Award-winning author Amy Hassinger spoke to Oswego State students Monday about discovering their unique voices through their writing for a creative writing class.

The talk opened with Hassinger defining what a voice is, starting broadly and ending more precisely. The final definition she gave was, “a mode of expression or point of view in writing, especially a particular literary tone or style.”

Hassinger, whose fiction has won awards from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, the Illinois Arts Council and others, discussed her writing process and gave advice at the Marano Campus Center auditorium as part of the Living Writers Series class.

The theme of the series this semester is Find Your Voice, said Juliet Giglio, assistant professor in the English and creative writing department.

Giglio worked with Leigh Wilson, professor, and director of the creative writing department, to select Hassinger for the series. As a writer, teacher and manuscript consultant, Hassinger fit the theme well, Giglio said.

“I knew that she was writing about a specific place from the perspective of a young mother,” Giglio said. “I thought that was a different voice than we’d had [before].”

Hassinger addressed why establishing a unique voice through one’s writing is crucial.

“It’s an important subject for all of us, but especially for aspiring writers, it can feel somewhat mysterious,” Hassinger said. “It really is a process of discovery.”

Hassinger oriented her speech around the central message of how to find one’s voice in writing, primarily through discussion with the students who attended both for and outside of the class.

To relate her message to lyrics, she played three artists’ performances of the song “Trouble in Mind” and asked the students to write down characteristics of each one of the singers’ style. She also read three examples of prose that conveyed different voices and asked for a similar discussion from the students.

“[I liked] to see how other people find their own voice,” said Natalie Discenza, a junior and broadcasting major.

Hassinger used the examples to teach the students how to find their own writing style.

“I like how she got the students thinking [and] she wasn’t just talking to them,” Giglio said. “[The students] are going to think about those very concrete examples.”

Hassinger provided the students with three main pieces of advice for how to find their voice: read, write and listen. She said a common language is the uniform tool that everyone is given to write with and that it is the job of the writer to take common language and use it to make something completely new.

“Your voice should be yours and no one else’s,” Hassinger said.

At the end of her talk, students asked Hassinger about her writing style and process and how she found her voice. Specifically, the students were interested in her book, “After the Dam,” which she signed after the speech.

She discussed the research that went into “After the Dam,” which was a seven-year process, and how that influenced her characters and her writing.

“All places have a sort of natural tension you can exploit [in writing],” Hassinger said in relation to how she developed foreshadowing. “Every place is full of its own stories.”

Students overall said they found Hassinger’s talk informative and fascinating.

“It was really driven home that if you want to be a writer, you have to read and listen,” said Ashely Trevor, a junior and business administration major. “[Her advice] was really helpful for me personally.”

Hassinger consistently returned to the idea of distinction in writing and how individuality is a writer’s most useful tool.

“It comes back to specificity, which is what good writing is about,” Hassinger said.

As the author signed the students’ books, some of them expressed how they admired her style.

“I thought she was very prepared for what she had to talk about,” said Canaan Main, a sophomore and biology major. “She was exposing us to different voices.”

Students took away the message of the most crucial steps to finding one’s voice.

“The more you read and the more you write, the more your voice will come,” Discenza said.

Some students and professors came who were not part of the class and expressed a similar sentiment about Hassinger’s presentation.

“Her message was…it’s very important to find your voice,” Gabor Hardy, critical thinking, and public speaking professor. “[That] came through loud and clear.”

Photo: Taylor Woods | The Oswegonian