The Marcia Kinsey Visiting Writers Series usually brings to campus writers from all across the country, but last week it was composed of St. Edward’s University’s own.

The Feb. 17 event in Jones Auditorium was inspired by the release of Mary Helen Specht’s debut novel “Migratory Animals,” but featured a number of readings from other professors within St. Edward’s Creative Writing department.  

As a creative writing professor, Specht isn’t unfamiliar with publishing creative work. It’s something she’s been doing for more than a decade, but publishing a novel was a different experience entirely.

“At first I just felt relief. One hates to think that one might have worked so long on a book for nothing to happen with it,” Specht said.

“Then I felt excited that a New York press had picked up the novel.  Then I felt terrified because I remembered that this meant people would actually read it.”

Specht isn’t the only member of the St. Edward’s faculty at the reading who has been published. She was joined by a pantheon of other published faculty members, like Tomás Morín, visiting assistant professor of creative writing.

Morin read some excerpts from his own poetry as well some of Pablo Neruda’s “The Heights of Macchu Picchu,” a work he translated from Spanish to English.

“As for something being lost in the process. It goes without saying. By its very nature, change implies loss,” Morin said of his translation work.

“The silver lining is that while yes, when you remake a work of art into a new language you will lose something, you will also gain something, too.”

Alan Altimont, a professor of English, read from a variety of other’s creative works including French Medieval poetry and from poet Philip Levine.

English professor Catherine Rainwater, author of “Dreams of Fiery Stars: The Transformations of Native American Fiction” and “Figuring Animals: Essays on Animal Images in Art” read from her own work at the Faculty Reading. She read from a selection of a larger published essay.

Beth Eakman, an instructor of English writing and rhetoric, read a chapter from her finished but unpublished memoir about raising two kids as a single mom.

“I thought their work would be very scholarly and serious and by comparison mine would seem like the little brother who’s trying to make you laugh in church by making fart noises,” Eakman said, whose selection was entitled “Spud Day.”

“Fortunately, all of the other readers were relaxed and funny about and in their own work. Tomas Morin’s poem ‘Bloodhound,’ was brilliant — a real lightning strike of funny and literary and profound all at the same time,” Eakman said.

“I’m immensely inspired by the range of talent we have on campus,” sophomore Erica Schomer said. Schomer is an English writing and rhetoric major who came out to support Specht, from whom she is currently taking a fiction workshop.