Beyond Imagining: Bella Stephens ’27 becomes the first Pioneer to earn a scholarship to the prestigious New York State Summer Writers Institute
"I feel like my purpose is to just make things and create as much as possible.”
It was a typical exercise, one Professor Gary Leising had given students in his creative nonfiction courses many times before – write an essay about the neighborhood where they grew up. What he got back from one particular student, however, was nothing like what he was expecting.
Bella Stephens’s essay began conventionally enough, describing with imagery her South Utica neighborhood before moving into other areas of her life and upbringing, and then circling back, in and out. Leising was struck by the young writer’s rare gift for powerful, patterned storytelling.
“She braided together this story in a really interesting way that made it not just about her experiences coming of age as a young person, but also about this almost stereotypical kind of upstate town where there are these big mansions that rich people used to own, but there’s not as much money now, so they’re crumbling down,” he recalls. “She was incredibly good at just creating images that carry the emotion and telling stories without it feeling like she’s setting out to tell a story. She’s telling stories in very literary ways, but not literary to the point of being difficult or inaccessible.”
He had stumbled upon a special writer, just as Stephens, a transfer student, had stumbled upon his class.
Stephens attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City right out of high school before enrolling at Herkimer County Community College a year later. After earning her associate’s degree at Herkimer, she decided last summer to transfer to Utica.
“I signed up for classes really late, and my advisor was like, ‘Well, this one’s still open,’” she says, recalling how she learned of Leising’s 300-level creative writing course. “I had never written creative nonfiction before taking his class. I was actually really surprised how much I liked it.”
By the time the semester concluded, Leising had nominated Stephens for a scholarship to attend the highly selective New York State Summer Writers Institute. The prestigious summer program, held annually at Skidmore College, draws student applicants from colleges and universities across the country, including the likes of Harvard, Yale, Vanderbilt, and Northwestern.
Stephens was unaware that her professor had nominated her until she received an e-mail this spring informing her that she had been selected.
“I was amazed – and a little nervous too,” she says.
Now, this summer she will be among a host of literary luminaries. The four-week residential experience features an award-winning faculty of visiting writers, including Pulitzer winners and PEN/Faulkner Award recipients. Attendees engage in intensive workshops in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, attend readings by renowned authors, and have their own work evaluated.
Stephens thinks the experience will be very beneficial. “I’m definitely proud,” she says, “especially because I feel like I didn’t really know what I wanted to do for a long time and I’ve found a direction here that I’m passionate about.”
Breaking through
Leising is excited for his student to have this special opportunity. Further, he believes Stephens’s selection is validation for an English program that has long fostered published undergraduate writers.
“As long as I’ve been here, I’ve gotten requests to nominate students for scholarships, and this is the first time we’ve had somebody selected. Each year when you look at the list of recipients there are always students from Harvard, Yale – the elite schools,” he says.
“You sort of think it’s unfair to students not just here but other places that are smaller and have first-generation students who are probably not coming from a prep school background where they’re probably doing lots of creative writing as high school students. It always felt like there was this kind of elitism involved, so it’s nice that we have Bella breaking through that. Hopefully she goes there and has a great experience, and when we nominate students in the future, they will see that we definitely have writers here who are ready for this opportunity.”
After Utica, Stephens plans on pursuing her MFA. She is considering several graduate schools, including Brown, but would ideally like to return to New York City.
“My top program is NYU. I’m a really big fan of one of the poets who teaches in the master’s program,” she says. “I really do want to move back. I liked (the city), I just didn’t have a vision for what I wanted to get out of it. Now I have a much better idea of what I want from the college experience.”
Leising believes Stephens’s academic and career goals, while ambitious, are well within her reach.
“She’s equally talented at writing prose and poetry,” he says. “She will easily have a portfolio that can get her into a good graduate school, and from there it’s up to her what kind of path she wants to take.”
In a very short time, Stephens discovered both a career path and a creative passion through the opportunities that came her way at Utica, pursuing a form of expression she had never contemplated before.
“I really don’t think I could have pictured this,” she says. “When I graduated high school – and even when I came back from FIT and got my associate’s – I had no idea what I wanted to do. I definitely would not have expected myself to commit to writing and enjoy it the way I have. Now, I know I want to keep writing. That’s very important for who I am. I feel like my purpose is to just make things and create as much as possible.”
