect sense to me.”
Levis, the author of eight volumes of poetry, is one of Fresno’s most celebrated creative writers. He graduated from Fresno State University with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1968 and went on to have a successful career as a writer and educator. In 1995, he received the Outstanding Alumni Award from the College of Arts and Humanities. Levis died unexpectedly in 1996 at the age of 49.
Emily Muñoz, an annual fundraising analyst at Fresno State, said the Fresno 15 Creative Writing Marathon is a good addition to the Crowdfunding platformused as a tool to provide faculty, staff, and students on campus with the ability to raise money for causes related to student success. Similar to sites like GoFundMe and Kickstarter, Fresno State Crowdfunding offers custom project pages that open up storytelling and fundraising opportunities for partners across campus.
“For some groups, like the Creative Writing Alumni Chapter, this is the first step toward fundraising,” Muñoz said. “This can be a huge undertaking, so we do our part to create a framework for success. Ultimately, we hope to teach project teams how to build a cycle of philanthropy in areas that don’t typically raise funds themselves.”
The writing marathon aspect of the campaign created a unique sense of urgency among supporters and inspiration among writers, Muñoz said. And because the campaign was designed as a five-year project, donors from previous years kept coming back and participating, knowing they would be asked to support the project each October.
“It has been very inspiring to watch the project grow year after year,” Muñoz said. “The authors and donors have worked together to create something valuable that the next generation of authors can read and be inspired by.”
Finding a literary home at Fresno State
The impact of the campaign will live on at Fresno State through the now-endowed Larry Levis Memorial Scholarship. The 2024 recipient of the scholarship is Taylor Seals, a sophomore studying poetry in the MFA program. Seals aspires to work as a literary editor and publisher and said she is grateful to be named a Levis Scholar.
“I feel like I’m trusted,” Seals said. “Coming from a low-income household, I bear all the financial responsibilities as I work to make my way to the top. It lights a fire inside me to think that someone believed in me enough to help me advance in my career. It means I made the right decision in making Fresno State my writing home.”
Seals said she grew up feeling “like my voice was never loud enough.” One summer, she decided to do something about it. She started watching endless poetry videos on YouTube and began randomly marking definitions in the family dictionary, a worn and thin-edged volume on her small family library shelf that was much older than she was.
Her love of writing quickly blossomed.
“For me, turning to poetry was like visiting my childhood home after years of forgetfulness,” Seals said. “Like I knew exactly where to lay my head amid the frayed familiarity.”
Her poetry focuses on human relationships, she said, as she explores how to forge and preserve the deep bonds in her life across generations, across trauma and healing, through the songs of her mothers’ mothers’ mothers and through her lesbian identity.
“I think what gives me the greatest sense of accomplishment as a writer and a professional is the hope that one day I can convince someone to pick up a pen and start writing,” Seals said. “There is so much more life in voices the world hasn’t heard yet.”
To continue Larry Levis’ legacy and support creative writing, visit the Fresno State Alumni Association Formand select the Larry Levis Memorial Scholarship under “Giving Options” or call 559.278.1569.
(Editor’s note: The author of this story, Jefferson Beavers, co-organized The Fresno 15 Creative Writing Marathon project with Ronald Dzerigian. He is a communications specialist in the English department and a two-time graduate of Fresno State.)
Related Links:
