Written by Judith Schwartzstein, Director of Public Affairs, Sarah Lawrence College

Nov. 26, 2014:  A discussion about how thirteen students in a fiction-writing class taught by Sarah Lawrence College faculty member Melvin Bukiet collaboratively conceived, wrote, and ultimately published the novel Naked Came the Post-Postmodernist will take place on Thursday, December 4, at 3:00 pm in the Great Room of the Esther Raushenbush Library on the campus of the college.

In the resulting whodunit, inspired by the inglorious literary tradition of Naked Came the Stranger and Naked Came the Manatee, the students crafted a collaborative novel about a murder mystery on a fictional campus where crime, hedonistic characters, and praying mantises come together for a wild, irreverent parody of a privileged campus culture.

Naked Came the Post-Postmodernist was published last year by Arcade Publishing. It is the first novel of its kind to be composed entirely by students, but it was not without its challenges--each student wrote two chapters and revised them based on class critiques. Throughout the process, students had to balance the creative freedom of developing the plot with the accountability of carrying through storylines of the previous chapters--and ultimately had to produce a compelling, cohesive novel worthy of publication at the end of the course.

Pictured here: Sarah Lawrence College faculty member Melvin Bukiet.

Photo courtesy Judith Schwartzstein, Director of Public Affairs, Sarah Lawrence College