After the first round between St. Mary’s and USF, Munn approaches stage left to face Jose Vadi of Mills College. Vadi reads a selection of untitled creative non-fiction about his Puerto Rican family, focusing primarily on his strong-willed mother and her bout with cancer. Munn chooses an excerpt from a fictional short story, a romance at the soup kitchen of a meditation camp. Both students’ voices rise and fall in time with the plots of their respective stories, captivating everyone else in the room.
But in spite of these students’ undeniable talents–from Ho’s sexually-charged poem about sandwiches to Justin etc.’s dry humor–the foreseeable future of book publishing is less than bright. According to the SF State’s body slammers, the shift in the industry from big corporations to independently-owned bookstores and from printed works to online archives makes them alter their approach to getting published.
Ho finds that online publications ensure a longer shelf life of her work.
“It’s unfortunate, but electronics are more permanent than print,” she says.
Justin etc., embodying a romantic nostalgia for lit culture, maintains that while the publishing industry is undergoing a metamorphosis, it should not have an influence on writers’ intentions.