After learning about a book giveaway on the third floor of 33 E. Ida B Wells Drive this week, Antonia Butka eagerly began searching for her next read.
The third-year film, television, and acting major was in the TRIO Lounge on the building’s fifth floor on Monday, Aug. 26, when Ann Hemenway, a professor emerita in the new School of Communication, Culture, and Society, announced that she and five other full-time faculty members leaving the former English and Creative Writing Department were cleaning out their offices and giving away their books to students.
The college had offered 18 faculty members positions through the Incentive program for voluntary separations to close the deficit and potentially avoid layoffs of full-time staff. Faculty from the former English and Creative Writing Department who will retire or receive severance pay include professors Deborah HoldsteinThomas Nawrocki, Jeff Schiff and David Trinidad and Eric May, an associate professor.
The hallways of the newly renovated third floor were mostly empty except for construction workers during the last week of summer. While a half-dozen students browsed books in the former English and Creative Writing Department office, Hemenway and May chatted with the students as they continued to sort and organize their books.
Butka was an avid reader and devoted herself to her usual genres such as plays and literature, but she also took the opportunity to expand into other genres.
“I don’t buy nonfiction or more intellectual books, so I can always come across some for free and build my collection,” she said.
Hemenway, an acclaimed author who taught fiction writing at Columbia University, said the faculty wanted to offer the books to students first before giving them away elsewhere.
“We love the students; we want them to have this,” she said. “Our students are writers or readers, and they’re going to want it.”
Other students browsed the bookshelves without a specific genre in mind, like Esmeralda Garcia, a sophomore graphic design major. She said she’s open to anything that appeals to her.
“I love books, and they’re free books, so I’ll take them,” she said. “I just found a stack of poetry books, and they look interesting. I found a book on screenwriting, so I’ll take that and maybe write a screenplay.”
May agreed with Hemenway that most professors who give away the books simply don’t have enough space for them, but he was happy to give them to students so they could “use them for school or just for fun.”
“It makes me feel good when I see people come in and take a book, because I know that the book has found a home, that it’s in a beautiful place and is appreciated,” says May, a novelist and former Washington Post reporter who taught creative writing.
After finding books that inspired many of her interests, Garcia said she appreciated the effort made to show students part of her office before she retired.
“I think it’s really cool that we get access to all these free books that the professors want to leave behind, it’s great,” she said.
Editing by Vanessa Orozco
